Almos’ A Man  (by Richard Wright)
Video: VHS, color; 39 minutes
A black, teenage farmworker, Dave, persuades his mother to give him part of his earnings for a used handgun. While timidly practicing with it, he accidentally kills a mule. Consequently, his father demeans him in front of the landowner, who demands that he work 25 months to pay for the animal. At nightfall, armed with vague notions of manhood and independence, Dave retrieves his gun and hops aboard a passing train. LeVar Burton is featured. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Barn Burning (by William Faulkner)
Video: VHS, color; 41 minutes
Tommy Lee Jones and Shawn Wittington are featured in this story of a family of tenant farmers in the rural South. Any disagreement with the landowners provokes the head of the family to commit acts of destruction against his employers. His son must choose between his aversion to playing the accomplice in his father’s violent and hate-filled deeds and his desire to win his father’s acceptance. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1985.
Producer: Perspective Films

Bernice Bobs Her Hair (by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Video: VHS, color; 48 minutes
A member of the pre-flapper generation, Bernice is transformed from a reticent ugly duckling into a successful, sought after vamp by her manipulative cousin Marjorie. Shelley Duvall plays Bernice, who becomes so adroit at social cliches and conventions that she wins the hearts of all Marjorie’s suitors. When trapped into bobbing her hair, however, Bernice loses her new-found beauty. Her revenge gives the story a delightful, ironic twist. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1976.
Producer: Perspective Films

Beyond Words: The Story of The Southern Review
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
A descriptive history of one of the nation’s top journals of Southern literature. Tells of the founding and the long history the journal has enjoyed at Louisiana State University. Includes interviews with Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, and the founders and editors of The Southern Review. Copyright 1987.
Producer: Peggy Scott Laborde
Director: Danella Hero

The Blue Hotel (by Stephen Crane)
Video: VHS, color; 55 minutes
The time is the 1880s. An alien arrives in a small, brooding town in Nebraska. He anticipates the wild west of the dime novels and parlays that anticipation into his own death. As fear and antagonism mingle to produce an atmosphere of fateful expectation, a card game sets off accusations, and events that follow point to a timeless theme: the complicity of every person in his or her own fate and the fate of others. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Boswell for the Defense (by Mark Harris)
Video: VHS, color; 90 minutes
In this historical story James Reid, accused of stealing 19 sheep, was defended by Scottish lawyer and Samuel Johnson biographer, James Boswell. The story explores the question of Reid’s guilt and the larger question of the quality of justice in 18th-century Scotland. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Howard Sayre Weaver/BBC
Director: Roderick Graham

The Displaced Person (by Flannery O’Connor)
Video: VHS, color; 58 minutes
The displaced person is a conscientious, but driven Polish refugee, who arrives with his family at a Georgia farm in the late 1940s. An elderly priest has arranged for the family’s placement but, obsessed with preaching his scriptures, does not succeed in integrating the refugees with the farm dwellers. Suspicion and hostility grow until all are brought together in a tragic act of complicity. Featured are Irene Worth and John Houseman. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1988.
Producer: Perspective Films

Ernest Gaines: Louisiana Stories
Video: VHS: color; 60 minutes
A profile of one of Louisiana’s finest novelists. Gaines is best known for his novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman that was remade for television. Copyright 1992.
Producer: Louisiana Public Broadcasting
Director: Rick Smith

The Golden Honeymoon (by Ring Lardner)
Video: VHS, color; 52 minutes
Teresa Wright and James Whitmore star in the poignant comedy about an elderly couple who take a winter vacation in St. Petersburg, Florida in the 1920s. There they discover that 50 years of marriage do not prevent the stirring of old jealousies or diminish the chances of an even deeper love. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

The Greatest Man in the World (by James Thurber)
Video: VHS, color; 39 minutes
The first man to fly solo and non-stop around the world is an illiterate, incorrigible lout, and attempts by news reporters and high government officials to present him as a hero fail dismally. Featured are Brad Davis and Carol Kane. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

I’m A Fool (by Sherwood Anderson)
Video: VHS, color; 38 minutes
A young man’s job, his relationship with his co-workers, and his desire to impress those around him mark his passage to adulthood. In this film, Ron Howard plays Andy, a swipe doing manual labor on the Ohio racetrack circuit in the early 1900s. When Andy meets a beautiful woman at the track, he tries to impress her by exaggerating his position in life. When the young lady reveals her fondness for him, Andy is trapped and afraid to win her with the truth. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall (by Katherine Anne Porter)
Video: VHS, color; 57 minutes
Geraldine Fitzgerald portrays a matriarch who, on her death bed, struggles to resolve tormenting memories of a past she had long since buried. Lois Smith is featured as the daughter. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

The Jolly Corner (by Henry James)
Video: VHS, color; 43 minutes
Spencer Brydon returns to New York 35 years after fleeing the Civil War. At once repelled and lured by American lust for profit and power, he wonders who he would have been had he never left for Europe. On one of his frequent visits to the haunted house of his youth, he encounters his other identity and the possibilities this knowledge permits him. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

*The Joy That Kills
Video: VHS, color; 60 minutes
This film is an interpretation of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” which focuses on the mental liberation experienced by the heroine, Louise Mallard, upon hearing a mistaken report of her husband’s death. The work explores the relationship of this happily married couple and climaxes with Louise’s collapse as she confronts the return of her supposedly dead husband. An in-depth examination of one woman’s repression by the constraining social attitudes found in the patriarchal South of the 19th century. Copyright 1984.
Producer: Cypress Films, Inc.
Director: Tina Rathbone

Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour
Video: VHS, color; 24 minutes
Set in Victorian New Orleans, the film is the retelling of a brief and final episode in the short life of Mrs. Louise Mallard and has been characterized as a poignant insight into Chopin’s personality. Copyright 1982.
Producer: Ishtar Films

Letter of Katherine Anne Porter: The Eye of Memory
Video: VHS, color; 56 minutes
The early life and work of author Katherine Anne Porter are the subject of this film portrait, which first aired as part of the PBS American Masters series. It includes interviews with Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren among others. Copyright 1988.
Producers: Patricia Perini/Calvin Skaggs-KERA-TV
Director: Ken Harrison

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (by Mark Twain)
Video: VHS, color; 40 minutes
The mantle of a small town’s self-righteousness is torn from Hadleyburg when a visiting stranger concocts a scheme to test the honesty of the town’s leading citizens. Featured are Robert Preston, Fred Gwynne, Tom Aldredge, and Frances Sternhagen. NEH American Short Story Series.  Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

The Music School (by John Updike)
Video: VHS, color; 30 minutes
A contemporary writer struggles during a 24-hour period to find a focus in his life. Religion and technology, contemporary violence and social change all emerge in vivid images, as do the fragile moments of joy the writer experiences when he takes his daughter to music school. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Parker Adderson, Philosopher (by Ambrose Bierce)
Video: VHS, color; 39 minutes
Parker Adderson is a captured Yankee spy whose facile philosophy and flippant concern for life arouse a Confederate general’s suspicion. The harsh reality of his impending execution brings abrupt character changes in Adderson, and a vicious battle in the general’s tent ensues. Finally, there is a maudlin execution at midnight in violation of all honor codes. NEH American Short Story Series.  Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Paul’s Case (by Willa Cather)
Video: VHS, color; 55 minutes
This film centers on a romantic young man who drops out of high school in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh and journeys to New York City. NEH American Short Story Series.  Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Rappaccini’s Daughter (by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Video: VHS, color; 57 minutes
Kristoffer Tabori and Kathleen Beller are featured in this tale of 18th century Italy and a young man’s romantic entanglement with a beautiful but forbidden young woman in a poisonous garden. NEH American Short Story Series. Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

The Sky is Gray (by Ernest Gaines)
Video: VHS, color; 47 minutes
A young black farmboy's visit to the dentist in a small Louisiana town marks the dawning of his social and self awareness. Olivia Cole, Cleavon Little, and James Bond III star. NEH American Short Story Series.  Copyright 1983.
Producer: Perspective Films

Soldier’s Home (by Ernest Hemingway)
Video: VHS, color; 42 minutes
Harold Krebs is a soldier returned home following the greeting of heroes at the conclusion of World War I.  Wanting only to live his life simply to avoid lies and complication, he struggles to make sense of the past and to face the uncertainties ahead.  NEH American Short Story Series.  Copyright 1976.
Producer: Perspective Films

*Funding provided by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

For more info, contact Walker Lasiter • lasiter@leh.org • 504.620.2631