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For no obvious reason, Washington and Lee University in the mid-20th century produced a number of graduates who became Hollywood screenwriters, and Anne Drake McClung tells their story — focusing on one who went to work for Walt Disney — in the newest online “Rockbridge Epilogue.”
Her article, “Not Your Ordinary Book Report: ‘Marty Markham,’ By Lawrence Watkin,” centers on a professor of English in the years 1926 to 1942, who was lured to Hollywood. There he became one of Disney’s leading writers, responsible for Disney’s first live-action film, “Treasure Island,” as well as “The Great Locomotive Chase,” “Darby O’Gill” and, perhaps most memorably, “Spin and Marty.”
The latter series ran as a regular segment of Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club” in 1955-57, adapted from Watkin’s coming-of-age novel “Marty Markham,” about a spoiled rich boy who found himself in a rough summer camp — which the author said was modeled after Broadview Ranch in Rockbridge County, then owned by Warren E. “Tex” and Virginia Tilson.
Other W&L-educated screenwriters whom McClung mentions include Fielder Cook and Jeb Rosebrook, who, separately, worked on Earl Hamner’s multi-part series that started with “The Homecoming” and became “The Waltons.”
Anne McClung, a Rockbridge native, has written extensively about the area, notably Goshen Pass. A memoir, “Dried Apples and Other Vanishing Memories,” was published in 2014. Her article, the 41st in the “Epilogues” series, is freely available at www. HistoricRockbridge.org.
