Barn featured in ‘Bootleggers’ to be restored

HAZEL GROVE (AP) — Sisters Sue Richmond and Kay Shaw were exploring the backroads of Stone County last spring when they drove by what appeared to be a log cabin tucked back into the woods.

They knew their friend, Randy Bradley, was looking for some kind of cabin to put on his parents' old home place near the Hazel Grove/Cord community, and although this was far out in the country, it might just fit the bill.

But this was in May, and Richmond and Shaw could barely see the barn because of all the brush. So they stopped to get out of the car and take a picture to send to Bradley.

"I was scared to get too close," Richmond said with a laugh, adding that she didn't know what critters might still be taking up residence in a "huge rat's nest" in front of the cabin — but she sure didn't want to find out.

It turns out that Bradley was spending the weekend in Mountain View when he got Richmond's call. Otherwise, he might never have gone to see the property. But because he was close by, he went that very day to check it out.

The land the cabin was sitting on was for sale and Bradley had a friend who worked for the real estate company that had listed it.

The friend had a little history on the cabin itself, saying it was featured in the 1974 movie "The Bootleggers."

Steven Perryman was just a teenager when he learned a movie was being shot in his hometown of Calico Rock.

As luck would have it, the producers would need locals to help build some of the stage sites.

He recalls helping the Long brothers produce the jail.

"We built the jail that was pulled down with the train. Dwight Long was cast as the train conductor. They couldn't get an engine to pull the train cars so they got Bobbie Russell to bring his bulldozer to pull them.

"It was a lot of fun," Perryman said.

For the small community, a movie was big news — and some local folks got roles in it, the Batesville Daily Guard reported. Perryman's sister, Brenda Perryman Ward, recalls that Charlotte Majors played a hairdresser.

People came from miles around just to watch the various cast and crew come into town.

The upper side of Main Street was a familiar gathering place.

Debbie Wren and Sandye Lucy Perryman were impressed with seeing Jaclyn Smith, who was just in the beginning stages of her acting career.

"Some of us sat on the upper side of Main Street, legs dangling over the edge of the sidewalk and watched as (Jaclyn) Smith's big motor coach parked across the street and she got off. I thought she was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever seen. Years later, as I watched 'Charlie's Angels,' it was like watching an old friend," Wren said.

Sandye Lucy Perryman recalls a couple of the actors, one being Smith, walked up the hill behind town. Twins Joni and Jill Jeffery had a little red wagon in the yard.

"I just remember them taking it on up to Grady and Lota Perryman's at the top and riding it down. They were at a pretty good speed when they got to the end," she commented.

Local historian Mary Cooper Miller said they filmed all up in the national forest and in Calico, and Kenny Green remembered being on the swinging bridge in Allison when they were filming.

A few scenes were also reportedly filmed near Mountain View, but the bulk of the movie was shot in Calico Rock and the national forest — and it's in the scene where wellknown star Slim Pickens' character is murdered that Bradley's new cabin is featured.

Pickens played Grandpa Pruitt, the family patriarch who went to war with the rival clan, the Woodalls, over making moonshine and bootleg running.

As Bradley explained, "The competition bootleggers come up to kill him (Pickens), the family they'd been feuding with, and they shot him in the back. He turned and ran toward that door, fell dead just before he got to it."

"In the movie, it looks identical to that (scene)," Bradley said.

This was the only side with a door; the other had a window, Richmond said. "I can't be positive but I really think that house could have been the barn, that they just disassembled (it and put it back together) . They just took off (pieces) of that house and made the crib barn for the movie."

Bradley agreed, saying he can't be 100 percent sure, but he has compared photos of the structure with images from the movie and they are a match, from what he can tell.