To Kill a Mockingbird is a
1962The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
AmericanThe cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
dramaA drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
film adaptationFilm adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
of
Harper LeeNelle Harper Lee is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama...
's
novel of the same nameTo Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature...
directed by
Robert MulliganRobert Mulligan was an American film and television director best known as the director of humanistic American dramas, including To Kill A Mockingbird , Summer of '42 , The Other , Same Time, Next Year and The Man in the Moon...
. It stars
Mary BadhamMary Badham is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird , for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. At the time, Badham was the youngest actress ever nominated in this category...
in the role of Scout and
Gregory PeckEldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
in the role of
Atticus FinchAtticus Finch is a fictional character in Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus is a lawyer and resident of the fictional Maycomb County, Alabama, and the father of Jeremy Atticus "Jem" Finch and Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Atticus is a central character in the novel...
.
In 1995, the film was listed in the
National Film RegistryThe National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. It also ranks twenty-fifth on the
American Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 10th anniversary list of the greatest American movies of all time. In 2003, AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.
To Kill a Mockingbird marks the film debuts of
Robert DuvallRobert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career....
,
William WindomWilliam Windom is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his work on television, including several episodes of The Twilight Zone; playing the character of Glen Morley, a congressman from Minnesota like his own great-grandfather and namesake in The Farmer's Daughter; the character of John...
, and
Alice GhostleyAlice Margaret Ghostley was an American actress. She was best known for her roles as housekeeper Esmeralda on Bewitched, as Cousin Alice on Mayberry R.F.D., and as Bernice Clifton on Designing Women, for which she received an Emmy Nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1992...
.
The film's young protagonists, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (
Mary BadhamMary Badham is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird , for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. At the time, Badham was the youngest actress ever nominated in this category...
) and her brother Jem (
Phillip AlfordPhillip Alford is an American actor best known for his role as Jem Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird.-Career:...
), live in the fictional town of Maycomb,
AlabamaAlabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, during the 1930s.