Savannah’s Book – and Clint Eastwood…

In my post of 25-Sept “Experience Savannah with a Song” I showed a picture of the monument erected in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski. This monument is located in Monterey Square. We decided to walk there as I wished to take pictures of the Mercer Mansion which borders it. I could not stop taking more pictures as we passed many lovely old houses.

Like the mansions, the pavement is old and we had to keep watching where we stepped.

We arrived in Monterey Square. It was laid out in 1847 and was named for one of the battles in the Mexican War. From the start, this square was noted for its unsurpassed elegance and lovely mansions.

I was going to take a picture of what I believed was a church, but after closer inspection saw that it was a synagogue. In fact Temple Mickve Israel is the only Gothic synagogue in America. It is home to the third oldest Jewish congregation in the country and contains the oldest Torah in the nation. It was the first synagogue established in the South.

Savannah’s first Jewish community was mostly composed of settlers from Spain and Portugal. Forty-two of them arrived in 1733 and organized their congregation, five months after the arrival of General Oglethorpe, founder of Savannah.




The present synagogue was built in 1876, after the inauguration of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist. As the cathedral, it was built in the Victorian neo-Gothic style and has pointed windows, pinnacles and stained glass windows. It was too late in the day to visit the synagogue but I found a picture of its interior in one of my books. I’ll also show the interior of the Cathedral - their interiors are similar in style.



We walked then around Monterey Square and came in front of the Mercer House. It was built in 1860 for Confederate General Hugh Mercer and completed after the War Between the States. The house is of Italianate design, almost 7000 square ft. with beautiful archways, eight cast-iron balconies, cast-iron window pediments and a wrought iron fence at the sidewalk. It has a garden in the back with a pond, a fountain and a carriage house. It occupies an entire trust lot (a full city block.)

Click on collage to enlarge, then on each picture to enlarge once more

General Hugh Mercer was the great grandfather of the talented and famous Johnny Mercer (1909-1976.) Johnny Mercer was a lyricist, composer and singer. He was the co-founder of Capital Records. Some of the songs he wrote or composed became well known, such as Days of Wine and Roses, That Old Black Magic, Moon River and many more. You can read more about him here where it says that “Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular tunes…. He was also asked to compose English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes" (Dead Leaves.) Below are the original French lyrics and Johnny Mercer’s version in English.

[Refrain] :
C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble.
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble,
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais.
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment,
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

This is Johnny’s version:

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold....
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sunburned hands, I used to hold
Since you went away, the days grow long
And soon I'll hear ol' winter's song.
But I miss you most of all my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall.

Les Feuilles Mortes is a 1945 song composed by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by poet Jacques Prevert. Yves Montand added it to his repertoire in 1948. Johnny Mercer translated the lyrics in 1949. Below is Montand’s later rendition. First Yves recites the beginning of the song : “Oh I would like so much that you remember, the happy days when we were friends, in those days life was beautiful, and the sun more brilliant than today. Dead Leaves are gathered with a shovel, you see.. I have not forgotten the memories and the regrets too…” Then he starts to sing:”And the wind of the north takes them away in the cold night of oblivion. You see I have not forgotten the song that you sang to me…”

Yves Montand singing the French song “Les Feuilles Mortes” (Autumn Leaves)

The Mercers never lived in the house. It had a series of owners and finally became a Shriner temple. By the time Jim Williams (1930-1990), an art dealer and restorer, purchased it, it had been vacant for 10 years and fallen into disrepair. Jim Williams a socialite and self-made business man also restored Savannah mansions – some say up to sixty houses, some say seventy. Williams completely restored the Mercer mansion to its original period and made it his own home. He furnished it with priceless paintings and gorgeous antiques such as Queen Alexandra’s silverware, Faberge objects and silver sets from one of the Grand Dukes of Russia.

Jim Williams was a bon vivant and every year he had a lavish black-tie Christmas party anxiously awaited by the cream of Savannah high society. He passed away at 59 years of age of pneumonia and heart failure after being tried four times for a 1989 murder committed in his home. The writer Jim Berendt spent seven years in Savannah and recounted the story of this murder in his 1994 bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” This non-fiction book recounts, with great details, the events leading to this alleged killing. In 1997 Clint Eastwood directed a movie from this book. Below is my husband’s autographed first edition copy of the book:



The last time we were in Savannah, in November 2005, we did not go and see the Mercer House but my little pocket calendar shows that on Friday 16th of May 1997 we drove to Savannah early as my husband was attending a business meeting on the following Saturday. Being avid readers we usually visit local bookstores. As it happened, on that Friday we visited, for a long time, an antiquarian bookseller located on Monterey Square, close to the Mercer House. When we left the store we were surprised to see that the square was deserted but could see people on the far side. The first thing I noticed was a very nice looking vintage automobile. So I took its picture –

Then we came close to the Mercer House, heavily decorated for Christmas…in May. I told my husband to stand in front of the house so I could take his picture. My husband went by the gate but started to look funny and shake his head. I told him to stay put and he did. I took the picture then turned around and almost fell on top of Clint Eastwood who was patiently waiting behind me with his huge movie camera. I was so stunned that I just stood there until my husband took me away back to the sidewalk. When Clint Eastwood stopped filming and walked away I remembered my camera (film camera) and took a picture, but now Clint was at a distance. He is the little figure with a white tee-shirt in front of the Mercer House in the picture below.

The house, now named the Mercer-Williams House, is occupied by Dorothy Kingery, the sister of Jim Williams. She tried to sell the home for $8.95 million but there has been no buyer. She has opened the house for tours and the public can visit 4 or 5 rooms on the ground level. Many of Jim’s valuable furnishings are no longer there as they were sold by the Sotheby auction house for Ms Kingery. From an old book, I have several photos of the interior taken when Jim Williams lived in the house. (My scanner is defective and places a line on the pictures.)

Photographs by Van Jones Martin

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was on the New York Times best seller list for over four years and has sold more than three million copies in 101 printings. It has been translated into twenty-three languages and in twenty-four foreign editions. This placed the Mercer House on the tourist circuit. Clint Eastwood’s movie made the house even more famous. “The Book” as it is called in Savannah has brought hundreds of thousands of tourists to visit this lovely city and Monterey Square. It is even on the Ghost Tour circuit as it is said that tourists from New York and some others too, claimed to have seen lights and festivities in the house on the nights Jim Williams used to have his famous party. (Jim Williams eerily collapsed and died on the exact spot on which he would have fallen if he had received the bullet intended for him that fateful night of the murder.) Below are two postcards I just found in my collection. The first one is of author Jim Berendt and Lady Chablis, a character in the book who appeared as herself in the movie.

Jim Berendt and Lady Chablis

A strange thing happened regarding the second postcard – the postcard below showing Jim Williams in his living room. I had already finished writing this post and was going to publish it the next day when I suddenly awoke at 4:00 am remembering that back in 1997 I had purchased a postcard of Jim Williams. The next morning I looked for quite a while and finally found the postcard, actually there were these 2 postcards. I then scanned them. Jim Williams ‘ postcard was slanted and I tried to straightened it. My computer would not work on it. I tried several times. Finally I decided to let it go and publish it crooked. But when I tried a last time it somehow straightened itself out…… I mean this is really what happened, it is not a joke.




We left the Mercer House and walked back toward Monterey Square. The light was fading. As we reached the live oaks covered with Spanish moss I turned around to take one last picture of the house…. and this is what I got…..