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BY JANE AMMESON
Times Correspondent | Friday, September 24, 2004 | (No comments posted.)
The evening before I took the Midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil Tour -- a three-hour jaunt through Savannah visiting the locations mentioned in "The Book" -- it seemed only fitting that I should be staying in the Turner Hamilton Inn on Lafayette Square.
In John Berendt's best-selling tome, which chronicles the eccentricities of this most southern of cities, the four-story Second Empire chateau, built in 1873, was one of the places where the impoverished aristocrat Joe Odom and his girlfriend, Mandy, lived. In the charming rascally way that epitomizes the lifestyle of Odom, he charged a fee for touring the house and he didn't even own it.
Inn owners Rob and Jane Sales have made significant renovations to this magnificent mansion, including a restoration of the carriage house. In much the same way that the Turner Hamilton Inn has risen again, so has Savannah.
"The Book" and then the movie based on it -- directed by Clint Eastwood starring Kevin Spacey as Jim Williams, an antiques dealer of refined tastes who was accused of murdering his young protégé -- has increased tourism by 43 percent and helped spur renewal of the wonderfully elaborate architectural fantasies that abound in the city's historic district.
Savannah's two-and-one-quarter-mile historic district is the largest in the country. Designed by founder Gen. James Oglethorpe, the city had 24 garden squares (now down to 21). Each is a precious gem of emerald lawns, towering trees and luscious flowers. Some have statues, some fountains and one, Greene Square, a gravesite of Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene.
The character Jim Williams lived in the old Mercer House on Monterrey Square. The century-old house that he restored originally was built by an old Savannah family whose most famous member is the composer Johnny Mercer, author of over 1,100 songs including four Academy Award winners.
Martha Elizey, the tour guide, had a role in the movie, albeit a small nonspeaking part. She was one of the diners that was sitting at Clary's when the character Luther came in with bees tethered to his head and a vial of poison that he carried in case he felt the urge to spill it into the city's water supply. As Brandt points out, Savannah not only tolerates its eccentrics, it thrives on them.
As Elizey talks, it becomes apparent that there is an almost mystical reverence for "The Book" in this delightful city with its live oak trees that drip Spanish moss and tabby sidewalks made of oyster shells. Elizey posits that we might get to view the dog whose barking bothered Williams ("I drove past earlier and she was on the balcony, so get your cameras ready").
On the corner where Bull Street intersects Gaston Street, surrounded by wrought-iron fencing (wrought iron twisted into unique shapes and used for fences and gates is part of the grandeur of Savannah homes), is the Armstrong House, an Italian Renaissance palazzo that Williams bought and rehabbed.
No "Book" tour, and surely no trip to Savannah, would be complete without visiting the Bonaventura Cemetery. After all, it was here that the Bird Girl, who graced the cover, used to mark a grave (though she now has been moved to a museum). It also was here that the fevered pitch of our book tour reached a crescendo. Bonaventura, which is listed on the National Historic Register, is the final stopping place for many of Savannah's famous people. The Mercers rest here as does novelist and poet Conrad Aiken, who in traditional Savannah high style, has a bench poised on a bluff overlooking the river as his grave marker so that people can sit and rest.
Berendt drank martinis from a silver cocktail shaker and listened to the wicked history of many of the characters who made their way into his story while sitting here in one of the first scenes in his book.
A century before, Aiken frequently sat in this spot. He once saw a ship with the words Cosmos Mariner painted on the bow. Because cosmos was a word that appeared frequently in his poetry, he was delighted with the name and looked up the ship in the news that night (this was a time when ships' comings and goings were part of the paper). The name was followed with the words "destination unknown." The words and the feeling they conveyed so entranced him that he had them inscribed on the bench: "Cosmos Mariner Destination Unknown."
But "Midnight" wasn't the first book or movie to be made in Savannah. This city that was spared by General Sherman on his march to the sea because of its great beauty (he stayed for three months and then left to burn Atlanta), has figured as a location in movies since the early 1900s.
The old Greenwich Plantation was the setting for the 1915 movie "Under Southern Skies" set in Colonial times and starring Mary Pickford and Francis X. Bushman. Though it is now just a few piles of stone, at one time Greenwich was said to rival Biltmore in splendor, costing $500,000 to build and $100,000 to furnish (in late-19th-century dollars).
"We love movies in Savannah," says John Duncan, who was Jim Williams' neighbor.
Duncan, a retired school professor, lives in a Second Empire baroque house with his wife, Ginger. They operate an antique book, map and print shop in the lower level of their manse. Both had parts in the "Midnight" movie (John played "Gentleman in the Park" and Ginger was "Married Woman Number One" while their dog Rosie played herself). The Duncans bought and restored their house in the late 1970s and, in 1979, the television movie "Orphan Train," starring Jill Eikenberry, was filmed there.
"It was a bawdy house in the movie," says John, showing a photo of him in pre-Civil War garb with the actress.
Savannah ghosts
"When I stayed there, a stick moved from one side of the room to the other," says pretty Madeline Stacy, a 10th grader who lives on Tybee Island. Stacy was spending the night at the Hamilton Turner Inn with her Brownie troop. Ghosts don't particularly bother Savannah residents -- they are just part of the landscape. That's a lucky thing, for almost all the houses in the historic district seem to have a ghost.
"Remember William Faulkner said that in the south, the past is not the past, it is part of the present," says Duncan, who knows of a ghost that lives across the square.
Because of its ghostly presence, carriage-driven ghost tours are popular, particularly after dark. Horseshoes pound on old brick streets while the guide talks of sailors who never returned and the women who still wait for them centuries later and Revolutionary War soldiers who wander the Colonial Cemetery on Abercorn Street. The moon is full and a soft mist rises up around the old-fashioned street lamps.
Slow up the pace
For those who want to explore the coastline near Savannah, a must visit is to Jekyll's Island, a place whose diverse heritage comes about from the Native Americans, English colonials and French privateers who have lived here. After the charm of sophisticated Savannah, the island offers outdoor pursuits including turtle sighting -- from May through August female loggerhead turtles swim ashore and then make their way across the sand to dig their nests where they lay 80 to 100 eggs each.
Other treasure finds include a plethora of seashells, particularly olives and whelks. A boon for birding enthusiasts, the island is one of 18 sites along the Colonial Coast Birding Trail.
If you go
* Savannah: www.georgia.org
* Hamilton Turner Inn: www.hamilton-turnerinn.com
* Melon Bluff: Set on 3,000 acres and approximately 35 minutes from Savannah, the site offers views of the river, access to wetlands and an Old South feel with rows of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Visit www.melonbluff.com
If you go
* Savannah: www.georgia.org
* Hamilton Turner Inn: www.hamilton-turnerinn.com
* Melon Bluff: Set on 3,000 acres and approximately 35 minutes from Savannah, the site offers views of the river, access to wetlands and an Old South feel with rows of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Visit www.melonbluff.com
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