Ideas for a Movie: Starring These Colorful Mountain People

The five most colorful, interesting, important or Hollywood people in the history of the mountains

Frequently, when doing research for an article – or noodling aimlessly about on the internet – I’ll come across some historical figure or colorful character and wonder, “Why haven’t they turned this person’s life story into a movie?”

The No. 1, person for this Robert Smalls. He was an enslaved African American who stole a Confederate ship, piloted it out of the heavily defended harbor and to the Union Blockade where he turned the ship over to the Union. This earned freedom for himself and the other slaves aboard. He was later a U.S. Congressman. However, since Congressman Smalls wasn’t from the Smokies, his is a story for another blog.

But it doesn’t take much digging past the topsoil of history to find stories that have escaped greater notice. They are forgotten or overshadowed by the larger tides that mark the passing of the ages.

The Smokies – and the larger Southern Appalachian Mountains – are filled with such people and stories. These histories are just sitting there. They are waiting for the right person to snatch them up, dust them off and show them to a world that is – at least in theory – begging for something beyond another movie or video game adaptation.

And so, as a service to the Hollywood folks who might not be rustling around in the deep cuts of mountain lore for their next idea, let us share a few stories of colorful, interesting, odd, or notable characters of the Smoky Mountains. All I require is a small percentage off the backend, a producer credit and a spot on the podium at the Oscars. It’s cool. I don’t need to speak or anything.

1. Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt aka Nilcha

Long-time readers of this blog will be aware of my fascination with this scion of unfathomable wealth and power. The daughter of George Washington Vanderbilt – the money and visionary behind the Biltmore – and Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt – from a powerful New York family – Cornelia was born into the Vanderbilt family. She was 14 when her father died following an appendectomy. She then inherited Biltmore.

In 1924, at the age of 23, she married a British aristocrat 10 years her senior named John Francis Amherst Cecil. The Cecils had their first son, George, in 1925 and their second, William, in 1928.

Here is where things pick up. In 1932 or thereabouts, Cornelia left her husband to manage the estate and presumably their sons. It does appear once they were old enough they attended a boarding school in England, so maybe not for long.

Cornelia moved to New York to study art. A few months later, she moved to Paris, dyed her hair pink and started calling herself Nilcha. In 1934, she divorced old John Cecil and never set foot in Biltmore or even America again.

Living her best life in Europe, she moved to London. That was where she met and married Captain Vivian Francis Bulkeley-Johnson, a former Governor General of Canada – good work if you can get it. The two remained married until his death in 1968. Four years later she was having dinner with a friend when she met and fell in love with their waiter, William Robert Goodsir who was 26 years younger than Cornelia.

Meanwhile Cecil managed the property until his sons inherited it. George took the lands and dairy while Williams took the house and grounds. Bill – who died in 2017 – is largely credited with preserving Biltmore and turning it into the popular tourist attraction it is today.

What kind of movie are we thinking? I see shades of “Titanic” which is ironic because George and Edith were supposed to sail aboard the Titanic. They changed their plans at the last minute. A family servant – Frederick Wheeler – did ride aboard the Titanic to attend to the family’s luggage which was still on the ship due to the last-minute change.

2. Martha Jane Ogle

In a lot of the histories, you’ll read that Martha’s husband William “discovered” a place near the foot of Mt. LeConte that was perfect for a mountain settlement and laid claim to the land. To be clear, William – a South Carolinian who’d found his way up in the mountains – didn’t discover anything.

In fact, the local Cherokee who used the area for a hunting ground even helped him prepare the homestead. William had planned to bring his wife and seven children to live there. Before the work was done, he returned home to South Carolina to bring in another crop and make some money to finance the move. He never made it back. He caught malaria and died in 1803.

His widow – however – finished the job her husband had started moving to the spot with her brother Peter Huskey and the children. They finished that log cabin which today stands at the Gatlinburg Welcome Center.

Martha became the matriarch of the mountains. The Ogles went forth and prospered creating the community that would first become White Oak Flats and then Gatlinburg – more on that later. Today the Ogle name remains ubiquitous in the mountains. Many modern businesses have their roots in projects started by the Ogle family and their descendants, including The Peddler Steakhouse.

What kind of movie? Here, I’m thinking some prestige TV along the lines of The Harrison Ford/Helen Mirren starring “1923” in the Taylor Sheridan Universe. We follow Martha as her husband goes on a “hunting trip” to the mountains. He finds the homestead and dies before she takes the vison and see it through.

3. Radford Gatlin

Radford Gatlin was not a well-liked man. In today’s vernacular, he was something of a male Karen. Well-educated, well-read, possessing beautiful penmanship and excellent spelling, he first appears in East Tennessee from his native Georgia in Jefferson County. That is where he amassed a considerable amount of land. But he also displayed a proclivity for suing – and losing to – his neighbors.

Gatlin left Jefferson County for Sevierville where he was elected to the County Court. He also became an ordained minister and nearly run out of town on a rail. A letter – written in immaculate penmanship, no doubt – was sent to the Tennessee Baptist Convention. When the group sent a committee to investigate whether Gatlin – now an ordained minister in the church – was worthy of continuing in the role, it was reported he was most “rude and uncivil.” A second attempt was made to send a church committee to speak with Gatlin. But it apparently ended in a fistfight that lasted half the day. Gatlin was kicked out of the church.

He and his wife sold their land in Sevierville moving to White Oak Flats where they bought 50 acres of Ogle land for $30. Gatlin also laid claim to a larger land grant, a claim that might have rankled his new neighbors. Gatlin opened a store and in that store was the town’s only post office. There’s no record of when, how or why White Oak Flats’ name was officially changed to Gatlinburg. But one can surmise excellent penmanship was involved.

Gatlin ultimately fell out with the Ogles over the path the road that would become the main strip through town would take. Gatlin wanted it to run alongside the property he’d purchased and convened a grand jury to make it so. When everyone kind of ignored the first grand jury, he convened a second.

Tensions were high when Gatlin’s wife Elizabeth got into a kerfuffle with Thomas Ogle Sr. She had apparently been striking some of Ogle’s cattle with a stick. When Thomas complained she also struck him with the stick. Both Gatlins ended up arrested in the incident. Gatlin appealed his case all the way to the state supreme court.

Gatlin – whose chief modus operandi had been irritating people and suing them – finally ran into folk willing to go a bit further.  Not long after the fight, the Gatlins barns and stables burned down with grain and horses inside.

Having finally written a check he couldn’t cash, Gatlin – a Confederate sympathizer – returned to Jefferson County and took up writing war-time propaganda. When the war went badly and Union Forces took up residence in Jefferson County he fled back to Georgia. He eventually moved to South Carolina where he lived out his days.

What kind of movie would this be? At first, I thought maybe one of those character studies about a rough-edged old guy who was quick to insult like “Otto” that starred Tom Hanks. But in that movie the grouchy guy kind of has a heart of gold. So now I’m thinking a Quentin Taratino alternate history in which the Ogles give Gatlin more than a burned down barn, reclaim the town name and everyone vacations in White Oak Flats.

4. Louis Voorhies

There is an alternate history of the mountains in which the National Park did not come to be. In this version of history, loggers would have claimed vast swaths of the mountains and the national fascination would have continued as the Smokies became the playground of the rich, powerful and wealthy. The development at Elkmont is one example of this. Another is the less-known Voorhies estate.

Louis E. Voorhies, an inventor, entrepreneur and businessman from Cincinnati, bought a mountain retreat that he developed from 1928-1944. Obsessed with hydroelectric power, Voorhies built a rustic compound filled with water features, employing several hands to keep the property up and growing. Voorhies drew the concern of the U.S. Government because the property he’d purchased was inside the planned boundaries for the park. However, he developed a cordial relationship with Col. David Chapman of the Tennessee Park Commission and worked with the government.

Eventually, he agreed to deed the property over to the U.S. government in exchange for a lifetime lease for himself and his secretary Edith, whom he married in 1934. He died 10 years later at the age of 69, and his cremated ashes were buried on the property. Edith declined the lifetime lease, remarried, and moved to Jackson, Tenn.

What kind of movie? I’m thinking tortured genius, like the “Social Network” with a little touch of Richard Dreyfus from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

5. David C. “Crockett” Maples

Another member of a foundational Gatlinburg family, the story of David C. “Crockett” Maples is the inspiration for the theming for Crockett’s Breakfast Camp in Downtown Gatlinburg.  Maples was, in fact, a real dude. Born in the Banner Community in the Smoky Mountains in 1838, Crockett was proper mountain man, learning to trap, hunt and fish as he grew up. Reportedly 6-foot-3 – that will be important later – he was a giant of a man for the times. He was married with one child and another on the way when he enlisted to fight with the Union in 1863.

After the war, he and his wife Polly – a member of the Ogle clan – had six more kids and opened a small supply store at the base of Mt. LeConte. They also offered room and board for travelers coming through and he would provide guide services. It was on one of those missions – in the winter of 1875 – that Maples nearly lost his life and did lose several inches of height. Maples was leading a man to Cherokee, North Carolina on horseback when a winter storm surprised them. Maples pointed the man towards Cherokee and turned back, trying to make it home. He took refuge in a hollow log.

The horse survived the night and Maples – with his feet numb – mounted the animal and rode to the nearest house which was several miles away. He was carried home from there and a doctor was summoned. His feet were frostbitten and gangrenous. The doctor did the double amputation in the family’s woodshed. They gave him enough moonshine to knock him out and sawed off his legs right there.

He somehow survived and that spring filled his boots with wooden feet, strapped them to his legs and learned to get around with the aid of two canes, stubbornly carrying on with much of the same work he did before. Polly died 10 years later in 1885. She was 51. The next year Crockett married Lucinda King, who was 20 years younger than the 48-year-old Crockett. Together they had eight more children, giving Crockett a total of 16 children. He fathered the last child in 1902 at the age of 64. Crockett lived to ripe old age of 90, dying in 1928.

What kind of movie? I’m thinking something like the Robert Redford classic “Jeremiah Johnson,” the one with the nodding meme. But honestly any timeless epic would get the job done.

What do you think about these historical figures? Would you like to see a movie about them? Let us know in the comments!