TWO WORLDS OF WILLIAM MARCH

Synopsis

Best known for his sensational 1954 novel about a child murderess, The Bad Seed,, author William March had a dark vision of the South and polite society that was a product of both his childhood in Alabama and his service as a decorated U.S. Marine in World War I. Irony and pathos would inform all of his fiction, from his early, acerbic short stories, to his devastating 1933 novel Company K, to his final work The Bad Seed, published shortly before his death in 1954 and adapted as a successful Broadway play and movie.

He lived in two worlds: as William Edward Campbell, an employee, then executive of Mobile’s Waterman Steamship Corporation; and as William March, the secretive writer whose inner conflicts were the source of both his writing and his eventual mental breakdown in the late 1940s. The film includes both documentary materials and dramatized scenes from his fiction, including Company K, The Bad Seed, and the short stories “This Heavy Load”, “Happy Jack” and “Flight to Confusion.” David Little, Ari Fliakos, Brett Owen and Molly Parker Myers lead the cast.
"March is the unrecognized genius of his time." Alistair Cooke

“March explored the human psyche’s dark recesses. There were no “moonlight and magnolias,” no romantic rhapsodies for Spanish moss, bay breezes and front porches..” Kevin Lee, Langniappe (2017).

Where to See the Film

TWO WORLDS OF WILLIAM MARCH is available on Amazon Prime (VOD and DVD)

Film Trailer

Major Funders

Produced with generous support from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ben May Charitable Trust, A.S. Mitchell Foundation, Daniel Foundation of Alabama, Monte Moorer Foundation, and Mobile Public Library.