30 Secrets About Steel Magnolias That Probably Won’t Make You Cry
Thirty years ago Steel Magnolias turned Julia Roberts into a star and the rest of us into sobbing messes. Relive the story of how the Southern classic came to be.What bride, when planning her vows, hasn’t declared, “My colors are blush and bashful”?
Thirty years ago, those words were being uttered by a promising young thespian named Julia Roberts. Just seven credits to her name when filming began, the then-21-year-old was hand-picked as the woman who could hold her own among the likes of Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah and Shirley MacLaine in a film about the coterie of woman who make up a small Southern community and how they deal with the death of one of their own.
Based on a true story, Steel Magnolias was meant as a tribute to playwright Robert Harling’s sister Susan, who passed due to complications from diabetes. Following the success of the 1987 play of the same name, director Herbert Ross adapted it to the big screen, creating a star-studded Hollywood production that took over the small town of Natchitoches, Louisiana.
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“The L.A. people required things that you didn’t find at the local Piggly Wiggly,” Harling recalled to Garden and Gun in a 2017 look back. “I remember the manager of the store saying to a local reporter, ‘Yep, if it hadn’t been for Herbert Ross, nobody around here would know the difference between ostera and beluga.”
Caviar knowledge aside, the female-forward tearjerker (noting how no men appeared in the stage pale, The New York Times’ critic complained the film wasn’t much better complaining “the male characters are no more substantial now than when they were invisible”) became one of the top-grossing films of 1989 and birthed a legend. Roberts, the least known member of the cast, earned her first of four Oscar nominations for her turn as newlywed Shelby, willing to risk her life for just a few years as a mom.
Off-camera, the success stories were just as real, with MacLaine declaring that the summer camp-style filming experience bonded them for life. Allow us to fill y’all in.
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1. The movie came thisclose to never happening.
Because, actually, Harling never intended to be a playwright, earning a degree at Tulane University Law School before following his acting dreams to New York City. After his beloved younger sister got sick and passed away, however, he was inspired. “I wrote it to somehow get this true story off my chest and to celebrate my sister in the process,” he told The Huffington Post in 2014.
Like Shelby, he told Garden and Gun, Susan’s diabetes meant bearing kids could be life-threatening: “But she wanted a child, she went ahead and had a child, and then, sure enough, her metabolism started to fail—circulatory system, kidneys, the whole thing. It was much grimmer than I portrayed in the play.”
Initially he intended to write a short story, in part to share with his nephew one day to explain what happened to his mom. But a few pages in, he felt he wasn’t accurately capturing the women’s dialogue, so he switched course. Within 10 days, he’d scribbled out an entire play.
2. The names were also based on a true story.
Shelby’s mother M’Lynn (Field) was taken from a close friend. Shelby was the name of one of his mother’s cousins. Clairee (Dukakis) “a fabulous aunt” and Ouiser (MacLaine) from his sister’s best friend: “She in no way resembled the character,” he said of the town curmudgeon. “But there was just something about the name that fit.” Personalities were also lifted from the people he grew up with in Louisiana. “I’ve never told a living soul who Ouiser is based on,” he shared, saying he was willing it might offend. But when people came to see it, “Lo and behold, every woman in town was saying, ‘He based Ouiser on me.'”
3. They didn’t expect people to find the funny.
“We played it like a drama,”said Margo Martindale, who took on the part of hairdresser Truvy in the play, largely set in the town salon. (Her role was later adopted by Parton.) “And then the first night it was in front of an audience, we were shocked. It was riotously funny and played straight as an arrow.”
The way Harling sees it, he just happened to know a lot of hilarious ladies. “They all love one-liners and they talk in bumper stickers,” he told Huffington Post, “and they’re sharp, funny women.”
4. But for the family, it was a place to openly grieve.
“That play really did work miracles,” Harling’s brother John told Garden and Gun, “and I don’t use that term lightly.” Echoed is father, Bob, “I felt happy, I felt sad, I just couldn’t believe what was happening. But I was mostly feeling good, proud. It was a memorial to my daughter.”
