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The South never plays itself: The South on screen

Ben Beard
Courtesy of the author
Ben Beard

This time out we are bringing you an encore from our broadcast archive featuring a conversation with Ben Beard, author of The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff’s Journey Through the South on Screen (2020, UGA Press).

Beard’s idiosyncratic narrative—part cultural history, part film criticism, part memoir—journeys through genres and eras, issues and regions, smash blockbusters and microbudget indies to explore America’s past and troubled present, seen through Hollywood’s distorting lens.

In The South Never Plays Itself, Ben attempts to answer the question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.