Places in the Heart was shot in its writer’s hometown, and Waxahachie is in every frame.
If you are looking for where Places in the Heart was filmed, the answer is Waxahachie, all of it. The American Film Institute records the shoot from September 21 to December 15, 1983, entirely in Waxahachie, and the production thanked the town and Ellis County in its credits.
Robert Benton grew up there. He wrote and directed the film about the town as it was in 1935, and he shot it in the town as it still was in 1983.
The story came from his family.
AFI’s notes on the picture lay out how personal it is. Benton’s great-grandfather was the town sheriff, killed in 1882, and that death drives the opening of the film. Edna Spalding, the widow Sally Field plays, is drawn from his mother’s side of the family. He wrote more than fifteen drafts and cut a whole bootlegging storyline he decided was too dark. Relatives turn up as extras and in cameos.
The Spalding home itself, per AFI, was an existing house that Benton and production designer Gene Callahan turned into a two-story version of his mother’s house.
How the town became the set.
AFI describes the production working with what Waxahachie had and adding what it lacked. The house was converted. A barn was moved closer to it. An abandoned downtown hotel was remodeled into the bank. A cotton gin that no longer worked was restored. A schoolhouse was built from scratch. A grange hall and a large farmhouse hosted the two dance scenes, and the tornado combined salvaged houses with effects.
Several of those places are still there.
The hotel is the Rogers Hotel on the corner of the courthouse square. The Texas Film Commission’s film trail confirms its first-floor lobby was the bank where Edna fights foreclosure. It went up around 1912, replacing a hotel that burned the year before.
The gin is at Five Points, an unincorporated Ellis County community about eight miles southwest of town. Wikipedia’s entry on Five Points says it was used for at least two scenes, and the county’s history site confirms the gin and store still stand. I could not find the Film Commission listing for Five Points that the record mentions, so I am naming the source I could read.
The Ellis County Courthouse, built in 1897, is in the opening credits. Bethel Community Church west of town, founded in 1853, is where the closing scene was shot, according to Country Roads Magazine. I could not find where the Spalding house or the schoolhouse stood, or whether either survives.
A town that kept winning Oscars.
The Waxahachie convention bureau calls it the Movie Capital of Texas and lists more than thirty productions. Bonnie and Clyde used a farmhouse in the county in 1967, a film Benton co-wrote. KERA points out that a film shot in Waxahachie won at least one Academy Award three years running: Tender Mercies, then Places in the Heart, then The Trip to Bountiful. KERA credits the historic architecture and a local film liaison, T.J. Felty. Texas Highways quotes one local calling the town the backlot of Texas. More recently, Lawmen: Bass Reeves shot courtroom scenes inside the courthouse.
That is not luck. A town whose downtown survived intact, with someone local whose job is to say yes, is a production asset that most places do not have.
Who made it.
Benton wrote and directed. Arlene Donovan produced, with Michael Hausman as executive producer, for Tri-Star. Nestor Almendros shot it, Carol Littleton cut it, Gene Callahan designed it, and Ann Roth did the costumes.
Sally Field is Edna. Danny Glover is Moze, the drifter who helps her bring in the cotton. John Malkovich is Mr. Will, the blind boarder. Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan carry the second story about a marriage in trouble.
The awards, and the speech.
The film took seven Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor for Malkovich, Supporting Actress for Crouse, Costume Design for Roth, and Original Screenplay. It won two, Field for Best Actress and Benton for the screenplay. Field also won the Golden Globe. Wikipedia credits Benton with the Silver Bear for directing at Berlin in 1985. The Berlinale archive would not load for me, so treat that one as reported.
Then there is the speech. Almost everyone remembers it as “You like me, you really like me.” She did not say that. The Academy’s official transcript of her speech on March 25, 1985 has her saying she cannot deny that you like me, and then: “Right now, you like me!” The “really” was added by everyone who quoted it afterward.
People know the line. Fewer know the movie behind it.
The money.
TriStar released it September 21, 1984. Box Office Mojo records $34,901,614 domestic, which places it at forty on this list. The budget in circulation is $9.5 million, which carries a citation-needed tag even on Wikipedia, so I am not leaning on it.
Why people love it.
It is a nearly perfect screenplay. Every scene is doing two jobs, and it trusts the audience with an ending that a lot of studios would have cut. Roger Ebert wrote that Benton was filming the places he held sacred in his own heart, and that is exactly what it feels like.
My read.
Waxahachie is the DNA of the movie. You could not have made it on a backlot or in a town that only looked like this one. The writer knew where the bank should be because he grew up walking past the building.
The producing lesson is the one the town has been teaching for forty years. A preserved downtown and a local who says yes are worth more than a stage. Use what is standing, restore what you need, build only what is missing.
What this means if you are scoping a Texas shoot.
Period pictures need towns that have not been torn down. Texas has more of those than people expect, and most are within an hour or two of the Dallas and Austin crew bases. Waxahachie is about forty minutes south of Dallas and runs its own city film permit. Ask early, because a historic square has neighbors, businesses and traffic that all need to agree.
The previous entry in this countdown is number 41, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The full countdown lives here. For towns that play other places, see where Texas doubles for somewhere else, and for permits, who to call about shooting in Texas. If you are scoping a period shoot in a Texas town, start here.
Next in the countdown: number 39.
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