Getting and Staying Married

Walk The Line (DVD) Review   by Britt Gillette

Nominated for five Academy Awards, and winner of the Oscar for Best Actress (Reese Witherspoon), Walk The Line chronicles the life and times of legendary country music star Johnny Cash with an intense, and sometimes dark, intimacy. Following on the heels of the previous year’s Oscar Award-winning picture Ray, based on the life of Ray Charles, I entered the theater under the mistaken impression that Walk The Line would be a cookie-cutter attempt to capitalize on the various themes of that picture’s commercial success. But although the dramatic personal struggle with drug addiction is prevalent in both films, Walk The Line was more than able to stand on its own as a powerful and impressionable big screen biography. And just like the aforementioned film, you leave Walk The Line with a renewed interest in the music of Johnny Cash and a deep personal attachment to the lives of Cash and his likeable wife, June Carter.

Directed by James Mangold, the talent behind such notable films as Kate & Leopold (2001) and Identity (2003), Walk The Line begins in the rough and tumble world of Depression-Era Arkansas where a young Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) tends to the family cotton farm with his parents and older brother. Early on, a family tragedy strains the relationship between Cash and his father, providing a glimpse into the epic moment that would shape his life forever. Soon after, the film jumps to the early 1950s where Cash perfects his guitar talents while stationed overseas in the Air Force. His marriage to high school classmate Vivian Liberto lands the two in Memphis where Johnny supports the family as an appliance salesman while pursuing his musical interests on the side. Here, Cash founds The Tennessee Two with bassist Marshall Grant (Larry Bagby) and guitarist Luther Perkins (Dan John Miller), and the trio plays its way to a music deal with local label Sun Records.

As part of a promotional campaign, Cash is put on tour with other “rockabilly” newcomers Elvis Presley (Tyler Hilton), Jerry Lee Lewis (Waylon Payne), and Carl Perkins (Johnny Holiday). But during his tour with the quartet, the life of Johnny Cash takes numerous turns. He meets the affable June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), begins an addiction to amphetamines and alcohol, and watches his marriage to Vivian deteriorate under the strain of his constant absence. All three would come to define the next fifteen years of Cash’s life as he struggled to triumph over his personal demons. Despite his all-encompassing drug addiction, Cash nevertheless manages to crank out hits, but his personal life hits rock bottom following bouts with divorce, loneliness, depression, and his continued drug addiction. When Cash reunites with June Carter in a musical collaboration, the magical bond between the two is amplified. But Johnny’s addiction threatens to ruin everything they’ve built together.

The most impressive aspect of Walk The Line, aside from the storyline itself, is the performance of Witherspoon and her counterpart Phoenix. Amazingly, both provide their own voiceovers, and for the casual listener, very little difference can be detected between the Hollywood talents and the real life country music legends they impersonate. Much was made of the performance of Joaquin Phoenix in the days leading up to the film’s release, but I came away more impressed by Witherspoon. Apparently, so did the Academy because they awarded her their highest honor for the role. What stood out the most was the actress’s down-to-earth smile and charismatic mannerisms. She created a character with ample assertiveness, yet one that burst at the seams with an infectious optimism and love for life. As such, the audience can’t help but fall in love with June Carter. In addition, Witherspoon displays an amazing singing voice that accurately captures the distinct and unique aspects of June Carter’s talent. Overall, Walk The Line is a fine film, and a fitting remembrance to the career and life of country music’s greatest icon, Johnny Cash.

About the Author

Britt Gillette is a movie reviewer for The DVD Report, a dvd review blog where this Walk The Line Review can be found.
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Communities of Kinship $24.95 Trained as both a genealogist and a historian, Carolyn Earle Billingsley shows how the analytic category of kinship can add new dimensions to our understanding of the American South. In Communities of Kinship, she studies a southern family–that of Thomas Keesee Sr.–to show how the biological, legal, and fictive kinship ties between him and some seven thousand of his descendants and relatives helped to shape the growth of the interior South. Keesee, who was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, left there with his family when he was still a boy and subsequently lived in South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Arkansas. Drawing on Keesee family history, Billingsley reminds us that, contrary to the accepted notion of rugged individuals heeding the proverbial call of the open spaces, kindred groups accounted for most of the migration to the South’s interior and boundary lands. In addition, she discusses how, for antebellum southerners, the religious affiliation of one’s parents was the most powerful predictor of one’s own spiritual leanings, with marriage being the strongest motivation to change them. Billingsley also looks at the connections between kinship and economic and political power, offering examples of how Keesee family members facilitated and consolidated their influence and wealth through kin ties. Piecing together a wide assortment of public and private records that pertain to the Keesee family and shed light on naming practices, residential propinquity, migration patterns, economic and political dealings, and religious interactions, Billingsley offers a model of innovation and subtle analysis for historians. This important new study makes a persuasive case that kinship,particularly in the study of the antebellum South, should be considered a discrete category of analysis complementary to, and potentially as powerful as, race, class, and gender.

Tell Us a Story $10.99 Supplemented by recollections from the present era, Tell Us a Story is a colorful mosaic of African American autobiography and family history set in Springfield, Illinois, and in rural southern Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas from the 1920s through the 1950s.Shirley Motley Portwood shares rural, African American family and community history through a collection of vignettes about the Motley family. Initially transcribed accounts of the Motleys’ rich oral history, these stories have been passed among family members for nearly fifty years. In addition to her personal memories, Portwood presents interviews with her father, three brothers, and two sisters plus notes and recollections from their annual family reunions. The result is a composite view of the Motley family.A historian, Portwood enhances the Motley family story by investigating primary data such as census, marriage, school, and land records, newspaper accounts dry directories, and other sources. The backbone of this saga, however, is oral history gathered from five generations, extending back to Portwood’s grandparents, born more than one hundred years ago. Information regarding two earlier generations — her great-grandfather and great-great-grandparents, who were slaves — is based on historical research into state archives, county and local records, plantation records, and manuscript censuses.A rich source for this material — the Motley family reunions — are week-long retreats where four generations gather at the John Motley house in Burlington, Connecticut, the Portwood home in Godfrey, Illinois, or other locations. Here the Motleys, all natural storytellers, pass on the family traditions. The stories, rangingfrom humorous to poignant, reveal much about the culture and history of African Americans, especially those from nonurban areas. Like many rural African Americans, the Motleys have a rich and often joyful family history with traditions reaching back to the slave past. They have known the

Tell Us a Story: An African American Family in the Heartland $50.03 Supplemented by recollections from the present era, Tell Us a Story is a colorful mosaic of African American autobiography and family history set in Springfield, Illinois, and in rural southern Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas from the 1920s through the 1950s.Shirley Motley Portwood shares rural, African American family and community history through a collection of vignettes about the Motley family. Initially transcribed accounts of the Motleys’ rich oral history, these stories have been passed among family members for nearly fifty years. In addition to her personal memories, Portwood presents interviews with her father, three brothers, and two sisters plus notes and recollections from their annual family reunions. The result is a composite view of the Motley family.A historian, Portwood enhances the Motley family story by investigating primary data such as census, marriage, school, and land records, newspaper accounts dry directories, and other sources. The backbone of this saga, however, is oral history gathered from five generations, extending back to Portwood’s grandparents, born more than one hundred years ago. Information regarding two earlier generations — her great-grandfather and great-great-grandparents, who were slaves — is based on historical research into state archives, county and local records, plantation records, and manuscript censuses.A rich source for this material — the Motley family reunions — are week-long retreats where four generations gather at the John Motley house in Burlington, Connecticut, the Portwood home in Godfrey, Illinois, or other locations. Here the Motleys, all natural storytellers, pass on the family traditions. The stories, rangingfrom humorous to poignant, reveal much about the culture and history of African Americans, especially those from nonurban areas. Like many rural African Americans, the Motleys have a rich and often joyful family history with traditions reaching back to the slave past. They have known the