Fannie Flagg

Fannie Flagg is an author that I both enjoy and admire. She has succeeded as an actress, a comedienne, a screenwriter, and an author. The tenacity and vitality she has shown in her careers and her personal life sends us the message that women are strong and capable people. She also uses her humor and storytelling ability to create characters that further that image and encourage women to be independent. She sends the message that if you want to accomplish something you must keep trying to over

While writing for Candid Camera, Flagg would memorize the sketches, but would never show them to another person for fear they would discover she couldn't spell. "I was, am, severely dyslexic and couldn't spell, still can't spell," says Flagg. "So I was discouraged from writing and embarrassed" (Hillard). She did not realize she was dyslexic until she was appearing as a regular on the TV show "The Match Game". In that show she would have to write her answers and would try to cover her misspelling with jokes. She received a letter from a teacher who recognized her type of misspelling as a dyslexic trait. The teacher assumed Flagg knew and complemented her on the unashamed way she handled being dyslexic. Flagg says, "I didn't pursue writing because I always assumed and was told that if you can't spell you can't be a writer. I'd get C's and D's in creative writing. It was so embarrassing. To have gone from being a girl who could not spell her name to an author with her own books on a library shelf is the most rewarding thing that has ever happened to me" (Reynolds).

About the Author. Random House. 15 April 2001.

Fried Green Tomatoes is really two stories in one. It's the story of Idgie and her friend Ruth who run the Whistle Stop Café during the depression and the story of Evelyn, a woman in the 1980's, who is going through menopause and a depression of her own. Through the friendship of Mrs. Threadgoode in the nursing home with her stories of Idgie, Evelyn begins to change. Of Evelyn, Flagg writes, "She was always terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she'd be called if she did. She had spent her whole life tiptoeing around them like someone lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture" (236).

15 April 2001 .

Although she always wanted to write, Flagg found that acting came more easily to her. When she was 14 she joined a theater group in Birmingham where friends in the group called her "Baby Girl" because she was the youngest. She competed in the Miss Alabama pageant where she acted out some comedy sketches she had written and modeled a dress she had designed made entirely out of old menus. While not winning the pageant, she won a scholarship to the Pittsburgh Playhouse, an acting school, where she went for one year. She left after being told that she should go home, get married, and forget acting because her southern accent was too bad (ReadersOnly.com). When joining Actors' Equity at 18, she learned she'd have to change her name because her real name was Patricia Neal, the name of a famous movie star. As she was doing comedy, her father suggested a silly name to set the mood, and her grandfather remembered vaudeville and that Fannie was a name that a lot of comediennes took. She has been reinventing herself ever since.

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