Ernest Gaines in his office at his home in New Roads in 2009. Fifty years ago this year, on Jan. 31, 1974, CBS premiered a film adaptation of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” which became the most-watched television movie in history.
The production, which told the story of a 110-year-old woman who’s born into slavery and lives long enough to witness the Civil Rights Movement, was based on the bestselling 1971 novel by Pointe Coupee Parish native Ernest J. Gaines. Filmed in and around Baton Rouge, the CBS project won nine Emmys.
I was 10 years old when the movie first hit the airwaves. Back then, people of color rarely got dramatic roles on television. The thought of someone reaching their 100th birthday was also unusual five decades ago.
Like many viewers, I was eager to see how the title character, played by Cicely Tyson, could be made to look that ancient. But Tyson, who was around 50 at the time, pulled it off, thanks to a makeup job that would get one of those Emmys. Tyson also took home an Emmy for her performance, in which she completely inhabited the part of a woman weighted by the century she’d seen.
Tyson lived nearly a century herself, dying at 96 in 2021. Gaines had a long life, too, passing away in 2019 at 86. Now, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and three other novels by Gaines are getting a renewed profile.
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to curating definitive editions of American classics, is rolling out “Ernest J. Gaines: Four Novels,” a beautiful volume that includes “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” along with “In My Father’s House,” “A Gathering of Old Men,” and “A Lesson Before Dying.” This Library of America project is a big deal.
LOA selects only the best American writers for its lineup, and to be included within its canon is as close as our country’s authors can come to literary immortality. With the rollout of the Gaines volume, Louisiana has had two writers honored with new Library of America editions this year. Recently, the late Covington author Walker Percy entered the LOA pantheon with a newly curated collection of his early novels.
Writing about that new anthology a few weeks ago, I made the point that Percy seemed prescient about the future because he had such a deep awareness of his past. That was equally true of Gaines, whose Depression-era childhood on a Louisiana plantation gave him a vivid perspective on America’s complicated racial history. I’ve been thinking about Gaines a lot these days because I’ve been volunteering with organizers of the Ernest J.
Gaines Award, presented each year by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to an emerging African American writer. It’s a nice way to extend his memory, though his most enduring legacy will be the novels he left behind. Kudos to the Library of America for pointing new readers to his work.
Email Danny Heitman at [email protected] ..
