Tol’able David (1921) was chosen this year to be one of the 25 films inducted into the National Film Register. The film was directed by Henry King, a native of Virginia, who adapted the original story by Joseph Hergensheimer to the screen. Originally D.W. Griffith was going to direct. It was shown all over the world, influencing filmmaking even in Russia. It was filmed on location in Blue Grass, Virginia and continues to be shown.

The Charleston Daily Mail once did a front page story about the film and my purchase of a 16 mm print of the film from William Sloan at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. As it turned out, David Shepard, then head of special projects for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (ASCAP, the people who give out the Oscars), was friends with Henry King the director, and when he showed him the story, responded that the film was made in Virginia, NOT West Virginia – despite what Jim Comstock, the editor of the WV Encyclopedia, said.

The great irony is that the film is one of the many sources of negative stereotypes against the people of West Virginia because the Hatburns, the bad guys in the film, cross the mountains to destroy the paradise small town life of the Kinemons. ( Some recent film writers like Jack Wright and others have also pointed out this.) There was an entire sub-genre of filmmaking during the silent movie era of films about backward and dangerous hillbillies (“Easterns”) , hill folk, etc. that was latter replaced by the Westerns showing dangerous Native Americans, cowboys, etc.

The West Virginia Library Commission owns a 16 mm print with the hand-tinted color footage that I bought from Shepard who had gotten it from the man who founded the Eastman House film library.

The film is also available on DVD from Kino International. It’s still a good story and everyone in the region should see this landmark film – along with other Appalachian films now on the National Film Register including Mimi Pickering’s “The Buffalo Creek Flood – An Act of Man” and “Harlan County, USA.”

Henry King, the longest continuously working director in the history of Hollywood and the oldest person in the world to have a pilot’s license…

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