The Iowa Ten: Actors and Films with Connections to The Hawkeye State

We can be cold as our falling thermometers in December
If you ask about our weather in July
And we're so by-God stubborn
We could stand touchin' noses
For a week at a time
And never see eye-to-eye
But what the heck, you're welcome
Join us at the picnic
You can eat your fill of all the food you bring yourself
You really ought to give Iowa a try
― “Iowa Stubborn” from The Music Man

Though it may not have sired as many movie stars as, say, its neighboring state of Nebraska, Iowa has certainly been fertile ground for movies set and filmed within its borders. Here are ten contributions―stars and films―that Iowa has made to motion picture history.

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July 9

Charles Lane dies at the age of 102 in Santa Monica, California, 2007. When the Screen Actors Guild held its first public meeting on October 8, 1933, Lane was there as a founding member. “[The studios would] work you until midnight and get you back at seven in the morning,” the actor said about early conditions. “The actors were taking a terrible licking physically. Generally, as the case with any union, you form it because people are abused.” The lifelong character actor entered the movies in 1931 with Smart Money and made hundreds more, including Twentieth Century (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Teacher’s Pet (1958) and The Music Man (1962). He almost always found himself typecast as the meanie in the room, playing rent collectors, bureaucrats, tax assessors and other killjoys. “You did something that was pretty good, and the picture was pretty good,” Lane said in a 2005 interview. “That pedigreed you in that type of part, which I thought was stupid, and unfair, too. It didn't give me a chance, but it made casting easier for the studio.”

March 31

Can one be an Oscar winner and still be underrated? That's the question I had after attending a screening of The Music Man (1962) during the L. A. Conservancy's annual Last Remaining Seats event last summer. As the film unspooled in the historic atmosphere of the Los Angeles Theater, I was reminded what a terrific actress Shirley Jones is. This is not a daring statement to make, as she has proven her thespian heft often, perhaps most notably in the dramas The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963)—as next-door neighbor and friend to Glenn Ford and Ronny Howard's characters—and Elmer Gantry (1960)—as Lulu Bains, a woman, now a prostitute, from the title character’s past who proves to be his undoing. For the latter, she was awarded the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Perhaps I find her underrated because of her close association with more lighthearted fare. On stage and in film, she established herself in musicals, appearing on Broadway in South Pacific before making her film debut in Oklahoma! (1955). In that Rodgers and Hammerstein film adaptation as well as in Carousel (1956), she exuded a peaches-and-cream American beauty, lovely and likeable, with a gorgeous singing voice to boot. The Music Man took her a step further as a prim librarian slowly, ever-so-slowly, lowering her guard to not only let a man woo her, but willfully ignoring his nefarious intentions for the town she loves.

Today Shirley Jones, who was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, turns 78 years old.

October 22

Mary Wickes dies in Los Angeles, 1995. The character actress made movies for more than six decades, supporting the likes of Bette Davis, Doris Day, Meryl Streep and Whoopi Goldberg. She played nurses and nuns, busybodies and plain old bitties, and she had a way with a wisecrack that could steal a scene from a pro. Comedy was her forte, made obvious by her role as Miss Preen in the Broadway play The Man Who Came to Dinner. The play ran for years and, when it came time to film it, Wickes was brought along with the play’s star, Monty Woolley, to recreate their roles for the 1942 screen version. She continued providing ace work in some four dozen feature films, including Now, Voyager (1942), White Christmas (1954), The Music Man (1962), Postcards From the Edge (1990) and Little Women (1994). “I love playing good comedy with a heart,” she once said, “comedy which touches the audience.”