The Inspiration for Steel Magnolias

More than 30 years ago Steel Magnolias first opened Off-Broadway, a few years later it became a hit-movie – and now it is a beloved part of American culture with productions of the play being performed across the country and the movie, now a classic, quoted regularly.

But what was the inspiration behind these beloved characters?

Robert Harling grew up in Natchitoches, Louisiana (the basis for the fictional town of Chinquapin). As he grew up, he watched his mother and sister as they interacted with each other and their friends in the community. He graduated with a degree in theater from Northwest State University and went on to get a law degree from Tulane. He moved to New York City after college and pursued a career in acting.

Then in 1985, Robert Harling’s sister passed away. He was afraid that his 2-year-old nephew would never know his mother, so he wrote her story. The story of a young woman with Diabetes who experiences kidney failure after the birth of her child, receives a kidney transplant from a family member, and dies from complications.

He wrote the play in 10 days.  

It features a cast of all women, modeled on the friends of Harling’s mother. “I always thought the women in my community were so witty and clever. It was like a witty one-upmanship. In a lot of ways, they talked in bumper stickers.” He based each of the women in the show on real people he knew growing up.

The entire play is set in Truvy’s Beauty Shop because Harling witnessed the difference in how his mother and her friends spoke and interacted with each other when they were alone. The laughter and freedom were replaced with southern respectability as soon as a man walked into the room. The Beauty shop was the kind of place that no men would dare to enter so the women of the show could open up and be themselves.

With the story being so personal, Harling and the original Off-Broadway cast envisioned it as a tragedy. But on opening night when the audience first heard the one-liners and zingers that the women said to one another they erupted in laughter. The delicate balance of the comedic way the women interacted with each other, and Shelby’s tragic story catapulted the play into the Hollywood spotlight. From there Robert Harling’s sister became immortalized in one of the most cherished stories of all time.

Resources:

https://gardenandgun.com/feature/thirty-years-of-steel-magnolias/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Magnolias_(play)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harling_(writer)
https://www.countryliving.com/life/entertainment/a44128/steel-magnolias-30th-anniversary/