Photo by Rory Doyle
The Baby Doll House
The Baby Doll House
It was the talk of the town when a Hollywood movie crew came to the Mississippi Delta in 1955 to shoot a “black comedy” feature film—a project that would later be condemned by the National Legion of Decency for its “implied sexual themes.”
Still, Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll was a universal hit with moviegoers. And despite moral objections, when the film was released in December 1956, it garnered favorable responses from critics. Kazan won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and nominations for four more, four Academy Awards, and four BAFTA Awards.
The movie starred Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, and Eli Wallach. Serving alongside Kazan as director was none other than Tennessee Williams, author of the one-act plays the film is adapted from, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, and The Unsatisfactory Supper.
Set in rural Mississippi, the film’s plot centers around two rival cotton gin owners. Malden plays a middle-aged gin owner, Archie Lee Meighan, who has been married to his beautiful and naïve nineteen-year-old wife “Baby Doll” (played by Baker), for two years. In a deal made with her now-deceased father, Archie Lee cannot consummate the marriage until Baby Doll turns twenty.
Archie Lee and Baby Doll’s house still stands today, in the middle of soybean fields in Benoit, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It’s historically called the Burrus House, but, having developed an identity of its own, most folks in the Delta refer to it as “the Baby Doll House.”
She sleeps in a crib, the only furniture in the house besides Archie Lee’s bed in another bedroom. Night after night, he spies on her through a hole in the door. Adding tension to their relationship, Baby Doll’s senile Aunt Rose lives in the house with the couple.
Archie Lee and Baby Doll’s house still stands today, in the middle of soybean fields in Benoit, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It’s historically called the Burrus House, but, having developed an identity of its own, most folks in the Delta refer to it as “the Baby Doll House.”
Sitting on two hundred acres of farmland, the Greek Revival home looks much the same as it has when it was built in 1858, thanks to the stewardship of the home’s current caretakers, Eustace and Claire Winn, who began restoring the badly neglected home in 2005. Eustace, a descendant of the original owner, in recent years planted a grove of pecan trees on the property, a majestic addition for the future.
Jamie Hardin
Inside the "Baby Doll House" in Benoit, MS
Claire, a native of Natchez, works with the Mississippi Heritage Trust and is interested in preserving Mississippi’s old homes and buildings. “This home is right up my alley,” she said.
But in 1955, the cypress house was in deep disrepair. With its soaring fluted columns, and wide front porch, it offered a Southern Gothic aesthetic perfect for the infamous film’s setting. With four large rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs, the interior is centered by a grand staircase made of black walnut, built from trees cut on the land. “I think that may have been replaced at some point,” said Eustace. “But I’m sure it is similar to what was here originally.” A wide center hall stretches from the front porch to the back, and with both doors open, the breeze significantly cools the home, even on a hot summer afternoon. The floors are made of heart of pine, which Eustace believes was probably floated down the river from Arkansas.
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Judge John Crawford (J.C.) Burrus built the house in the years after he and his wife, Margaret, moved from Huntsville, Alabama to the Mississippi Delta in 1842, settling on the frontier of newly established Bolivar County. After a few years, the judge bought a large tract of land five miles from the Mississippi River, which would become known, ironically, as Hollywood Plantation—a tribute to the abundant holly trees that grew on the property.
Judge Burrus had a roomy log house built (likely by enslaved labor) to accommodate his growing family and their frequent guests while he oversaw the beginnings of construction for the “big house” on Egypt Ridge in 1858. By early 1861, Judge Burrus, Margaret, and their seven children moved into their new home.
Courtesy of Claire Winn
The Baby Doll House in Benoit, MS in the 1930s.
Not long after, the Civil War began and both Confederate and Union troops frequented the vicinity. In an upstairs bedroom, Eustace displays Burrus’s 1836 diploma from the University of Virginia. “The house was spared from being burned by the Yankees because the commanding officer recognized Burrus as a classmate,” he said. During the war, the home was transformed into a military hospital while the Burrus family lived in poverty.
The family occupied the home until 1916, before renting it out to several different tenants. Over the decades, the house fell into a state of disrepair.
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After the filming of Baby Doll in 1955, the home—which sat unheeded in the remote Delta—was repeatedly vandalized by fans of the film who would visit and collect “souvenirs.” In 1974 the Burrus family heirs deeded the house to the Bolivar County Historical Society, and upon raising needed funds, the Society partially restored the home, granting it a temporary new life. Ultimately, though, due to a lack of funds, the Historical Society returned the house to the Burrus heirs in 1987, and it once again suffered from neglect.
In 2001, a tornado almost did the house in, causing the front columns and gable to collapse. At that point, Eustace’s grandfather, Greenville resident Dr. E.H. Winn Jr., stepped in and put in a tin roof to protect the home from further decline. He established the Burrus Foundation in 2005 with the purpose of raising funds to restore the house.
Today, under the Winns’ care through The Baby Doll House LLC, the home looks much as Judge Burrus intended it to—though now with modern amenities. Available for rent, the Baby Doll House has hosted weddings and family events, but it also remains a destination spot for devotees of Kazan’s black comedy.
Right as you step inside, along the walls of the entry hall, are a collection of oversized vintage movie posters advertising Baby Doll. Make your way to the bedroom upstairs, and visitors can see a tribute to the movie’s infamous crib in the middle of the floor.
