Fannie Flagg on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

she started as a stand-up comic who found fame on the small screen co-starring on the TV shows candid camera and the new Dick Van Dyke Show and was a staple on 70s game shows including tattletales and of course Match Game she continues to do occasional film work and starred on Broadway in the best little whorehouse in Texas but her greatest fame has come as an author her bestseller fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe spent 36 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became a hit film oh I'm ready my news coming up on interviews our conversation with comedian actress author and Academy Award nominee Fannie Flagg are your characters alive to you yes they are and you know I only because I think the world of you that I will tell you the truth what I'm writing books those characters start to talk to me you know I hear them talking and of course my characters are basically combination everybody says well is that based on this person or that person and it really isn't it's based on a combination of four or five people and and like most writers some of yourself come gets in it you know the MER actually exactly the first book that I ever wrote which is called Daisy Faye in the miracle man there's about a little 11 year old girl that was raised on the beach in Mississippi and that was kind of everything in there was kind of true because I was raised on the beach and my father did have a malt shop and everything I wrote in there was basically kind of true and this new book I still dream about you the main character Maggie Fortenberry is a 60 year old gal who was a former Miss Alabama well now I know about oh I would say 30 former Miss Alabama's so it's a combination of all of these gals you know that I put into one but there also is a former Miss Alabama contestant sitting right thank you a portable miss Alabama Cattell that's right yes it's true I was in the Miss Alabama pageant for seven years and never won but now let let me please explain myself so you don't think I'm eager maniac when I was growing up this was in the early 60s um I was not I was dyslexic so I wasn't very smart in school I couldn't get a scholarship and um there was a whole tradition in Alabama miss Alabama pageant was the biggest thing other than the Alabama football team so when they had the Junior Miss Alabama and then you start at 16 so I went into the Junior Miss Alabama at 16 to win a scholarship to school because I didn't have very much money so they gave out scholarships and that was the only way a girl and back then could get a scholarship to school because they didn't have athletic scholarships or anything like that so I went in the Miss Junior Miss Alabama passion wrote some silly sketch I can't even remember what it was I'm embarrassed to even think about but and then I would get a scholarship to help me to go to school and so each year I would go back in it and get a you know get a scholarship I never intended I mean it wasn't my intention to win because I never could have won because you have to miss Alabama I always get tickled you know people say well beauty queens are not very smart but that particular pageant you have to have like very good grades it's the Miss America pageant it's not in this USA or whatever so you had to have like a all a average and I certainly didn't have that but I could never win but I certainly was in it a lot when you talk about education going to school and I know that your grandmother was a college graduate yes which I think is very interesting yeah at a time she wasn't in the fair of value there now your mom didn't go to school my mother was a child of the depression and a lot of kids in the depression did not get to go but my grandmother did she went to Judson College in Alabama and she was she I don't think she finished she met my grandfather there who was teaching at the Marian Institute but she did go to college and you're right it was very unusual at that time was there a lot of emphasis put on education than in your home no there really wasn't I think because at a very early age Ernie my parents realized that there was something the matter with me and when I say that I mean they understood somehow they were disappointed but they understood that I was not going to excel in education because I was severe dyslexic and couldn't spell and couldn't do math so I really struggled in school so I think that they were kind enough not to pressure me and I appreciate it to this day because they more or less let me go toward what I wanted to do which was theater and at a very early age I got into theater when I was 15 local theatre there in Birmingham and I just sort of I did go to the Pittsburgh Playhouse which is a theatre school and I took a couple of semesters of acting at the University of Alabama but as far as you know a formal education college education I did graduate from high school but that was a miracle did you ever worry you were dumb not understanding what the problem was I was horrified that I was dumb I was embarrassed and because I just I was I could read you know dyslexia affects people in different ways I was a very good reader but I couldn't spell and I couldn't do math and I have a hard time knowing my left from my right and so when I was in dancing school I was asked to leave because they say you know turn left and I'd go the other way turn right or whatever and to this day I'm constantly lost I'm lost everywhere because I can't figure things out but I it really affected me and that I thought that I was was not as smart as everybody else and why didn't you go and hide what made you become Sammy flag ah that's a wonderful question I think that I was so taken with entertainment the plays and movies that I wanted sons to be that you know and I had a lot of encouragement um my father was a motion picture machine operator and I think he always wanted to be in show business secretly you know was very supportive of me being in the theater and I had a wonderful mentor mentor James Hatcher who was my director and he was very supportive of me and pushed me and all of that and why I didn't hide was not because of anything that I did it was because I had just fabulous encouragement from people at the right time that said the right thing because when I can remember when I was in the sixth grade I developed that I started not speaking and hiding and I would go to school and I remember I would put my head down on the desk and I had a wonderful sixth grade teacher and she she sort of made me you know sit up and and she said you can't help that you can't spell and this this and so it was because I had people that encouraged me and I think that I wanted to you know I was affected by my mother always said I saw too many movies then the next oddity I think in this little path of yours is so you become a writer yes shall I tell you the story books well I always wanted I don't know why I always wanted to write so when I was in the fifth grade I just decided that I was going to write a play why I can't remember why I thought I could but that was before I knew how really just like what so I wrote this play called the whoopee girls and it was about I was a career girl living in New York and I was at my apartment was above the Copa Cabana nightclub now where I got that I don't know so I was going to Catholic school and I did this play and they put it on and it was amazing they put it on the fifth grade course I starred myself and my best friend and it was it was funny and the plot was silly because at that time President Harry Truman was president and I thought Harry Truman was coming to visit me and so I threw this huge party for Harry Truman and of course the the end of the play was that Harry Truman was insurance salesman oh it was hilarious and that was okay except during the play I had my character drinking something like 32 martinis but I must have seen in a movie that I thought that was very sophisticated you know to drink martini so the sister called my mother and she said my real name is Patricia Neal and she said mrs. Neal we thought the play was charming but we're a little concerned about her relationship with alcohol Oh sisters she's seen too many movies but I wanted to tell you later on how I came to find out that there was another thing that was the matter because my name really was Patricia Neal and I was known as Patsy my mother called me Patsy ever become me Patsy and I changed schools and the sister called my mother to give the report on my progress and she was talking to my mother and she said well mrs. neele uh pasty does very well she's a very sweet little girl and pasty does play well with others and she went on and on and my mother said excuse me sister she said you know her name is Patsy and the sister said well she spells it pasty so this already started figuring out something was better so that's what I would do is invert my letters how did it become Fannie Flagg okay when I was 18 I think I would had I was going to do a professional play and when you do that you have to bylaw sign up with that could you know equity well because my name was Patricia Neal they said you can't have that name we have another actress who has that name before you and I own Oh what will I do I've got to come up with something silly and my grandfather who had worked in the theaters old vaudeville theaters in Birmingham he said Oh take the name first name fanny he said because during the 20s and whatever a lot of comedians came through and they had that name and I said great and then I couldn't come up with a last name and I thought Fanny brown Fanny this Fanny that and a friend of mine called and they Mary hurt which is funny her name is funny anyhow she called me and she said Fanny I have your last name I said what is it she said it's Fannie Flagg I said great I've got about five minutes to call him and I said where you got that name she said well it's Muriel Dooley's grandmother's name well to this day I don't know who miracle do we have but the point of it is she got the name I got the name and I thought I was doing comedy at the time because I was wanting to be a comedian and I thought well it's a funny name so people will laugh before they even come out right never dreaming that one day I would grow up want to be a serious writer so I'm stuck with a Fannie Flagg so there you go I think a lot of people when they think of you they think of writer but then when they think of you they also think of TV guest characters address and candid camera comes in yes but what a lot of people might not know is that you wrote for Canada kiss idea that's how I did how that happened and I'll tell you I'm glad you asked me about that because that came into play because I couldn't write this way I was hired I went to New York and I wrote some material and I had a friend type it out and I sold it to a review in New York you're too young to remember but it's called the upstairs at the downstairs ad at the last minute the young woman who was supposed to do what I had the material I had written because I went to New York wanting to be a writer it couldn't get out of another contract and so they came to me and they said you have can you do this because you know the material you know it already so I stepped into the show opening night Allen Funt came and he saw that I had written the material and he asked me if I would come and be a writer and I saw what is that entail he said well you just sit in the room and throw out ideas and I thought oh that's not writing so I became a so-called writer but I really didn't write things down see so I then I add that that's what I really wanted - well then Ernie I wrote a thing and the next sketch about a woman who was I think was a truck driver or something back then that was unusual and again the gal that was supposed to do the sketch didn't show up so Alice oh you wrote it so you go in there and do it so what happened was on my way to become a writer I sort of fell into the acting and did well with that and I sort of got away for a while from what I really wanted to do and then in 1975 I had been doing a lot of game shows and things like that and I was I was getting sort of thing where where is this going and all that in 1975 I moved to Santa Barbara California and the first day I was there I noticed on a aren't you glad you asked I noticed on a pole and it said Eudora Welty you know the famous Mississippi writer short story writer I was coming to speak at the writers conference and I thought I'd give anything in the world to hear her speak so I went to the writers conference signed up for the whole you know four days and I went there and I was so excited about being there and I sat in an auditorium with all these I just thought they were all must have been professors and brilliant and all then they had their papers and everything and the man came out and he said welcome writers to the Writers Conference and he said this year our short story contest will you have to have your story in in three days I didn't know that was part of it he said and we have a one word theme and that theme is childhood and so I noticed everybody got out their pencil and they wrote childhood and I got out my pencil and I think I wrote childhood and so I thought oh no I've got to have this thing in or they won't let me come see your door well - so I ran down to the to the drugstore and I bought when those little spiral notebooks you know so I thought childhood childhood and so I started writing is this little 11 year old little girl and I thought if I make mistakes they'll think I did it on you know the child didn't know how to spell or grammar or whatever so I turned it in and at the end of the conference the last day I saw Eudora Welty speak it was just wonderful and then that morning this had come back and we're going to hand out the prizes and I came back and I won first prize and your door wealthy handed me the prize and it's just I couldn't believe it it just I was at once so thrilled and horrified because I felt like I had faked them out you know and the story was sent to an editor in New York and he came out and he said I want to talk to you about your writing and I and I thought okay and he said he said what we'd like for you to do is we'd like for you to develop that short story into a novel and I burst into tears and I said I am so sorry I can't do it I can't spell yeah and he looked at me and he said well honey why do you think we have copy editors he found your voice I said I don't have to know how to spell he said oh he said most writers don't do well I didn't know that and so then I started writing you know and then I just fell in love with it and so then they did fried green tomatoes did the movie and that helped me a great deal in terms of my writing career because I got more offers to do more books which I probably wouldn't have had they not done that movie yeah so it was a long way around but I finally got to what I was what I think I'm supposed to be doing because I enjoy it so much and I would think they I think the only downside for me is that it's so lonely and you know that Ernie how sad it is to sit in a room all by yourself so most writers when they have to go out on a book tour they're sad about it I can't wait yeah got to go ever feel bad and I know it's not totally left behind you still make appearances but leaving that professional performer person behind you know I don't I had a wonderful time when I was doing it but ah really I think I was so lucky because as you know men and women down if you could you get older you don't have much of a career it's few and far between and particularly for women so I am so lucky that I have a second you know how you find your second profession I was able to find a second profession that I just adored that I can do for the rest of my life you know and and when I you know it's hard like if I was trying to act now it would be very I think it'd be hard to get a job well before we get into all of the right I do have to ask match game oh my god hilarious but something I never thought about when you talk about dyslexia did you worry writing down here is yes and people used to laugh and I pretended I did it on purpose and it is so funny now when I was doing match game I was a 30 maybe 29 or 30 or maybe even in my early 30s and at that point I still didn't know what was the matter with me and I had been doing the match game for about a year and a school teacher somewhere I thought somewhere in the Midwest wrote me a letter and she said oh she said I noticed you're dyslexic so and so it and I didn't even know what the word meant and I looked it up and then I went to get tested and that was the first time I knew what it was because we didn't know what it was you know nobody really that it was people just thought it was you were just stupid you know and so then I knew what it was but I was embarrassed about it strangely enough I didn't want to talk about it didn't want to tell anybody and it's an actor and somehow found out that I was and he called me up and he said Fanny we're doing a calendar for people with dyslexia and I want to put your your name on it and I oh I said I'm embarrassed about that please don't love about and he said it's not for you fanny it's for kids it's to encourage other people and I thought oh okay that's I was being so selfish and self-centred thinking about myself so I did and then a year to later I won an award from the lab it's la B School in Washington which is the big school for I thought they have now for people with learning disabilities and I went there and that year they were they were honoring about four or five people and you're you know Richard Avedon brilliant photographer and Richard at that point was probably 75 76 something like that and he and I were walking down the hall at this school and we were seeing how they were training the kids and and you know how they were learning so differently than we did and they were so happy and having such fun and he looked at me and he said fanny he said do you feel like I feel and I said I think so and he said yeah he said I'm so happy for these kids and yet I'm kind of so sad I didn't have this and he looked at me and he was so sincere he said you know he said I've been a hear success he said I still feel dumb and that's it that's how it affected us and I still feel you know a little bit that way the success of fried green tomatoes the book mm-hmm did that help alleviate it did it say I've arrived because it wasn't just a successful book it's a huge hit huge hit still continues on today yeah yeah when you look at that does that at least validate all of the struggle I don't I know what you're saying and I there is still as hard as I tried there is still a part of me that is insecure and still in bear yeah and and I wish it weren't so but it's true and I still feel a little less than because I feel like if I if I had just gotten I had just been able to get a degree in English you know I might have been better or you know what I mean yeah at but now I have friends that say well honey you know if you had a degree in English you might be you might not have been able to write as simply as you do you know to appeal to to mass audiences which is what I want to do I don't want to be an academic but but then your book is taught in schools I know I know that's just horrifying but thrilling at the same time yeah seeing it turned into a film yes how do you react to that as the parent of it you know it's taken on a different life totally it was unbelievable I'll tell you a story you're I was sitting as you know in a room 442 that book took a long time because nobody wanted that book people did not want a book because I submitted it to the first publisher and they said no we don't want to book about an old lady in a nursing home we don't think that that'll be we're not interested so nobody would I didn't get an advance so I worked on that book just with no money no job and when finally they bought it and Jon Avnet bought it as a movie I was the only one that had been living with those characters and they were filming down in Georgia this little town in Georgia and they were building the sets and John called me and he said come on down to Georgia because we'll you know work on this thing because I had written the screenplay he said come on down and be with us on the set and I and I took a plane it was Sunday and the driver from Universal pick me up and he said do you want to stop at the set and they're doing a little something and I say yeah I'll go down there and I walked in and there was the street and all of a sudden what had been only in my mind there was the town and there was Sipsey and Ag and Ruth and all these people walking down the street and it was like I felt like I had walked inside my book you know it was it was real and so far it's not just seeing it on the screen you saw it in real life yes I saw a real life and I'm going oh my gosh I can't believe it and and and it's so funny because the people that you have in mind are not the people necessarily that that other people have in mind you know because I had a specific lady like for mrs. the older lady mrs. threadgoode I had a big kind of country big-boned woman and then Jessica Tandy was little in teeny so that was kind of hard for me because it was not the person that I saw but now people that see the movie that's fine you know that's who the hell yeah yeah you know we are out of time well I can't believe it I'm knocked your ear I'm so sorry it was a pleasure thank you so much for sharing all your stories that you have over the years and we look forward to what you have for us next well I thank you so much thank you very much Fannie Flagg to order a DVD of this or any episode of interviews please visit to stone pbs.org you

Channel: HoustonPBS

Views: 41,361

Rating: 4.9252338 out of 5

Keywords: fannie, flagg, on, innerviews, with, ernie, manouse, interview, houston, pbs, channel, author, fried, green, tomatoes

Id: R8wkZGQm9sg

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2011