Kermit Hunter

Outdoor dramas are a type of theatrical production that take their story from local history, augmented with music and dance. The style evolved from pageant dramas, popular in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, which were spectacles that presented historical events in a tableaux manner. As popular entertainment and as tourist attractions, outdoor dramas became key to the economic vitality of many communities in the Smoky Mountains region, drawing thousands of visitors each summer and providing a training ground for young actors and theater technicians.

For many mid-twentieth century vacationers, the stories they learned about regional America may have been formed by these and other similar outdoor dramas.

Unto These Hills was first staged July 1, 1950, at the Mountainside Theater in Cherokee, North Carolina. The work of prolific playwright Kermit Hunter, it is the outdoor dramatization of Cherokee Indian history in the Smokies starting centuries before the dark and tragic event known as the Trail of Tears, and continuing through the sacrifice made by Tsali, whose staunch resistance to this forced removal to Oklahoma led to a small group of Cherokee remaining in their homeland.

The outdoor drama had its genesis with the successful production of The Lost Colony, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Green. The play was intended as a single season celebration of the 350th anniversary of the first English settlers' arrival on the continent. However, Green’s drama has remained in continuous production on Roanoke Island every summer since 1937, with the exception of the World War II years.

A maste

In the late 1940s, the Cherokee Historical Association, inspired by Green’s drama, began exploring ways to develop tourism and promote economic growth in Western North Carolina. With Green unavailable, they commissioned Hunter, a University of North Carolina graduate student, to write an outdoor drama about the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Immediately successful, Unto These Hills had an audience of more than 100,000 in the first season.

Hunter was born in McDowell County, West Virginia, in 1910. He studied at Emory and Henry University and graduated from Ohio State University in 1931. Joining the Army in 1940, he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II, serving as assistant chief of staff of the Caribbean Defense Command. After the war, Hunter left the military and served as the business manager for the North Carolina Symphony. In 1947, he decided to pursue graduate studies under the GI Bill in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of North Carolina. While there, three of his plays were produced by the Carolina Playmakers, a dramatic group at the university.

Hunter wrote Unto These Hills in 1949 as a master's thesis while studying under Paul Green. His draft won a submission contest and was staged at the Qualla Boundary on the eastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Though Hunter’s play has been rewritten over the years, it is his vision that put the Cherokee outdoor drama on the map. He later parlayed the success with Unto These Hills into scripting Trail of Tears, a play that would be performed by the Cherokee nation in Oklahoma until the mid-1990s.

Hunter’s Horn in the West has been performed in Boone, North Carolina, since 1952. It tells the story of frontiersman Daniel Boone and the southern campaign of the American Revolution through both fictional and historic characters. The story culminates in the Battle of King’s Mountain. Since the show began in 1952, over one million people have seen the outdoor production, and it is the longest-running Revolutionary War outdoor drama in the country.

A play for Tennessee

Responding to a  presentation by Hunter in 1954, the Women’s Club of Beckley, West Virginia, agreed to endorse a project that would create an annual event to celebrate West Virginia’s birth and generate tourism in the Beckley area. Later, the West Virginia Historical Drama Association was formed to produce the outdoor drama, Honey in the Rock.

Told through the experiences of the fictitious Morgan family, the play recounts the settling and development of the land and the political maneuvering in Wheeling to break away from Virginia. Honey in the Rock opened in 1961 at Grandview Theater near Beckley.

After completing his master's degree, Hunter continued graduate studies at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in 1955, the same year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and started working as a professor of drama at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

Following the success of Unto These Hills, Rel Maples, a Gatlinburg hotel owner, entrepreneur, and civic leader asked Hunter to write a play to be produced in Gatlinburg. The drama opened in 1956. Maples granted Hunter creative license to write a drama featuring the local culture, and honored the playwright by naming the theater after him. The technically advanced Hunter Hills Theater had a seating capacity of 2,501, and featured a revolving stage that allowed for nine scenes to be prepped and set for fast and quiet change. Seven banks of floodlights were installed, requiring eleven miles of wiring.

The epic drama Hunter created, Chucky Jack: the Story of Tennessee, was based on the life and times of John Sevier, who received the unusual moniker for his exploits as an Indian fighter when he lived along the Nolichucky River.

Sevier was a Revolutionary War hero, the only governor of the state of Franklin, the first governor of Tennessee, and the man for whom Sevier County and Sevierville are named.

To promote the drama, Maples introduced The Chucky Jack Special, a trackless, open air, streamliner train conceived as a conveyance for sightseeing parties in and around Gatlinburg. Ticket outlets for the drama were located in Gatlinburg businesses and as far away as Knoxville. Another publicity device was “Chucky Jack’s A Comin," a 28-page children’s comic book.

The Sevier drama ran for only four consecutive seasons despite Maples efforts and promotional gimmicks. After Chucky Jack closed, Hunter Hills Theater was operated by a variety of entertainment groups before Maples donated the property to the University of Tennessee.

A Failed Drama

In 1964, Hunter became dean of the Meadows School of Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and later as writer-in-residence at the school. He also was a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington.

In the late 1960s, Hunter was commissioned to write what was perhaps his most curious drama, depicting a marginalized mixed-race people called Melungeons. At the time, Hancock County, Tennessee, was the eighth poorest county in the United States. Isolated by rugged mountains and far from population centers or major highways, the county had few natural resources, couldn't attract industry, and had lost half its population in just a few decades.

In their desperation to pull Hancock County into the 20th century, Sneedville Mayor Charles Turner and others begged for road improvements, to no avail. Finally, a 1967 study by two East Tennessee State University professors suggested a surprising way to bring visitors and their dollars into the county: an outdoor drama about the Melungeons.

For most of American history, multi-racial citizens were maligned and distrusted, but some of that prejudice had subsided. Some Melungeons supported the idea of the play and its themes.

A leadership group gradually became convinced presenting a play about the Melungeons was worth a try, and they commissioned Hunter to write a script. Walking Toward the Sunset premiered in 1969 and ran for five seasons—with two off years—before it was abandoned in 1976.

A man of his time

Looking back from a 21st century perspective, what is the historical value of Hunter’s plays?

“Hunter began writing outdoor historical drama … just as that genre began gaining popularity,” said Wayne Winkler, the recently retired director of WETS-FM, the public radio station at East Tennessee State University, and author of the Mercer University Press book Beyond the Sunset: The Melungeon Outdoor Drama, 1969-1976. In fact, “Hunter’s dramas, beginning with Unto These Hills, were responsible for much of that popularity,” he said.

“Kermit Hunter’s plays … were a product of their times, and should be judged in context,” Winkler said. “Most of his work was commissioned by organizations hoping to attract tourism to their communities, and to celebrate that community’s ties to historic events,” he said. “Hunter’s task was to present the community’s story in a way acceptable to those commissioning the play, to make the story understandable to the audience, and to make it entertaining,” he said. “The popularity of his outdoor dramas in the 1960s and 1970s testifies to his success in accomplishing those tasks.”

Hunter wrote more than 40 historical dramas for communities throughout the United States. Of his works, three continue to be produced: Unto These Hills in Cherokee, North Carolina, Horn in the West in Boone, North Carolina, and Honey in the Rock in Beckley, West Virginia. For others, changing tastes and competition from new media reduced the audience to the point that local productions were forced to close.

Kermit Hunter died in Dallas, Texas, on April 11, 2001.