60 years ago, she was Scout in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Soon, she’s in Dallas for the play

The American Library Association issued an alarming report in March, noting that book banning set a record in 2022. The report revealed that 1,200 “challenges” of books were compiled during the last calendar year, nearly double the then-record-total from 2021 and by far the most since the ALA began keeping data 20 years ago.

One of the books on the list, as it has been for years, is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which in 1961 won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1962, it became an Oscar-winning movie, whose star, Gregory Peck, won the Academy Award for best actor.

Mary Badham, the girl who starred alongside him, was 9 when she was cast in the film. She played Scout Finch, the daughter of Atticus Finch, an attorney in a small Southern town tasked with defending a Black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman.

Sixty years after her screen debut, Badham, now 70, is part of the Broadway touring production of To Kill a Mockingbird, which opens on May 16 and runs through May 28 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. She plays Mrs. Dubose, an elderly, cranky, racist woman who lives near the Finches. Richard Thomas, who starred as John-Boy Walton in the 1970s television show The Waltons, headlines the show as Atticus Finch.

It is a role quite different from Scout, but Badham took on the part, albeit reluctantly, because she believes so deeply in Lee’s novel, which she sees as a story America desperately needs to hear — now more than ever.

For that reason and so many others, Badham is appalled and increasingly outraged that the banning of such a book could, in fact, happen.

To Kill a Mockingbird has been on banned-book lists as far back as 1960, when it was published. As recently as 2020, it appeared in the “Top 10 of Most Challenged Books,” a list released annually by the ALA. States with school districts banning the book — among others — include Virginia, Mississippi, California and Texas.

As recently as last fall, PEN America, a nonprofit advocating for free speech, reported that “Texas banned more books from school libraries this past year than any other state in the nation, targeting titles centering on race, racism, abortion and LGBTQ representation and issues.”

“It upsets me to no end,” says Badham, an Alabama native, who was nominated for best supporting actress for her role in the film. “Because, obviously, I feel like if people had read the book, they wouldn’t have banned it. We have found that in a lot of those cases, the people banning the book have not bothered to read the book.

“This book has everything that we as a country need to pull ourselves back together again. It’s a book of love and hope and understanding. And we need to get back to that. We’ve gotten so far away from that.

“And now, there are people who want to drag us back to the 1930s, and I’m sorry, I’m just not for that. We’ve come too far to go backwards, and we have gone backwards in the last few years. That’s what keeps me on the road with Mockingbird — trying to educate people. To get them to understand that we need to love each other and take care of one another. If we want to be a strong country, we’re going to have to do that.”

Badham was the guest of honor on Monday at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, where she was introduced by former first lady Laura Bush. During her appearance, she spoke endearingly of Peck, who died in 2003 at age 87.

“What you saw on screen is what you got at home,” she said earlier, in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. “We forged a lifelong bond. And when I lost my father, which was very early in my life, Atticus stepped up to the plate.”

Badham never refers to Peck by his surname. She calls him Atticus. Always.

“He was,” she says, “my Atticus.”

Some of Badham’s sweetest memories revolve around the movie, through which she met, among other cherished friends, Alan J. Pakula, the film’s producer. Pakula earned three Oscar nominations during his career, for To Kill a Mockingbird (best picture), All the President’s Men (director) and Sophie’s Choice (screenwriter).

Badham tells a story about how Pakula was getting nowhere with Hollywood studios in landing a deal for Mockingbird. Until he showed the script to Peck, who in her words told Pakula, “If you want me, I’m your boy.”

Peck sauntered into Universal Studios and proclaimed, “We’re doing this. So, do you want in on it?”

What is so threatening to people about the book and the movie?

“I think it’s ignorance,” Badham says. “I don’t understand how you can read this book and come away with anything but hope. One of the things I have said on the road is that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that education is the key to freedom.”

The 1962 film changed her life, emotionally and artistically. “I grew up so fast being in it.”

At 14, she hated being in an all-girls school. She also wanted out of her native Alabama, where racism toward Black people was just one of the raging issues. So, she left her hometown and her mom and dad and fled to Arizona, where her brother’s wife raised her.

In the aftermath, “My mother and I never came to terms,” Badham says. “She died three weeks after I graduated from high school.”

Long past her teenage years, Badham is thrilled that the Tony Award-winning play has allowed her to re-embrace the story that changed her life so dramatically. Her role in Mockingbird led to six other credits, including an appearance on the TV show The Twilight Zone in 1964 and alongside Robert Redford in the 1966 movie This Property Is Condemned.

Redford shares in common with Badham having worked with Pakula, whom she praises for perpetuating Mockingbird’s relevance.

“He so wanted to make a difference,” Badham says. “And I think in some small way, we have. I hope we have. I hope we can continue — and that is why I signed up for the play.”