Every item in the museum has a story—from the 1930s icebox to the cream separator, from the cow muzzle to the 1970s breathalyzer once used by the Mount Olive Police Department. So when Ken Dilda comes to a standstill beside a movie poster, gestures toward it with a proud smile, and tells you this poster is particularly interesting, then you know it must be pretty special.
The poster, displayed on an easel in the David John Aaron Teaching and History Museum at 137 East Main St. in Mount Olive, advertises the 1944 movie See Here, Private Hargrove, based on the book of the same name by Mount Olive native Edward Thomas Marion Lawton Hargrove, Jr.
“Marion Hargrove was one of our two most famous authors,” museum director Dilda says (Samuel Armanie Byrd, Jr., being the other).
Hargrove was born in Mount Olive in 1919. His family, according to Dilda, left the town in 1929, eventually settling in Charlotte, where Hargrove started writing, first for his high school newspaper and then for The Charlotte News. After being drafted by the U. S. Army in 1941, he began submitting humorous columns to the News, describing his experiences in basic training at Fort Bragg, NC. These columns were compiled into a book entitled See Here, Private Hargrove, which was then made into a movie. Both the book and the movie were hits, with the book grabbing the number one spot on The New York Times Best sellers list for non-fiction, and the movie — starring Robert Walker as Hargrove and Donna Reed as his love interest, Carol Holliday — providing much-needed entertainment to a war-weary nation. “The movie was very popular during World War II,” Dilda says. “It was a comedic look at basic training.”
This was just the beginning of what would become an illustrious career for Hargrove. He went on to write two novels, Something’s Got to Give and The Girl He Left Behind, which was adapted into a movie released in 1956, starring Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter.
“Marion Hargrove wrote or co-wrote nine screenplays,” Dilda says. He won a Writers Guild Award for the screenplay he penned for the 1962 musical film, The Music Man, based on the Broadway musical of the same way.
Hargrove also wrote for some of the best known TV shows of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s: Zane Grey Theatre, Maverick, I Spy, The Waltons, Eight is Enough, and Fantasy Island.
Because Dilda was well aware of Hargrove’s literary accomplishments, he recognized the movie poster as a treasure the second that local Molly Williams Holler showed up at the museum and surprised him with it. “I just walked on air for a few days,” he says. Holler found the poster on eBay and purchased it specifically for the purpose of donating it to the museum. “We have several people out there looking for the [museum] collection,” Dilda says, adding that it’s always exciting when someone presents him with a new find.
The museum’s unveiling of the See Here, Private Hargrove poster took place about 15 years ago, and two of Hargrove’s children came from California for the event.
Dilda underscores the importance of Hargrove’s local connection, noting that the author donated a large collection of his original manuscripts to Steele Memorial Library. “He loved Mount Olive and kept some attachment to it over the years,” Dilda says. “He could have given [the manuscript collection] to the Library of Congress just as easily.”
Hargrove died in 2003 at the age of 83 in Long Beach California.
To hear more stories about Hargrove, and about many other aspects of Mount Olive history, visit Dilda at the history museum. Admission is free, and it’s open the second Sunday of each month from 2-5 p.m. and other times by appointment. To schedule an appointment, call Dilda at 919-731-2779.
