Walterboro campus gets starring role in Radio

By Marshall Swanson

When the movie Radio is released this fall, it will tell the story of how T.L. Hanna High School and the community of Anderson took a mentally retarded man under its wing and helped him blossom.

But the movie, which portrays the experience of T.L. Hanna's coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris) and James Robert Kennedy, aka Radio (Cuba Gooding), wasn't filmed in Anderson. It was shot entirely on location at the Walterboro campus of USC-Salkehatchie and in other parts of Walterboro.

"From higher education to Hollywood was a stretch for us, but we found the overall experience to be positive and very rewarding," said Ann Carmichael, the Salkehatchie dean who acted as the campus' liaison with the movie production company during its filming last fall.

The movie came within a hair's breadth of being filmed in Atlanta, after the producers looked at Anderson and passed on the site because of financial considerations.

But when Mary Morgan Kerlagon, who was then the South Carolina film commissioner, showed the film's production designer, Clay Griffith, and executive producer Herb Gains, the Walterboro campus, it's ambience and atmosphere had an immediate appeal.

"The preserved architecture coupled with the beautiful old oaks and a lovely old Southern neighborhood was just what they were looking for," Kerlagon said.

The production company, Tollin-Robbins, eventually decided on using as locations the Walterboro campus' main building (formerly Walterboro High School), its gymnasium, the town's Hampton Street Education Center, an adjacent auditorium, and Cougar Stadium of the current Colleton High School.

All of the exterior scenes for what will be T.L. Hanna High School in the movie were shot in the courtyard area of the Walterboro campus. Interior crowd scenes and basketball game action was filmed in the gymnasium. Interior classroom scenes were filmed at the Hampton Street Education Center while sporting events were shot at Cougar Stadium. Other footage was shot in and around downtown Walterboro.

When Carmichael was first approached about the film, her initial reaction was that it would be a wonderful public relations opportunity, as well as a potential educational opportunity for students. "We were intrigued," she said. "But I had to make it clear at the outset that we could not compromise our academic program for the sake of this project."

As it turned out, the company was very respectful of the campus' concerns, Carmichael said, and worked well with faculty and staff.

The campus got extensive physical plant renovations, as did downtown Walterboro, in return for the filming rights. But almost as important was the educational value of being involved in the production of a major theatrical motion picture, Carmichael said.

"The behind-the-scenes perspective was an education in itself," she said. "The degree of detail and planning that is required to shoot a scene is unbelievable. I gained a new respect for movie production."

One of the requests that the campus made in agreeing to be a location was to give students, faculty, and staff the educational experience of being involved and students quite often got first priority when it came to working as extras in crowd scenes, Carmichael said.

"We also had Herb Gains speak to a standing room only group of students about producing a movie. They asked good questions and learned a lot about the movie making business."

The movie's principal talent, Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding, also were very personable, said Carmichael. "They really made an effort to get to know the people and the community."

Carmichael is hopeful the Walterboro campus' role in the film will help burnish its image and make it more appealing to students and faculty. "We're very proud to be a part of the University of South Carolina," she said, "but I think this also gives us a little bit of a unique identification in our own right."

Kerlagon said she hopes the production company and the campus can work out an agreement to have pieces of wardrobe and props from the movie exhibited in a permanent display case in one of the campus' hallways. "It would certainly offer the potential to have more people visit the campus and hopefully take part in the good education that they can get there," she said.

The town of Walterboro is likely to benefit from the exposure as well.

"It's my hope that the downtown gets a real shot in the arm from this," said Kerlagon. "They have a real opportunity here and if they're smart, they'll try to leave everything on Main Street the way we've done it for the movie. It's a darling little community."

Said Carmichael: "This was a wonderful opportunity for Salkehatchie. I have a very positive impression of Hollywood based on my experience with this production crew."

04/03