Madewood Plantation
Beyoncé, The Beguiled, Birdfoot Festival, and the arts incubator that connects them
Brei Olivier
In the past few years, Keith Marshall has often felt like a spectator in his own home.
That’s because Marshall’s family home is Madewood Plantation House, a striking Greek Revival manse designed by New Orleans architect Henry Howard. Built between 1840 and 1848 by slaves and master craftsmen on Bayou Lafourche, Madewood was originally a sugarcane plantation. Now a gracious bed and breakfast just ninety minutes from the French Quarter, Madewood is a sought-after location for film, music, and television productions, like the music videos supporting Beyoncé’s groundbreaking visual album Lemonade, which brought the diva to the plantation for a full day of shooting in 2016.
[Read this: A Weekend at Fontainebleau State Park.]
Then there’s the Southern Gothic Sofia Coppola film, The Beguiled, an Oscar hopeful for which she won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. Set towards the end of the Civil War, the film, starring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell, retells the 1971 Clint Eastwood potboiler (and 1966 novel), with Farrell in the role of the wounded Union soldier sheltered at an all girls’ school. Coppola and the cast were on site for several weeks of filming.
Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Madewood, remade into the set of Sofia Coppola's "The Beguiled," which filmed onsite in fall 2016.
The 2016 remake of Roots included a grim lynching scene shot under the sweeping live oak where Keith and his wife Millie said their wedding vows in 1981. “Their using the same location was kind of unfortunate,” he said. The J. Cole music video “G.O.M.D.” may take the cake, though. “I had no idea they were shooting a song called ‘Get off of my (male member),’” he recalled. The video plays out at the massive Ionic-columned entranceway, in the outside kitchen and in the formal dining room, with the rapper playing a house slave that stages a revolt against the abusive white plantation owners. “There’s a scene where they take all this Hollywood stunt furniture outside and burn it—it’s actually quite powerful. Not quite sure what my mother would have made of it, though.”
Born into an Arts Incubator
Marshall’s mother, Naomi Damonte Marshall, was quite the force of nature. Damonte Marshall, a New Orleans native who passed away at the age of 92 in 2006, bought Madewood for $75,000 in 1964, “when my father was out of town,” recalled Marshall. He and his brother Don, now executive director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, were teens at the time. Marshall’s father H.K., a Texas cowboy, used to say he never saw two people work harder at losing money than his wife Naomi (whose own father made and lost two fortunes in his lifetime) and his son Keith. H.K. had little to do with Madewood, which had sat on the market for almost fifteen years, a 15,000-square-foot handyman’s special. Keith turned the home into a B&B to counteract rising expenses in November 1983.
Damonte Marshall, a New Orleans native who passed away at the age of 92 in 2006, bought Madewood for $75,000 in 1964, “when my father was out of town,” recalled Marshall.
“Don and I were average children,” said Marshall. “It was the environment we grew up in that was remarkable. We were hatched in an arts incubator, surrounded by art and music and a mother with a formidable will.” Damonte Marshall, who lived at Madewood the last five years of her life, was considered a grand dame of the New Orleans art scene. She nurtured a startling array of artists from the Downtown Gallery, which she opened in 1959 on Jackson Square. She represented such artists as John McCrady, Paul Ninas, George Dureau, and Noel Rockmore as they pursued their careers.
Madewood Plantation was purchased in 1964 by Naomi Damonte Marshall (left), mother of current owner Keith Marshall (right), when Keith’s father was “out of town.” (Photo of Damonte Marshall by Philip Gould, courtesy of Keith Marshall; photo of Keith Marshall by Brei Olivier.)
“When Mother talked, people listened,” said Marshall. This is the same woman who swam the Mississippi River from McDonoghville to the foot of Canal Street at the age of 16, traveled solo for the family business in Latin America in the 1940s, and was the first female member of the New Orleans Board of Trade. President Nixon appointed her to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts, and she became fond enough of Pat Nixon to name one of the live oaks on the property in the woman’s honor.
The Show Goes On
The apple, as they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree. Don Marshall has a long and storied career in the arts, including serving as the first director of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), executive director of Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, and co-founder of the New Orleans Film Festival and Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the much-loved Krewe du Vieux Mardi Gras parade.
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Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Birdfoot Festival musicians rehearse at Madewood.
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Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Keith Marshall (center) between his brother, Don Marshall (left), executive director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, and Don's son, Will Marshall, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall family's ownership of Madewood. The portrait is of their maternal grandfather Joseph Damonte.
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Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Along with his brother, Keith Marshall co-founded the Madewood Arts Festival, which ran until 1983.
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Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Marshall built a full-scale theater for the staging of opera productions; here, a performance from the New Orleans Opera.
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Courtesy of Keith Marshall
Keith Marshall and Millie Ball's wedding on Oct 17, 1981. Millie's nieces, Sharon (left) and Laura McGee, were flower girls.
Keith Marshall, a Rhodes Scholar alongside Bill Clinton in 1968, is an avid opera fan and patron of the arts. Along with his brother, he co-founded the Madewood Arts Festival in 1979. Marshall built a full-scale theater for the staging of the last two of sixteen opera productions featuring talented family friends from the Met, the English National Opera, and New York City Opera. As Keith remembers, his wife Millie Ball, the retired travel editor for the Times-Picayune, joked that he could continue doing the arts festival or they could have a successful marriage, it was up to him. She remembers it differently, but the money-losing festival shuttered in 1983. “We certainly had some good times,” he recalled, with a touch of nostalgia in his voice. “We just couldn’t afford to keep it going.”
“Don and I were average children,” said Marshall. “It was the environment we grew up in that was remarkable. We were hatched in an arts incubator, surrounded by art and music and a mother with a formidable will.”
Being able to stay overnight at this ornate plantation home is an experience apart from what you’ll find at other fancier plantations that dot the Mississippi. Madewood is clearly a personal space, a home full of photos and memorabilia. Furnished in antiques, many purchased by Naomi at auction, the property is striking, particularly the vast 24-by-48-foot ballroom, with fine plaster medallions and dentil molding along the 18-foot high ceilings. The dining room, where guests gather for dinner and breakfast, is adorned with a black Italian marble fireplace, pocket doors, and Waterford crystal chandeliers. Family portraits line the walls. The original music room includes 1860s Meek’s furniture from New York and a set of William Hogarth engravings. There’s also a picture of Keith and Millie in 1958 when they were king and queen of the Children’s Carnival Club. (The couple have known each other since he was 3 and she was 4 and have been married thirty-six years.)
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The eight spacious guest rooms, furnished in an eclectic mix of family heirlooms and antiques, offer sweeping views of the ancient live oaks that shade the twenty-acre site. Along with bedrooms called Mystery Lady and Mrs. Marshall is the Brad Pitt room; the actor rented the room for an afternoon to study his lines while filming Interview With a Vampire, which was shooting nearby. Take note of the bedroom’s closets—Madewood was among the first homes in Louisiana to have them.
“Our guests like that this is a real home,” said Marshall, who often holds court and keeps conversation lively during the dinner and breakfast that is included in the overnight stay. Keeping the plantation operating and in the black is a full-time job, one that Marshall and his staff seem to relish. “We have so many repeat guests, who come year after year for their anniversary or other special occasions. Now everybody wants to sit in the “Beyoncé chair”—which my mother purchased at auction back in the ‘60s. I never would have imagined that chair would be so popular.”
Brei Olivier
If you go: Standard rates, which include a wine and cheese reception in the library, a set-menu dinner in the dining room and coffee and brandy post-dinner as well as breakfast, start from $229 to $265 Sunday through Thursday, and from $259 to $298 Friday and Saturday.
