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Trailing Pulitzers and Oscars, It’s difficult now to remember that Alfred Uhry’s adaptation of his own play was a small, low-budget production. It went on to win Best Film at the Academy, earn the Best Actress award for Jessica Tandy, and propel Morgan Freeman on the road to both President of the USA and God. Uhry’s story of the slowly developing friendship between wealthy Miss Daisy (Tandy) and chauffeur Hoke (Freeman) was filmed on real locations around the play’s setting of Atlanta, Georgia, where the production company managed to find the ideal setting. Daisy’s home is 822 Lullwater Road NE, in the residential suburb of Druid Hills, northeast of the city. Having been left unmodernised by its owners, the home perfectly suited the film’s quarter-century time span, from the late 40s to the early 70s. West of downtown Atlanta, in the Castleberry Hill district, the Fulton Supply Co, 342 Nelson Street SW, stands in for the ‘Wertham Bag & Cotton Co’, owned by Daisy’s son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd). Driving Miss Daisy film location: the Piggly Wiggly store: Euclid Avenue, Atlanta | Photograph: flickr / Joe McKnight Like most modern cities, downtown Atlanta itself had changed too much for filming, without scads of expensive period dressing. The street scenes were filmed about 40 miles to the south, on North Hill Street between Solomon Street and Broadway, in the town of Griffin. Hoke’s first little victory is persuading the proud Daisy to be driven to the store. The black-tiled, deco Rag-o-Rama, 1111 Euclid Avenue NE, a second-hand clothing store in Atlanta’s funky Little Five Points district about a mile southwest of Daisy’s home, was transformed into the ‘Piggly Wiggly’ store. A very real location is the synagogue that Daisy attends. It’s The Temple, 1589 Peachtree Street NE, which was indeed subject to a bomb attack in October 1958. Miss Daisy wouldn’t have been on her way to worship, though. The none-too-bright bombers, clearly having little knowledge of the Jewish Sabbath, attacked the empty Temple on a Sunday morning. On to another place of worship, this time for the funeral of Idella (Esther Rolle), which is held at Little Friendship Baptist Church, 315 5th Avenue, between Gordon and Northern Streets, Decatur, east of Atlanta. Miss Daisy attends the speech by Martin Luther King in the Biltmore, 817 West Peachtree Street NW. Built in 1924, the Biltmore Hotel closed its doors in 1982, standing empty and abandoned until 1999, when it was transformed into a combination of office space, retail and event space. With the renovation its Georgian and Imperial Ballrooms, the Biltmore is now listed on The National Register of Historic Places. "Driving Miss Daisy" is a film of great love and patience, telling a story that takes 25 years to unfold, exploring its characters as few films take the time to do. By the end of the film, we have traveled a long way with the two most important people in it - Miss Daisy Werthan, a proud old Southern lady, and Hoke Colburn, her chauffeur - and we have developed a real stake in their feelings. The movie spans a quarter century in the lives of its two characters, from 1948,
when Miss Daisy's son decides it is time she stop driving herself and employ a chauffeur, to 1973, when two old people acknowledge the bond that has grown up between them. It is an immensely subtle film, in which hardly any of the most important information is carried in the dialogue and in which body language, tone of voice or the look in an eye can be the most important thing in a scene. After so many movies in which shallow and violent people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see
a film that looks into the heart. The movie contains two performances sure to be nominated for Academy Awards, by Morgan Freeman, as Hoke, and by Jessica Tandy, who at the age of 80 creates the best performance of her career as Miss Daisy. As the movie opens, Miss Daisy still lives in proud
self-sufficiency, with only her cook to help out, and she drives herself around in a big, new 1948 Packard. One day she drives the Packard over the wall and into the neighbor's yard, and her son (Dan Aykroyd) lays down the law: It is time that she have a chauffeur. She refuses. She needs no such thing. It is a nuisance to have servants in the house, anyway - they're like children, always underfoot. But her
son hires a chauffeur anyway, and in their first interview he tells Hoke that it is up to him to convince Miss Daisy to let herself be driven. Thus commences a war of wills that continues, in one way or another, for 25 years, as two stubborn and proud old people learn to exist with one another. Hoke's method is the employment of infinite patience, and Freeman's performance is a revelation, based on close observation and quiet nuance. Hoke is not obsequious. He is not ingratiating. He is
very wise. His strategy is to express verbal agreement in such a way that actual agreement is withheld. If Miss Daisy does not want to be driven to the Piggy Wiggly, very well, then, Hoke will not drive her. He will simply follow her in the car. The car by this time is a shiny new 1949 Hudson, and Hoke somehow defuses the situation by making the car itself the subject, rather than himself. It is a shame, he observes, that a fine new car like that is left sitting in the driveway, not being
used. It's good for a car to be driven. Eventually Miss Daisy agrees to be driven, and eventually, over the years, she and Hoke begin to learn about one another. Neither one is quick to reveal emotion. And although Miss Daisy prides herself on being a Southern Jewish liberal, she is not always very quick to see the connections between such things as an attack on her local synagogue and the Klan's attacks on black churches. Indeed, much of Hoke's relationship with her consists of helping
her to see certain connections. When she goes to listen to a speech by Martin Luther King, for example, she has Hoke drive her; but although she has an extra ticket, it never occurs to her to invite him to come inside. "Things have changed," she observes complacently in another scene, referring to race relations in the South, and he replies that they have not changed all that much. "Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?" Pauline Kael asked, reviewing his
performance as a steel-eyed pimp in "Street Smart" (1987). It is when you compare that performance with his one in "Driving Miss Daisy" and another current film, "Glory," that you begin to understand why the question can be asked. The three performances have almost nothing in common; all three are works of the imagination in which Freeman
creates three-dimensional characters that are completely convincing. In "Street Smart," he created an aura of frightening violence. In "Lean on Me," early in 1989, he was school principal Joe Clark, a man of unassailable self-confidence and bullheaded determination. In "Glory," he is an ignorant gravedigger who becomes a soldier in the Civil War. In "Miss Daisy," he is so gentle, so perceptive, so patient, it is
impossible to get a glimpse of those other characters. It is a great performance, matched by Tandy's equally astonishing range as she ages from a sprightly and alert widow in her 60s to an infirm old woman drifting in and out of senility in her 90s. Hers is one of the most complete portraits of the stages of old age I have ever seen in a film. "Driving Miss Daisy" was directed by Bruce
Beresford, an Australian whose sensibilities seem curiously in tune with the American South. His credits include the superb "Tender Mercies" and "Crimes of the Heart," as well as the underrated and overlooked 1986 film about an Aborigine teenager, "The Fringe Dwellers." Working from a screenplay by
Alfred Uhry, based on Uhry's play (and on Uhry's memories of his grandmother and a family chauffeur), Beresford is able to move us, one small step at a time, into the hearts of his characters. He never steps wrong on his way to a luminous final scene in which we are invited to regard one of the most privileged mysteries of life, the moment when two people allow each other to see inside.
Roger EbertRoger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Now playingFilm CreditsDriving Miss Daisy (1990)Rated PG 96 minutes Latest blog posts
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4 days ago CommentsHow old was Morgan Freeman when he filmed Driving Miss Daisy?“Many actresses who wanted the role were too young,” he says, “like Lauren Bacall.” Morgan Freeman had played the role of Hoke in Uhry's stage play, but Dad had some initial misgivings about his age as well (Freeman was 52 at the time).
Was Driving Miss Daisy a true story?Uhry's characters stem from real people close to his heart. He based the two central characters of “Driving Miss Daisy” on his own grandmother, Lena Fox, and her chauffeur Will Coleman. After Fox experienced a driving accident and could no longer drive herself, Coleman chauffeured her from 1948 to 1973.
What years did Driving Miss Daisy take place?Driving Miss Daisy is set in Atlanta, Uhry's hometown. Spanning a quarter of a century, from 1948 to 1973, the action takes place before, during, and after the civil rights movement. The plot centers on two characters, an elderly Jewish widow named Miss Daisy Werthan and her African American driver, Hoke Colburn.
What is the main point of Driving Miss Daisy?The movie is directly taken from a stage play and does show it. It covers over twenty years of the pair's life together as they slowly build a relationship that transcends their differences. Daisy Werthan, an elderly Jewish widow living in Atlanta, is determined to maintain her independence.
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