Still from Alice’s Restaurant, dir. Arthur Penn, 1969.
The 1969 movie, Alice’s Restaurant, seems like a fair and in fact great depiction of what the 1960s counterculture was like and what the zeitgeist of the era was against the backdrop of the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts.
Alice Brock, who died just a few days ago, didn’t like Arthur Penn’s (director and one of the movie’s two screenwriters) depiction of her character in the film and generally the depiction of life over a half century ago. The area, the Berkshire Hills, also gave rise to some of the iconic illustrations of Norman Rockwell and the earthshaking revolt of returning Revolutionary War veterans in Shays’ Rebellion. Shays’ Rebellion helped shape the early federal government in ways the rebels would not have liked with a strong central government. For a sense of how Norman Rockwell interpreted the beauty of the area, this is his famous work “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” (New England.com).
Alice resented director Arthur’s Penn’s Hollywood depiction of a hippie’s life. “So not true,” she said in 2020. “Everybody had me locked into that character,” she said. “And that was not my character at all” (“The real Alice of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” dies at 83,” wbur, November 22, 2024).
“In 2020, Alice fell on financial hard times due to her failing health. So Lamot and Davis [friends] organized a GoFundMe campaign that rapidly raised $180,000. Friends and strangers contributed, and Alice was humbled by the outpouring of kind words and donations (“The real Alice of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” dies at 83”.
Alice operated, among other restaurants, the iconic Back Room in Stockbridge, Massachusetts (“Alice Brock, Restaurant Owner Made Famous by a Song, Dies at 83,” New York Times, November 22, 2024). She also transformed, with the help of others, a former deconsecrated Episcopal church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts that belonged to her family into a gathering place for friends during the youth movement of the 1960s. It was the former church that figured into one of the major themes of the movie “Alice’s Restaurant” and served as the jumping off point with the conundrum of what to do with the collected garbage from Thanksgiving Day.
The graveside scene with a Joni Mitchell tune is perhaps one of the saddest and most moving parts of the movie. The actors who portray both Alice and Ray Brock are highlighted in it. In real life the scene never happened. The final scene of the actor who portrays Alice standing on the steps of the church is worth considering because of the emotions it brings to the screen.
Alice’s Back Room restaurant became a stopping off place for many in the youth movement and was visited by one of the students who would be killed on the campus of Kent State during the antiwar protest there on May 4, 1970.
Arlo Guthrie’s music from the movie soundtrack provides a perfect accompaniment to the story of friends in the late 1960s. The former church is now the Guthrie Center and appears today much like it did all of those decades ago.
Alice was a much different person than was portrayed in the movie. She became an artist later in life and was not especially fond of the screenplay writers’ depiction of her character, or the nostalgia connected with those times. But by being in the place and time that she was, and what she actually accomplished during that era of seismic changes, she left an imprint on that era of great changes.
Today, the Berkshire Hills are proclaimed on road signs that read: “America’s Premier Cultural Resort.” Tourism has flooded the area and is reflected in national ratings in major newspapers and magazines. Second homes now populate the hills and the phenomenon has driven up home prices. Good-paying jobs are not plentiful and one of the area’s major employers, the weapons manufacturer General Electric, long ago left and one of that company’s byproducts of production, PCBs, are an ongoing source of pollution and litigation.
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