I moved recently, and as I was packing countless boxes of books, DVDs and tapes, and souvenirs from my life, I came across one of my prized possessions, a poster for Thunder Road. Thunder Road is often called a cult movie, which is a movie without wide popularity that nonetheless appeals to very specific groups. “Cult movie” brings to mind people in costumes throwing pieces of bread at the screen during The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But, my family are all big fans of Thunder Road , and they don’t dress in costumes and throw stuff at the screen, though they wouldn’t hold it against you if you did. They are from West Virginia, and Thunder Road is one of their favorite movies because it authentically and sympathetically portrays the people and culture of Appalachia.

It isn’t often that a movie captures the sights and sounds of the rural South in a way that isn’t insulting (The Beverly Hillbillies), demeaning (Deliverance), or condescending (Your Cheatin’ Heart). Maybe it’s the difference between a studio-produced movie and an independent production. Thunder Road was written and produced in 1958 by actor Robert Mitchum, who also starred in the lead role. He produced this low-budget gem through his own company, DRM Productions. Instead of a studio backlot, Mitchum shot the film on location near Asheville, North Carolina, and he avoided the stereotypes of Southerners often found in studio productions. Where did his affinity or understanding of rural Southern culture come from? It wasn’t because he was born there. It may have come from the time he spent bumming around the country during the Depression. He had hit the road and the rails as a teenager, spending a lot of time in the South. Legend has it that he even spent time on a Georgia chain gang, but he was able to escape. The exact details of this particular adventure are debatable, because Mitchum exaggerated his exploits to manipulate the press. But, according to Shirley MacLaine, who was close to the actor at one time, the South marked Robert Mitchum, turning him into a world weary soul, with a long drawl and a melancholy air.

Thunder Road is the story of fast-driving Luke Doolin, played by Mitchum, who bootlegs moonshine across state lines from rural Harlan County, Kentucky, to the big city of Memphis, Tennessee. Luke’s father is a moonshiner, and the Doolin family has been making alcohol for generations. To get the moonshine safely to the city, Luke must outrun the government’s revenue agents, who are out to arrest him, and a crime syndicate, who plans to muscle in on the illegal alcohol trade.

JAMES AND ROBERT MITCHUM

Mitchum’s son, James Mitchum, plays Luke Doolin’s younger brother, Robin, who also has a way with cars and wants to follow in his big brother’s footsteps. Luke won’t allow it, insisting his brother stay clear of the dangers of bootlegging. Jazz singer Keely Smith costars as songbird Francie Wymore, who offers Luke comfort and solace whenever he is in the big city. Smith and her husband, band leader Louis Prima, were mainstays on the Vegas club scene during the 1950s, and her acting career was minimal to say the least. On the surface, she seems an odd choice to appear in a story about rural Southern moonshiners and bootleggers. But Smith was born and raised in southern Virginia and was undoubtedly familiar with the culture. Sadly, Smith is no actress, and James Mitchum did not inherit his father’s talent or charisma. Their acting is rudimentary, even weak. In addition to their poor acting, the dialogue is not sparkling, and there are continuity errors in the editing.

But, like many a cult movie, the appeal of Thunder Road is not in its production values. Instead, the appeal is in the mystique of the main character — what he represents not only to the people of the rural South but to others who can relate to his existential dilemma.

To understand how Thunder Road captures the essence of Appalachia, it helps to know something about moonshining and bootlegging. A moonshiner is someone who makes homemade whiskey, which is called any number of colorful names in addition to moonshine — corn liquor, white lightning, skull cracker, stumphole, ruckus juice, rotgut, catdaddy, mule kick, sweet spirits of cats a-fighting, old horsey, and wild cat. Considering some of these names, it amazes me that people would drink it. My cousin told me that he once dropped in on a party where moonshine was available. He stuck out his styrofoam cup to get a taste, and by the time the person was done pouring, the moonshine had eaten through the bottom of his cup.
Moonshine is distilled from fermented corn, it has a very high alcohol content, and it is illegal. While it is legal to make some alcoholic beverages in certain quantities, it is always illegal to sell it, because the government does not get to collect taxes on it. There is a misconception that selling moonshine is illegal because its potent alcohol content is hazardous to your health. Moonshine can be hazardous to your health, but it is illegal because the people making it intend to sell it, and when they do, the government won’t collect revenue from it. Hence, the government agents out to stop moonshiners are called revenue agents, or revenuers. They are part of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency. A bootlegger is someone who transports illegal alcohol across county or state lines. Bootlegging and moonshining are not synonymous. A bootlegger is primarily a transporter. And, you can bootleg alcohol that is not homemade; for example, if you carry real, store-bought alcohol into a county that is dry for the purposes of selling it, you are a bootlegger.

For almost 200 years, moonshining has been a way for some residents of Appalachia to supplement their incomes. The beginnings of moonshining can be traced back to the 1790s when the government imposed an excise tax on whiskey. Unwilling to pay the tax, Scotch-Irish immigrants who were whiskey makers (distillers) moved up into the Appalachian Mountains, where they lived in isolation and made their whiskey in secret. Production methods and recipes were passed down through generations, like any craft or cultural practice. This one just happened to be illegal.

The original Appalachian moonshiners believed that a man should be free to do what he wants on his own land, without government interference — a maxim that defines the region to this day. Anti-bureaucracy (and anti-government) sentiment is common, but so is a fierce patriotism, love of country, and living a good, moral life. This is a contradiction that is often difficult for residents of Appalachia to reconcile and for nonresidents to understand. I remember my mother telling me that when she was a little girl, my grandfather hid the local moonshiner in his barn so that the revenuers wouldn’t get him. My mother’s family were very strict, church-going people who did not drink or smoke — they still are — but my grandfather’s loyalty was to his moonshine-making neighbor.

The tension between moonshiners and the government peaked after WWII, when better roads, electricity, telephones, and other forms of mass communication made the region less isolated from the rest of the country. This proved a blessing and a curse: It made moonshining a bigger cash enterprise, but it also drew more heat from the revenue agents. The production of moonshine peaked in the 1950s, which is the time frame of Thunder Road .

MITCHUM AS LUKE DOOLIN: A DOOMED CHARACTER

To some Appalachians, moonshining is more than just extra income, it is a cultural practice, and it is associated with personal freedom. For a long time, it helped Appalachians to be independent from a world that they wanted no part of — the world of working for wages for factories, mines, or other advanced capital powers. Appalachians prided themselves on self-sufficiency, and their isolated existence from the urban world. For generations, they looked to the land to make their living, and to maintain that self-sufficiency, which included moonshining. Remaining self-sufficient by working the land became increasingly impossible for Appalachian residents after WWII as the modern, urban world rapidly snapped at their heels like a mad dog. The culture became steeped in a nostalgia and sadness for a way of life that was rapidly disappearing. Thunder Road captured this melancholy dilemma, which is perhaps its appeal to my family. When Luke says, “I know what I want. I wanna stop the clock, turn it back to another time in this valley that I knew before,” it echoes what I have heard many family members say. But, the movie offered no solutions, only an acknowledgment that the rural lifestyle they loved so much was doomed to change or disappear.

In the film, the modern urban world (of corporations, enslavement to wage earning jobs, fiscal violence of advanced captial power) is represented by the mob syndicate that wants to take over the moonshining operation and make the locals work for them. So, there are actually two forces working against the rural residents in the film — the government and the syndicate. And, the arena of confrontation is the road . As Luke speeds down the dark roads with his carload of moonshine, he never knows which force is after him, but he knows that there is always someone out there closing in on him.

Luke is tied by blood and tradition to his rural backwoods community. But, he has also been out in the world and understands its more sophisticated ways. A veteran of the Korean Conflict, his exposure to wider horizons has changed him. He is a displaced or split character, who is stuck between two worlds — on either end of the road. One end is family, community, and the comfort of tradition but a world out of touch, doomed to financial decline, and isolated from progress. At the other end is the modern urban world, which is fast-paced, lucrative, and progressive but also corrupt, self-serving, and without innocence. One world is morally superior; the other financially secure.

Luke travels between the two worlds, not fitting into either. He is a doomed character — darkly romantic, melancholy. He is most at home on the road. The road between these two worlds is a life suspended, marking motion but never progress.

ONE OF THE BOOTLEGGING CARS--THE VIRTUAL COSTARS IN THIS FILM

Outside the specific storyline, and the framework of Appalachian culture, the road in American pop culture has always been a potent symbol particularly for a mobile society like ours. The film speaks to the lure of lonely night driving, the ambience of the road, the lost existence of a life on the road, suggesting escape from whatever it is that traps us. The road can be a true existential image, a metaphor for restless souls.

No doubt another reason for the film’s cult appeal is its star Robert Mitchum — my very favorite actor of all time. Robert Mitchum could express more with the way he lit a cigarette than most movie stars could convey in reams of dialogue. Thunder Road may be Mitchum’s most personal film for several reasons. Mitchum not only wrote the original story for the script and produced the film, he also penned the two songs in the film, “The Ballad of Thunder Road ” and “Whipporwill.” Mitchum recorded “The Ballad of Thunder Road ” and released the song as a single, and it reached #62 on the pop charts.

In terms of appearances, the handsome, charismatic Mitchum seemed to be the perfect embodiment of the movie star. However, his tumultuous personal life and his anti-authority attitude made him an unlikely candidate for stardom — by Golden Age standards. Mitchum was never the least bit interested in protecting his star image. This did not mean he did not have one. It was constructed through his film roles, studio promotion, and publicity, which was plentiful. His image was that of the tough, smart loner, who most often found himself in deep trouble. His underplaying of such roles added a low-key demeanor to this image, which made him seem cynical, detached, and just plain cool.

WITH COSTAR SHIRLEY KNIGHT

This image was fed in part by his offscreen exploits, which included brawls, domestic disputes, smart-ass comments to the press about film industry bigwigs, and even stints in jail. No other star but Robert Mitchum could have survived a drug bust with his career intact. In 1948, when Mitchum was arrested and convicted for marijuana possession, the event was played out in the press from arrest through conviction through jail time. After his release from jail, he quipped that it had cured his insomnia. “It’s been the finest vacation I’ve had in seven years…It had been like Palm Springs — without the riff-raff.” In the years immediately preceding Thunder Road, Mitchum was arrested for eluding the police in a car chase after he was stopped for speeding; he was photographed at the Cannes Film Festival on the beach with a bare-breasted starlet; he beat up three sailors in a bar-room brawl while on location in Trinidad.

If Mitchum’s public image was that of a smart-mouthed tough guy, privately he was a much more cultured and artistic man than one might think. Before becoming a star, he had written plays, poetry, short stories — even an oratorio performed at the Hollywood Bowl. He wrote a few songs, and in the late 1950s, he recorded a calypso album. He was well read, had a good vocabulary, and a grasp of great ideas that was beyond that of many movie stars.

ONE OF MITCHUM'S ALBUMS

In my opinion, Luke Doolin was a version of Robert Mitchum, perhaps Mitchum’s expression of himself. Thunder Road is Mitchum’s soft, artistic side mythologizing his tough-guy image. Like Luke in the film, Mitchum was a split character. Robert Mitchum was the tough guy movie star, but he aspired to be an artist. On the one side, there was the rigidity of the Hollywood industry and his obligation to his family; on the other side, there was his humble, artistic self, his nonconformity. Mitchum spent his life moving between the extremes of these two sides, never completely at ease with either.

I don’t know how much Mitchum personally identified with the character of Luke Doolin, but it is easy to see how his life and career might make him empathetic to a character torn between two worlds.
While no one dresses in a costume to watch Thunder Road, or throws objects at the screen, the film has its fans. Rural Southerners, like my family, appreciate its authentic and sympathetic understanding of their culture; others are attracted to the romantic depiction of the road; Mitchum’s fans like his star turn as Luke Doolin, a character informed by the actor’s powerfully cool image. Thunder Road may have its weakness, but Mitchum did not make the film for critics. He made it for all the melancholy loners who know that something out there is chasing them, but they can do little about it.