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The Year a State Burned: Maine Fires of 1947 Wipe Out 9 Towns

A plume of smoke near Dolliver’s dump signaled the end of Bar Harbor’s splendid era and the worst of the terrifying Maine fires of 1947.

Mrs. Gilbert called the Bar Harbor Fire department on Oct. 17, 1947, to alert them to the smoke rising from a nearby cranberry bog. What caused the fire, no one ever knew. But the world would soon find out about the inferno that destroyed half of Acadia National Park and nearly all of the mansions on Millionaire’s Row in Bar Harbor.

From October 13 to October 27, firefighters tried to fight 200 Maine fires, consuming a quarter of a million acres of forest and wiping out nine entire towns. The Maine fires destroyed 851 homes and 397 seasonal cottages, leaving 2,500 people homeless.

The year 1947 became known as the Year Maine Burned.

The Malvern, one of the five elegant hotels destroyed in the Maine fires of 1947. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Warnings of Maine Fires

Warning signs of the Maine fires appeared as early as March. An abnormally warm spring caused snow to melt early in the woods. Mid-July to October were unusually dry, with 108 consecutive days without rain.

Ninety percent of the state was forested, and the state had made little preparation for fighting wildfires. Most towns didn’t have a fire department. There was no warning system, no mutual aid agreement and no centralized command and control structure.

By early October, Maine was in a ‘high state of inflammability.’ People were urged to clean their chimneys and the Forest Service reopened fire watch towers normally closed on September 30.

Fires broke out during the first week in October in Portland, Bowdoin and Wells. By October 16, 20 separate Maine fires were burning. Three days later, many Maine towns were covered with a smoky haze and smelled of burning wood. The night sky glowed red.

Maine Fires Trap 60

When the alarm went out, men and boys dropped what they were doing and rushed off to fight the fires. Men who went to work in small towns didn’t know if they’d be called on to fight the Maine fires that day. Volunteers came from all over Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

An eight-mile-long wall of fire burned in Kennebunkport. In North Waterboro, nearly 60 residents and volunteers were trapped for more than an hour behind a line of fire before escaping.

In York County, the fires destroyed most of the homes in Shapleigh and Waterboro. then swept toward the sea and consumed swathes of Alfred, Lyman, Newfield, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Arundel, Dayton, Wells, Biddeford and Saco.

USS Little Rock rushed to Portland to help put out the Maine fires.

The Army-Navy Day in Boston scheduled for October 26 was cancelled. The USS Little Rock, a light cruiser harbored in Boston for the celebration, sailed to Portland instead with 1,000 servicemen and equipment to help fight the Maine fires. They saved the town of Hollis and many other small villages, working ‘as if their own homes were endangered.’

On October 29, with 40 fires still burning, the Navy joined the Army and General Electric in a novel method of fire suppression: creating artificial rain. Two B-17s took off from Schenectady, N.Y., and dropped dry ice into clouds over York County.

But it had already begun to rain.

Bar Harbor Destruction

Stanwood, a cottage owned by James G. Blaine, was one of many destroyed by the Maine fires along Millionaire’s Row in Bar Harbor. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

After Mrs. Gilbert notified Bar Harbor fire officials of the smoke on October 20, the fire smoldered underground. For three days it blackened only 169 acres. Then on October 21, strong winds spread the blaze until it consumed over 2,000 acres in Acadia National Park that day alone. Firefighting crews were joined by the Army Air Corps, the Navy, the Coast Guard, National Park Service workers from the East Coast and students from the University of Maine and Bangor Theological Seminary.

The next day nearly 2,300 acres burned on Mt. Desert Island. That afternoon, the wind strengthened and turned toward Bar Harbor, traveling six miles in less than three hours. Fire engulfed 67 seasonal estates known as Millionaire’s Row on the shores of Frenchman Bay. The fires missed the business district but destroyed 170 homes and five grand historic hotels near downtown.

Rescue

Bar Harbor residents fled for their safety, first to the athletic field then to the town pier. When fire blocked all the roads, fishermen from Winter Harbor, Gouldsboro and Lamoine evacuated 400 people by sea.

By 9 pm, bulldozers carved a pathway was through the rubble on Route 3 and 700 cars carrying 2,000 people slowly drove to Ellsworth. Sparks pelted the cars and flames flared overhead, but the motorcade made it to safety.

The fire continued to destroy acres of forest and the Jackson Laboratory before it blew itself out over the ocean in a fireball. It was declared under control on October 27, but smoldered underground until November 14.

Five people in Bar Harbor died as a result of the fire – two in a car crash and two of heart attacks. The fire destroyed 17,188 acres, including 10,000 in Acadia.

Aftermath

The fire changed the composition of the forests in Acadia National Park. It wiped out mature spruce and fir stands and replaced them with sun-loving birch, aspen and oak. Acadia’s forests now turn to red and yellow autumn colors instead of the monochromatic green that reigned before the Maine fires.

On Jan. 13, 1948, officials held a statewide firefighting and prevention conference in Augusta. As a result, many Maine towns established volunteer firefighting departments within the next two years. They began to use standard equipment and to train to national standards.

In addition, the State of Maine got a license for a two-way public safety radio network. The state granted the forest commissioner more authority to respond to Maine fires and launched a public education program about fire safety.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Atwater Kent – The Vermonter Who Sparked The Radio Craze in 1921

Arthur Atwater Kent — Atty to his friends — gave up on college in 1896 to focus on his business designing and building car parts. But that didn’t make him a household name by the 1930s. That would be his radios, the most popular brand in the United States.

Kent began life in Burlington, Vt., on Dec. 3, 1873. His father was physician and his mother an artist. The family left Vermont, however, about the time Kent turned nine to relocate to Worcester, Mass.

Kent was always drawn to technology, but he couldn’t make it beyond his second term at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Instead, he turned his attention to one of the burgeoning industries of the day, car making.

Atwater Kent and others listen to his radio. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Atwater Kent, Carmaker

With a fascination for electricity, he went to work designing an ignition system that dramatically improved the way cars operated. He had started his company even before entering college in 1895. The Kent Electric Manufacturing Company that started out making small motors and other electrical parts soon morphed into a major automotive supplier.

For 20 years he continued designing and patenting ignition components for cars. His patented ignition coils – a small, but essential, part for every car being made – became the industry standard for decades.

Even before 1910, the pioneers of radio were experimenting with broadcast technology. Throughout the teens, the tantalizing technology was expanding and improving. Early efforts had so little power, they reached almost no one. Poor microphone and speakers rendered them little more than squawks.

But with each passing year, the technology was improving, and in 1920, it took off with the launch of commercial radio stations. KDKA in November 1920 broadcast the election returns in Pittsburgh. It captivated the public imagination.

Workers at A. Atwater Kent’s Philadelphia radio factory.

Hooked on Radio

By 1922, more than 600 stations were operating. Early radio was a chaotic affair, with broadcasters overlapping each other’s frequencies and scrambling for things to broadcast. In its infancy, radio had no advertising, but was viewed largely as a public means of communication – not unlike the early days of the Internet.

Atwater Kent saw an opportunity in this exploding new market. In 1921, he produced a home radio for consumers. It was a kit that required a lot of fine tuning by the operator, but his customers were hooked.

Kent had an edge over some of his competitors in that he already had manufacturing experience, facilities and a distribution network.

A. Atwater Kent and his family in Maine.

He established his main radio factory in Philadelphia and he continued refining the product, creating attractive cases and cabinets and incorporating better technology. He stayed on the cutting edge of the industry and insisted on the best parts he could get.

His customers rewarded him. When he produced a new model, with better features, they would queue up to buy it. By 1925, Atwater Kent was the world’s largest radio manufacturer.

In 1926, he sponsored the Sunday night Atwater Kent Hour, which included broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. It had more listeners than anyone but Amos n Andy and Rudy Vallee.

Kent’s sales boomed, and his ads lavished praise on his customers for their discerning taste in buying his product.

“Our thanks to the ladies for telling one another…” one advertisement said.

Honors

In 1924, he returned to Vermont to receive an honorary degree from the University of Vermont in electrical engineering. In 1926, he collected his honorary doctorate from Worcester Polytechnic.

Throughout his career, he took great pleasure in explaining that he never took on debt and never sold stock in his company. It was his to do with as he pleased. In 1923, he toyed with the idea of closing down. Profits from his auto parts, and related war contracts, had already made him very wealthy by 40, with summer homes in Bar Harbor and Kennebunkport.

But he decided to double down on radios. His radio line would continue until 1936. That year, as the Great Depression continued to erode his sales, he faced a choice. He could cut the quality of his products to lower prices, as some manufacturers were doing, or fold up.

Atwater Kent

Kent chose the latter course. He also put his life on a dramatically different course. Kent would fund many historical restorations in Philadelphia, but he also made great changes in his personal life. The diminutive and thrifty Vermonter would divorce his wife and leave his family in Philadelphia to move to Bel Air, Calif.

Party Animal

There, in a grand home, complete with 23 servants, he became a fixture in the Hollywood social scene. He threw hundreds of lavish parties for Hollywood stars, some of whose careers he had launched on his radio hour. He also partied at his mansion in Bar Harbor.

Dorothy Lamour and Vivian Blaine and countless other starlets would attend his bashes, festooned with balloons, circus animals, military equipment or whatever items he chose to accent the theme of the event.

Kent himself, at this point a vegetarian, would rarely eat the steak and champagne he served to his guests, often milling about in an oversized top hat and bowtie as he made sure to mingle with each guest.

Why the parties? “Just like to see the young folk have a good time,” he explained to one interviewer shortly before his death on March 4, 1949.

This story last updated in 2023.

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1816: The Year Without a Summer

The year 1816 was known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’ in New England because six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a hard frost.

Temperatures dropped to as low as 40 degrees in July and August as far south as Connecticut. People also called it ‘Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’ and the ‘Poverty Year.’

The Year Without A Summer had a far-reaching impact. Crop failures caused hoarding and big price increases for agricultural commodities. People went hungry. Farmers gave up trying to make a living in New England and started heading west. Politicians who ignored the melancholy plight of their constituents found themselves out of office.

And to this day, scientists don’t agree on what caused the bizarre weather in The Year Without a Summer.

Year Without a Summer

There were warm days in the spring of 1816, but they were followed by cold snaps. In Salem, Mass., for example, it was 74 degrees on April 24. Within 30 hours the temperature dropped to 21 degrees.

Thomas Robbins, the East Windsor, Conn., bibliophile, noticed the late spring. He wrote in his diary, ‘the vegetation does not seem to advance at all.’

On May 12, strong winds and freezing temperatures from Canada killed the buds on fruit trees. Inch-thick ice formed on ponds and streams from Maine to Upstate New York. By the end of May, corn plants froze in central Maine.

Then on June 6, 1816, six inches of snow fell on New England. Clockmaker Chauncey Jerome wrote in his autobiography that he walked to work that day in Plymouth, Conn., wearing heavy woolen clothes, an overcoat and mittens.

Chauncey Jerome wore mittens in June during the Year Without a Summer.

Flurries fell in Boston the next day, the latest ever recorded. The snow was 18 inches deep in Cabot, Vt., on June 8. On June 11, a temperature of 30.5 degrees was recorded in Williamstown, Mass. Frozen birds dropped dead in the fields. Some Vermont farmers who had already shorn their sheep tried to tie their fleeces back on, but many froze to death anyway.

Benjamin Harwood, a Bennington, Vt., farmer, wrote in his diary that it rained all night then began to snow from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The heads of all the mountains on every side were crowned with snow. The most gloomy and extraordinary weather ever seen.

And then it got warm again.

More Cold

Temperatures seesawed up and down throughout the Year Without a Summer, bringing hope on warm days that the crops could be harvested after all. Then sharp cold spells brought despair.

On June 22, for example, temperatures reached 101 degrees in Salem, Mass. But July 4 was cool. Chauncey Jerome wrote it was hard to feel patriotic while watching men play quoits in overcoats. Then a northwest wind brought a three-day cold spell, with 30-degree temperatures in northern New England, 40 degrees in Hartford and New Haven.

Gov. William Plumer blamed God for the Year Without a Summer.

The frost destroyed the bean crop in Franconia, N.H., and bean, cucumber and squash crops in Kennebunkport, Maine. Young plants grew so slowly they were vulnerable to frost, and farmers harvested so little hay they had to slaughter their livestock or feed them oats and corn.

As depressing as the second severe cold spell was the drought that enveloped most of the United States, including New England. “I never saw our street so dry,” complained a minister in East Windsor, Conn.

Gov. William Jones of Rhode Island issued a proclamation designating a day of public ‘Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving,’ noting the ‘coldness and dryness of the seasons’ and the ‘alarming sickness.’ New Hampshire Gov. William Plumer believed the weather was God’s judgment in the earth and urged people to humble themselves for their transgressions.

Fear of famine began to grow during the Year Without a Summer.

Hard Frost in August

Early August was sunny and warm. Farmers planted new crops hoping the growing season might last beyond the first frost in October. On Aug. 13th and 14^th, a cold spell froze the corn crop north of Concord, N.H.

On Aug. 20, a short, violent storm struck Amherst, N.H., signaling a steep drop in temperature: 30 degrees within a few hours. It snowed in Vermont. In Maine, farmers wrapped rags around their plants to protect them.

At least the wheat, rye and potatoes were holding up, staving off famine. In Ashland, N.H., Reuben Whitten was able to grow wheat on his south-facing farm. He shared it with his neighbors. After he died in 1847, his neighbors paid for his gravestone and later erected a monument that read:

A pioneer of this town. Cold season of 1816 raised 40 bushils of wheat on this land whitch kept his family and neighbours from starveation.

Hopes of salvaging what remained of the corn crop were dashed by a severe frost on Aug. 28. Maine and New Hampshire farmers cut up whole fields of corn for fodder.

Rev. William Fogg of Kittery, Maine, summed up the Year Without a Summer: ‘Crops cut short and a heavy load of taxes.’

There were reports of people eating raccoons, mackerel and pigeons.

It warmed up again in September, as usual, but then at sunrise on Sept. 26 in Hanover, N.H., it was 26 degrees. Snow fell throughout the region, and a killing frost froze crops in the field and apples on the branch.

Nettles and Hedgehogs

The drought caused wildfires to break out in the woods throughout New England. Fires in western New York produced so much smoke that sailors were blinded on Lake Champlain.

The Year Without a Summer was especially hard on the poor. The New Hampshire Patriot reported on Oct. 22, 1816, that ‘Indian corn, on which a large proportion of the poor depend is cut off. ‘ Vermont farmers lost much of their livestock, and Vermonters foraged for food such as nettles, wild turnips and hedgehogs.

Daniel Webster lost his bid for reelection during the Year Without a Summer.

Three-quarters of the corn crop was lost during the Year Without a Summer. Prices soared for wheat, grains, meat, vegetables, butter, milk and flour. In Maine, the price of oats tripled and potatoes doubled. Hay was 180 a ton in parts of New Hampshire, six times its usual cost.

The Year Without a Summer brought widespread famines in Europe as well. The bad weather forced a group of poets to remain in their rooms in Switzerland. To avoid boredom and entertain the group, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

Making maple syrup

At least the Year Without a Summer had been good for producing maple syrup. Vermonters traded syrup for fish, which is why they called 1816 the Mackerel Year.

Members of Congress seemed insensitive to the suffering of the people and voted to double their own salary. It didn’t go over well. Nearly 70 percent of incumbent U.S. representatives were voted out of office – including Daniel Webster.

After the Year Without a Summer, Josiah Meigs, commissioner general of the Land Offices, in 1817 began a more systematic approach to observing weather phenomenon. He ordered the 20 Land Offices to take thrice-daily recordings of the temperature, winds and precipitation.

The Frigid Zone

Author Samuel Goodrich visited New Hampshire, observing:

At last a kind of despair seized upon the people. In the pressure of adversity, many persons lost their judgment, and thousands feared or felt that New England was destined, henceforth, to become part of the frigid zone.

Samuel Goodrich

The next year started out cold as well, convincing Northeast farmers to migrate to the Midwest.

Rev. Samuel Robbins in East Windsor, Conn., wrote, ‘We have had a great deal of moving this spring. Our number rather diminished.’

At the time, many reasons were given for the weird phenomena: sunspots, deforestation, great fields of ice floating in the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod experiments and, of course, the wrath of God.

Many people believe the Year Without a Summer was caused by a massive volcanic explosion on Mt. Tambora in Indonesia, killing 15,000 instantly. Soon after, another 65,000 perished of disease and starvation. The volcanic ash and debris thrown up into the stratosphere is thought to have blocked the sun and caused a gradual lowering of temperatures.

Lee Foster, NOAA meteorologist, notes that climate data shows 1816 was part of a mini ice age lasting from 1400 to around 1860. The era had unusually harsh winters, short growing seasons and dry weather.

With thanks to The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History, by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman. This story was updated in 2023.

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Lucy Nicolar Goes Far From a Maine Indian Reservation — And Then Returns

In January 1900, 17-year-old Lucy Nicolar traveled from her home on Indian Island in Penobscot County, Maine, to New York City where she attended a debate about immigration. Lucy, a Penobscot Indian, was also known as Princess Watahwaso.

Lucy Nicolar

The debaters concluded that immigration was dangerous and threatening to all true Americans. Lucy rose to speak:

I believe I am the only true American here. I think you have decided rightly. Of all my forefathers’ country, from the St. John to the Connecticut, we have now but a little island one-half mile square. There are only about 500 of us now. We are very happy on our island, but we are poor. The railroad corporations, which did their share of robbing us of our land, are now begrudging us half-rate fare. But we forgive you all.

The room fell silent. Then the president of the society announced there’d be no musical feature as the pianist was sick – unless someone volunteered. Lucy Nicolar sat at the piano and played selections from Chopin. She then sang a plaintive song that, according to a journalist, touched everyone in the room.

Princess Watahwosa would spend the rest of her life mixing entertainment with political activism.

Indian Island

Lucy Nicolar was born June 22, 1882, on Indian Island, Maine, the daughter of Joseph Nicolar and Elizabeth Joseph. Every summer, her family traveled to the resort town of Kennebunkport to sell baskets. Lucy and her sister performed in Indian dress for the tourists. In her late teens she started performing at public events such as sportsman’s shows.

During those performances, she came to the attention of a Harvard administrator who hired her as his assistant. He took her into his household and gave her musical and educational opportunities in Boston and New York. In 1905, she married a doctor and moved to Washington, D.C. Eight years later they divorced, and Lucy moved to Chicago to study music.

Recording Artist

Eventually she became a recording artist with Victor Records, performing adaptations of Indian songs such as By the Waters of Minnetonka and By the Weeping Waters. The company sent her on a national promotional tour. As Molly Spotted Elk did later, she acted out stereotypes of Indians while presenting classical European music. She performed on stage in traditional Indian dress, mixing opera arias with Native American songs.

In 1917, Music News raved about a concert she gave in Chicago:

All the seriousness and reliability of her race (The American Indian) are hers and in addition she has individual charms and graces which maker her the peer of brilliant young womanhood of any Race and the superior of most.

Gifted with keen intelligence and musical ability she has added to the force of her natural heredity the style and finish which come from fine education and she stands today as a public entertainer possessing both intelligence and artistry of high order and — as these are applied to a subject of rare appeal to the public she is extremely fascinating to every audience before which she appears.

Sensational Success

In a review of her New York debut, the Music Courier reported, “Princess Watahwaso, A Full-blooded Penobscot Indian Mezzo-Soprano, scores a sensational success at her New York debut recital at Aeolian Hall, April 7, 1920.”

Lucy Nicolar as Princess Watahwaso

Lucy Nicolar also toured as part of the Redpath Chatauqua Bureau, then the Keith vaudeville circuit. She married a lawyer who became her manager. He took all her money and fled to Mexico after the stock market crashed in 1929.

When vaudeville died, she returned to the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation with her husband Bruce Poolaw, a Kiowa entertainer from Oklahoma. They opened a gift shop — a teepee 24 feet in diameter — called it Poolaw’s Indian TeePee and sold traditional Indian crafts. They also continued to entertain locally.

Lucy Nicolar’s gift shop, which became an office

Sisters

Lucy and her sister Florence campaigned to improve life for their people on the reservation,. Their land stretched along the Penobscot River from Indian Island near Old Town to East Millinocket.

The sisters raised the educational standards for Penobscot children by gaining access to the public schools. And they persuaded the state to build a bridge to the island.

Postcard of Indian Island before the bridge

Lucy and Florence also demanded the right to vote for their people. When the state extended suffrage to the Penobscots in 1955, Lucy Nicolar cast the first ballot.

The Old Town Enterprise reported “The princess has done much for the uplift of her people during her public career, both locally and nationally.”

Lucy Nicolar died at Indian Island on March 27, 1969, at the age of 87.

With thanks to Sifters: Native American Women’s Lives (Viewpoints on American Culture) by Theda Perdue. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: “Indian offices” By No machine-readable author provided. Hhmb assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1507581. Young Lucy Nicolar By Matzene, Chicago. – Cover illustration, Lyceum News (November 1916): 1., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71257272.

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Classic Movies Shot in New England, 13 Award-Winners

Hundreds of filmmakers have come to New England since the turn of the last century and some have shot classic movies here.

It isn’t just because autumn leaves and church steeples make the perfect backdrop for classic movies. New England’s history and literary tradition provide rich material for stories and characters set against quaint fishing villages, gritty mill cities, Gilded Age resorts and Ivy League campuses.

New England’s Classic Movies

Familiar New England themes appear again and again in film. The theme of the salty sea captain fighting a sea monster inspired classic movies from Moby Dick through Jaws to The Perfect Storm. Family secrets inspired Eugene O’Neill’s fictional Ah Wilderness in 1906 as well as the true story of a suspected murder in Reversal of Fortune in 1990. And haunted New England was a favorite theme long before Stephen King arrived on the scene.

New England characters populate many classic movies shot in the region. They include the Boston Brahmin, the rustic Yankee, the stalwart fisherman, the town gossip and the outsider struggling to assimilate.

Characters from New England literature also populate many classic movies. Filmmakers first shot Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in New England in 1909 and remade it four times as a feature film, three as a television production. But because it’s literary doesn’t make it good; Demi Moore starred as Hester Prynne in the 1995 remake of Scarlet Letter. It bombed at the box office and earned seven Golden Raspberries including “Worst Remake or Sequel.”

Here is a baker’s dozen of classic movies shot on location in all six states.

Boomerang

When a murderer takes the life of a kindly priest on a street corner, a prosecutor fights to prove the accused man innocent. The true story of Boomerang actually took place in Bridgeport, Conn., but the filmmakers couldn’t get permission to film there.

Elia Kazan, who directed many classic movies, shot the 1947 film in Stamford, Conn., instead.

He directed an all-star cast including Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt and Karl Malden. Playwright Arthur Miller appeared uncredited as a suspect in the police lineup.

Boomerang received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Kazan also won Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Homer Cummings, the real-life prosecutor who inspired the film, served as U.S. attorney general under Franklin Roosevelt.

Boomerang, filmed in Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire.

The Boston Strangler

This true-crime film about the serial killer who terrorized the Boston area from 1962-64 starred Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. As shooting was set to begin in 1968, the man believed to be the Strangler — Albert DeSalvo –escaped from the mental institution where he was held. DeSalvo was captured 33 hours later. Ed Brooke was elected U.S. senator after coordinating the hunt for the killer. “The Boston Strangler” was filmed in Boston, Cambridge and Malden. It received Eddie, Edgar and Oscar nominations. DeSalvo died in prison (where he made choker necklaces for sale) in 1973. His family is still trying to exonerate him.

The Boston Strangler was mostly shot in Boston.

The Trouble With Harry

Just about all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films are classic movies, and The Trouble With Harry is no exception. The trouble with Harry in the film is that he was dead. Hitchcock’s 1955 dark comedy starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine was filmed in Morrisville, Barre and Craftsbury Commons. The crew arrived in Craftsbury on September 27, 1954 to film outdoor shots of fall foliage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any, so they glued leaves on trees. It was nominated for three awards, including BAFTA, Directors’ Guild and Satellite for “Outstanding Classic DVD” in 2005.

Jerry Mathers in The Trouble With Harry, filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont.

The Stepford Wives

A 1975 take on the theme of haunted New England, the film takes place in the fictional Connecticut town of Stepford. Johanna Eberhart moves there with her family and soon discovers a sinister truth behind the perfect behavior of the town’s housewives — they’re robots.

Bryan Forbes shot the film in Connecticut, including Redding, Fairfield, Westport, Weston, Darien (at the Goodwives Shopping Center) and Norwalk at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion.) Katharine Ross, who stars as Johanna, won the 1976 Golden Scroll Best Actress award.

Stepford Wives enjoyed moderate success at first, but evolved into a cult classic over time.

The Stepford Wives, filmed at the Goodwives Shopping Center in Darien, Conn.

Lost Boundaries

This 1949 drama fictionalized the true story of Albert Johnson, a light-skinned African-American doctor. Johnson passes for white in a small northern New Hampshire town.

Starring Mel Ferrer and Beatrice Pearson, director Alfred Werker shot Lost Boundaries in Kennebunkport, Me. (church scene), York (Nubble Light) and Portsmouth, N.H.

In one scene, the doctor takes a Coast Guard boat from Portsmouth to the Isles of Shoals, six nautical miles away. He lands in York, however, quite farther away.

The film won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949.

Lost Boundaries, fimed in Portsouth, New Hampshire.

Jaws

Jaws was the first of the summer classic movies released in thousands of theaters and advertised heavily. The 1975 blockbuster featured a simple premise — the hunt for a man-eating shark that terrorized beachgoers.

The most successful film in box office history at the time, it set a precedent. Director Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws mostly in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.

It won many awards, including three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound. In 2001, Congress voted to include it in the National Film Archive as “culturally significant.”

The author, Peter Benchley, later felt guilty about unfairly maligning the Great White Shark, a creature generally uninterested in eating human beings.

Jaws, filmed in Menemsha, belongs to the pantheon of classic movies shot in New England.

The Great Gatsby

This 1974 film starring Robert Redford as self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby featured the Newport, R.I., mansion Rosecliff as his home. Another mansion, the Vanderbilt’s Marble House, provided interior scenes.

The original Long Island mansion that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write the novel fell to the wrecking ball in 2011. Stanford White designed Rosecliff in 1902 for Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs.

The Great Gatsby also featured Hammersmith Farm, another famous Newport property where Sen. John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier.

The Great Gatsby, which also starred Mia Farrow, received two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Music.

Robert Redford in the Great Gatsby, filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.

Peyton Place

New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious’ best selling book Peyton Place inspired the 1957 movie of the same name. It starred Lana Turner and Hope Lange.

Director Mark Robson shot the film mostly in Camden, Maine, with some exteriors filmed in the Maine towns of Belfast and Rockland, Gilmanton, N.H., and Lake Placid, N.Y.

Peyton Place employed as many as 500 local residents as extras. Most of them donated their earnings — $10 or so — for a new hospital.

The film premiered in Camden two days before everyone else saw it. Peyton Place didn’t do well at the box office for the first four months. Then, Lana Turner’s daughter killed her mother’s mobster lover, Johnny Stompanato. It then became the second-highest grossing film of 1958.

Peyton Place received nine Oscar nominations, including four for supporting performances.

A scene from Peyton Place shot in Camden, Maine.

Love Story

Love Story, the highest grossing film of 1970, was a romantic tragedy based on the wildly popular novel of the same name. It starred Ryan O’Neal as the preppy Harvard student Oliver Barrett IV. Ali MacGraw played the working-class Italian “Cliffie” doomed to an early death.

The American Film Institute placed Love Story in its pantheon of classic movies, calling it one of the most romantic films of all time. Production at Harvard caused such damage to the campus that the university denied future requests to film there.

The movie was also shot in Massachusetts at the frame house at 119 Oxford St. in Cambridge. There, MacGraw’s character utters the famous line, “Love means never having to say your sorry.” Love Story received nominations for seven Academy Awards, winning one for Best Music, Original Score.

Our Town

A 1940 adaptation of Thornton Wilder‘s play Our Town about family conflict in a small town, this classic movie was shot in Peterborough, N.H. It starred William Holden and Martha Scott.

The town served as the real model for the play, written by Wilder while in residence at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough. Wilder probably named the fictional town of Grovers Corners for Peterborough’s Grove Street. The film received six Academy Award nominations. See the full film here.

Captains Courageous

Spencer Tracy — in curls — played a Portuguese fisherman who rescues Harvey Cheyne, played by Freddie Bartholomew. Captains Courageous begins when Cheyne, a railroad magnate’s spoiled son, gets thrown overboard from an ocean liner.

The 1937 film adapted a book written by Rudyard Kipling in 1897 when he lived in Brattleboro, Vt.

Director Victor Fleming shot scenes in Gloucester, Mass., as well as in California with fish flown in from Alaska and Boston. Gloucester has also provided settings for quite a few classic movies, including Mutiny on the Bounty and The Perfect Storm.

The film received four Oscar nominations. Spencer Tracy won the first of two consecutive Best Actor awards for Captains Courageous; he won for Boys Town in 1938.

Spencer Tracy starred in many classic movies; Captains Courageous, with Freddy Bartholomew, was one of them.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Thomas Crown, a debonair bank executive, thinks he pulled off the perfect bank robbery in this 1968 crime drama.

Steve McQueen starred as Crown, while Faye Dunaway played the insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.

Director Norman Jewison filmed The Thomas Crown Affair in a number of well-known (and still recognizable) Boston-area locations, including Beacon Hill, the North End, Cambridge Cemetery, the Tobin Bridge, the Allston-Brighton toll booth, Crane Beach in Ipswich and Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurant.

The second Harrison Gray Otis house, designed by Charles Bulfinch for a congressman, appeared as Crown’s house. The Thomas Crown Affair won an Oscar for Best Song, Windmills of Your Mind.

Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway on Crane Beach in Ipswich, Mass.

High Society

This 1956 musical remake of The Philadelphia Story starred Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly. Kelly, who starred in many classic movies, retired after making High Society to marry Prince Albert of Monaco.

Cole Porter wrote the score and Louis Armstrong appeared as himself. Sinatra and Kelly appear driving together in a scene along Ocean Boulevard in Newport, R.I.

Director Charles Walters filmed interiors at a Newport mansion later purchased by Sunny von Bulow. Prosecutors later accused her husband Claus von Bulow of murdering her in the mansion. That story then inspired another film in 1990, Reversal of Fortune.

High Society received nominations for two Oscars, Best Musical, Original Song, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra on the set of High Society.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also want to read about historic New England movie sets and six places New England films were shot.

Images: Menemsha by User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. Boston Strangler By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26732719. Our Town By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7159045. Love Story https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6778617.

This story about classic movies shot in New England was updated in 2022.

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