I've been incommunicado as of late, but with good reason, I was on vacation. We traveled all the way up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, around the area where Anatomy of a Murder was shot.
As a quick recap of the film, James Stewart plays Paul Biegler a former district attorney in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Biegler is contacted by Laura Manion, (Lee Remick) wife of Frederick "Manny" Manion (Ben Gazzara) a U.S. Army Lieutenant who has been arrested for first degree murder of Barney Quill after seeing his wife being raped. Paul Beigler is assigned to the case and to make matters worse, his client does not deny the killing.
My aunt and uncle watch this film on a monthly bases and visited all the "hot spots" Some scenes were actually filmed in the Thunder Bay Inn in Big Bay, Michigan, one block from the Lumberjack Tavern, the site of a 1952 murder witch inspired the film. One such example is the court room in the movie. On the court room floor they have drawn a mirror image of the body, of course my aunt had to lay on the ground and recreate "the scene of the crime" and my uncle who is actually a lawyer recited Jimmy Stewart's monologue word for word.
The funny thing is that the citizens who are old enough to recall the goings on in 1959 could give you the smallest detail about the filming, but none have actually seen the movie. Go figure.
I will have to make the rounds the next time I'm in the U.P.
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"It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer."
Unlike Addison DeWitt I would not like to talk killer to killer but rather as movie lover to movie lover. What do you think?