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Big Doc is an adaptation of a 1942 New York Times best
selling novel, Big Doc's Girl, written by an Arkansan, Mary Medearis.
Mary studied at Columbia University with Whit Burnett,
editor of the influential Story magazine where such writers as J. D.
Salinger, William Saroyan, Norman Mailer and Carson McCullers made their
debuts. Story published what would become a chapter in Mary's
book and it won first place in a national short story contest sponsored by the
magazine. Burnett then encouraged Mary to expand the story into the only
novel she ever wrote.
Big Doc's Girl received universal raves from critics. The New York
Times said, "Its' generous
warmth and human feeling make it delightful reading." The Saturday
Review of Literature praised it as "well written, warm and
moving." The Los Angeles Times called it "a
brilliantly human story that lives with you long after the last reluctantly
turned page."
Subsequently, the novel was:
- Named one of "Ten Best Fiction Books of
1942" by The New York Times and the New York Herald-Tribune;
- Reprinted as book length novel in Redbook
Magazine;
- Condensed in Reader’s Digest;
- Chosen by the U.S.
government as one of 10 books to "show life in the United States"
and translated into six languages;
- Published as a play by Samuel French;
- In 1959, the Theatre Guild of New York presented
an hour-long live television dramatization of Big Doc's Girl
for the "U.S. Steel Hour" starring Margaret O’Brien,
Gene Raymond and a young Gene Hackman in his
first television role;
- In 1960, it was included in a list of
"Classics of American Literature" between Arrowsmith,
by Sinclair Lewis, and The Red Pony by John Steinbeck;
- Published by J.B. Lippincott Publishing Co.
(became Harper & Row) from 1942 to 1981. August House in Little Rock has
re-published the book from 1986 to the present time.
- The Arkansas Humanities Council provided a grant
to Luminous Films to option the book and develop a screenplay for a
motion picture.
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