Originally appeared on E! Online
What bride, when planning her vows, hasn’t declared, “My colors are blush and bashful”?
No? Just us?
Thirty-five years ago, those words were being uttered by a promising young thespian named Julia Roberts. Only 21 and with just seven credits to her name when filming began on Steel Magnolias, the Georgia native more than held her own among the likes of Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah and Shirley MacLaine in a film about a coterie of woman in a small Southern community and how they deal with the death of one of their own. Based on a true story, the 1989 tearjerker 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 for the big screen, creating a star-studded Hollywood production that took over the small town of Natchitoches, La. “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 flick (noting how no men appeared in the stage version, The New York Times’ critic complained that in the film iteration “the male characters are no more substantial now than when they were invisible”) became one of the top-grossing films of 1989. Roberts, the least known member of the cast, earned her first of four Oscar nominations for her turn as newlywed Shelby, who’s in fragile health but 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.
1. The movie came this close to never happening. Because, actually, Robert 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 Steel Magnolias’ 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 (Sally Field) was taken from a close friend. Shelby (Julia Roberts) was the name of one of his mother’s cousins, Clairee (Olympia Dukakis) “a fabulous aunt” and Ouiser (Shirley 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 worried 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 Dolly 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. For the family, the story 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 his 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.”
As such, Harling’s father, uncle and next-door neighbor all invested in the production. At first he worried about the cash they’d lose, then he realized that wasn’t the motivation: “They weren’t looking to make money, they wanted to support the continuation of the saga.”
5. The movie came together as quickly as the play. Producer Ray Stark was among those approaching Harling to take the play to Hollywood.
He floated the idea of shooting in his hometown and promised to “get the greatest cast you can imagine,” Harling told Huffington Post. “That’s how it came to me and then Ray got Herbert Ross to direct it and then it was this domino effect of superstar after superstar.”
6. Revealing that “somebody had told Elizabeth Taylor that M’Lynn was the perfect role for her,” Harling recounted that when she came to see the play, “I was thinking at the time, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s going to sit there and hear the line, ‘When it comes to suffering, she’s right up there with Elizabeth Taylor.’ No one laughed harder than she did.”
7. Bette Davis made a hard sell. Harling actually assumed he was being pranked when the film icon rang, inviting him for tea at her New York City hotel. Once there, she pitched herself as Ouiser, Elizabeth Taylor for M’Lynn and Katharine Hepburn for Clairee.
“It was fantastic,” Harling told The Huffington Post. “If I ever write a book, it’s a complete, incredible chapter. She basically, bless her heart, wanted to show that she was up and at ’em and doing it. There was nobody else and she was looking fabulous.”
And taking no prisoners. Telling the story to The Morning Call in 1989, he recounted her parting phrase: “You may give the role of Ouiser to someone else. But you and they will hear from Bette Davis.”
8. But it’s hard to argue with Shirley Maclaine. When director Ross sent the script over to the Oscar-winner, he said any part was hers except for M’Lynn and Shelby.
“So I read it and I said, ‘I want to play the really b–chy one,'” she recounted to Garden and Gun. “I think I was rehearsing for my old age. I was seeing if I could get away with saying what I negatively felt and still be funny. And it’s kind of turned out that way, actually.”
9. Meg Ryan turned them down. Which, in retrospect, it’s hard to say she made the wrong call. “The day we offered it to her, she came back and said, ‘I just got offered this movie with Billy Crystal, When Harry Met Sally, and that’s my chance to be a leading lady,'” Harling remembered. “‘In Steel Magnolias I’d be part of an ensemble.'”
10. While producers had a list of known stars they were considering, including Laura Dern and Winona Ryder, “The casting director said, ‘There’s this girl. She hasn’t been able to audition because she’s been off making some movie about pizza,” said Harling. When the Georgia native came in, fresh from filming Mystic Pizza, “It was like somebody bumped up the lights. She smiled that smile. She was the essence of the great Southern gal: spicy, witty, smart, with a layer of compassion underneath.”
11. Nicole Kidman took a stab as well. One of the Aussie actress’ earliest parts was Shelby in the Sydney production of the play.
12. And it turns out Maclaine has an eye for talent. “The moment Julia walked into the reading, I thought, ‘That woman is going to be a star,'” she told Garden and Gun. “I called my agent and said, ‘I don’t know if she has an agent, but you should handle her.'”
13. Because Stark insisted they film on location, the cast trucked down to Louisiana. “It helped that Natchitoches is gorgeous,” said Harling. “Anywhere you point the camera you’re going to frame a good shot.”
But bringing in the necessary equipment, plus finding rental accommodations for the big-named stars, turned the production into an extravaganza. As Harling put it, “The circus had come to town.”
14. Every night Parton and her squad (an assistant, bodyguard and hair stylist) dined at the same spot, “a restaurant called Mariner’s out on Sibley Lake,” resident Tom Whitehead recalled to Garden and Gun. As a result, the seafood spot remained sold out for the whole of the shoot as “people filled it up to see Dolly Parton eating in the back corner.”
15. Louisiana in the summertime presented some challenges. But while MacLaine admitted most of the cast were “always complaining” about the heat, there was never a peep from Parton.
“There was Dolly with a waist cincher no more than 16 inches around and heels about two feet high and a wig that must have weighed 23 pounds,” said the star. “And she’s the only one who didn’t sweat.”
Even when a Christmas scene required her to swelter in a cashmere sweater. “Julia said, ‘Dolly, we’re dying and you never say a word. Why don’t you let loose?'” Harling recounted. “Dolly very serenely smiled and said, ‘When I was young and had nothing, I wanted to be rich and famous and now I am. So I’m not going to complain about anything.”
16. Roberts lived up to her future billing as America’s sweetheart. As Harling remembers it, the twentysomething actress was eager to have his parents’ blessing to play their daughter. “She’d come over, and Daddy would cook hamburgers,” he shared, “and they’d talk, and she’d write poetry and she’d read us the poetry.”
Oftentimes, he continued, Parton would join the party, “sit on the sofa and play her guitar. It was just beyond surreal.”
17. During the summer of 1988, Dukakis’ cousin, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, was running for president against George H. W. Bush and she was heavily involved, even speaking at the Democratic convention. Though the town was largely Republican, said Harling, “there were some people who put Dukakis signs in their yard to be neighborly.”
18. MacLaine told Garden and Gun she made the most of being in Louisiana by studying the locals and “walking through their lives a little.” Making her way through town, “I’d go to the ice cream store and the magazine place and the video store,” she said. “I just wanted to see how people acted, how they belonged to themselves.”
19. She also indulged in some timely backtalk. Director Ross “could be sometimes very stern and sometimes very harsh,” MacLaine told Us Weekly at a 2013 screening. “My deepest memories of the film were how we bonded together after he told one of us or all of us we couldn’t act.” Seeing him go after Roberts “with a vengeance,” she continued, she felt the need to defend the young actress who was staying next door to her and coming over for nightly pep talks.
“Then one day I basically told him to go f–k himself,” she told Garden and Gun, “and everybody heard it and things got better.”
20. The director reportedly took aim at Parton as well. “I remember the day Herb said to Dolly Parton, ‘Why don’t you take some acting lessons?'” MacLaine shared at the same 2013 event as former costar Field hovered nearby.
“You don’t say that to Dolly Parton!” Field responded. “Dolly Parton is absolutely the funniest, wittiest and filthiest, and she will cut you to ribbons.”
21. With Harling on set for both the wedding scene and the funeral, director Ross suggested he play the minister. He agreed, provided he wouldn’t have to say much. “People have said, ‘Well, you’re an idiot, you just have one line, what’s the matter with you?'” he told Huffington Post. “But that’s not what it was for. The movie had very little to do with me.”
22. Roberts came away from the experience with more than just an Oscar nod. Dating Liam Neeson when she began filming, the actress fell hard for costar Dylan McDermott, her onscreen husband. The pair became engaged before splitting up a year after the movie’s release.
23. Even the small details in the film were true to life. Ross hired Susan’s actual doctors to play Shelby’s medical team, and the nurse who turned off Susan’s life support machine, did so for Shelby in the movie, as well. Having grown close with Roberts during the shoot, Harling’s mom chose to be on set for the scene.
“I said, ‘I can’t believe you put yourself through that,'” he recalled of the shoot. “She said, ‘No, I wanted to see Julia get up and walk away.'”
24. MacLain took umbrage with people labeling the film a chick flick. “To say it’s a women’s film I don’t think that’s correct,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2014. “If you’ve got women in your life, bring them to see this film and you’ll know much more about them when you go home.”
25. Filming was a bit like being at a sleepaway camp. With little to do in the small town, he shared, they’d often gather at night to play Pictionary and Charades. “Everyone got along great. It was just like Camp Magnolia,” Harling insisted to The Morning Call. “Olympia would call up and say ‘Come over, I have some leftover squash soup.’ Or Tom Skerritt would whip up some hot fudge sauce. Or we’d hang out on Shirley’s porch, which overlooked a lake. We always had a ball together.”
26. Those evening chats provided the inspiration for Soapdish. Harling told Huffington Post he wrote the screenplay for the 1991 comedy starring Field as a self-absorbed soap opera star after the crew spent a night discussing their dream roles.
While MacLaine wanted to play an alcoholic and newcomer Roberts just wanted to work, Field, he said, lamented that she was always cast as “really noble, earnest women that wear crummy clothes. For once I’d like to play a bitch that gets to wear nice clothes.” Enter: Soapdish’s Celeste Talbert.
27. True fans can fully immerse themselves in the film. Arlene Gould, executive director of the Natchitoches Convention and Tourism Bureau, told The Shreveport Times the movie “had a tremendous impact on the tourism trade and on our community.” Official tours are still on offer today and diehards can even stay at M’Lynn’s house. The 19th century Cook-Taylor House served as the backdrop for her residence and in 2003 it opened as a bed and breakfast called The Steel Magnolia House.
28. Harling’s nephew—Susan’s son—earned some serious clout after Roberts played his mom. During a 2014 appearance on Today, Harling recalled a time the teen was having trouble in school. Checking in to make sure he was okay, he was floored by the response. “Oh no. Don’t worry about me,” Harling recounted of what he was told. “Everybody likes me. They think I’m really cool.”
Whcih hit Harling “like a ton of bricks,” he said. “He doesn’t remember his mother, but he does know as a teenager that his mother was so cool, it took the biggest star in the world to play her.”
29. MacLain forecasted the film’s success. As she had said about Roberts, the veteran star knew there was something special about Steel Magnolias. Dressed up in parkas and sweaters to recreate the Christmas festival, Harling told Today, “I remember Shirley turning to me during one of those scenes and saying, ‘Ya know, I think this could be important.’ And, you know, Shirley’s never wrong.”
30. And the cast remained close with both Field and Parton paying tribute to Dukakis after her 2021 death. Perhaps it was the emotional nature of the storyline or the fact that everyone stays tight with their camp friends, but, “We really did make fast friends, all of us,” MacLain told Garden and Gun, “and have been ever since. I don’t know what it is about the subject matter in the movie, but going through that makes you friends for life.”
