Metro Pulse/Urban Renewal

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121 E. Scott Avenue
5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 4,000 sq. ft.
$219,900
Contact: Steve Hill, Elite Realty: 687-1311

by Matt Edens

Used to be, if you grew up in Knoxville and wanted to get into show business, you had to leave town to do it. It's something Knoxvillians have been doing for ages. Forget about Johnny-come-latelys like Johnny Knoxville or Brad Renfro or even—assuming you haven't already forgotten him anyway—David Keith. Go back a couple generations and Knoxville can claim such well-respected actors as Patricia Neal and John Cullum. Then there's James Agee. Even without his Pulitzer prize winning A Death in the Family, Agee made a considerable name for himself as both a film critic and as screenwriter of The African Queen (did you think Bogart just made it up as he went along?). But the dean of Knoxville's celluloid past has got to be Clarence Brown. The director of more than 50 films—from the silent era to Hollywood's Golden Age—Brown's credits include Intruder in the Dust, The Yearling, and National Velvet.

I'll admit, I don't know where the young Clarence Brown developed his love for movies. He would have already been a young man by the time a five-year-old James Agee was watching Chaplin shorts at the Majestic with his father. The theater's gone now. It used to stand on Gay Street, just up from Wall. Actually, with the exception of the Bijou, all the Gay Street theaters Agee knew from his youth are gone. (The Tennessee was built after he left town.) However, the wheels are turning to bring first-run movies back to Gay Street, with more screens than it had in is heyday.

Even more surprising is that Knoxville has its own burgeoning film and video industry, employing scores of producers, directors, cameramen, editors, and writers. Between the Scripps networks and several smaller production houses, it's possible for a would-be Brown or Agee to actually earn a living in Knoxville (or in the case of a couple of Metro Pulse contributors, manage to keep off the public dole). And, while it's a long way from Hollywood, the growth of the local TV business has even made this scruffy little city a destination of sorts for creative types from the far corners of the country. Since they're often looking for surroundings a little quirkier, a little less white bread, that's good news for downtown and the center-city's historic neighborhoods (recall, if you will, that 4th and Gill first took off during Whittle's heyday).

Which brings me to this place in Old North Knoxville. Agee's boyhood home on Highland may be nothing but a memory, but Clarence Brown's is more: It's been lovingly restored. And it only takes a quick tour through this rambling 4,000 square-foot house to realize that Brown's father—a manager at Brookside Mills—was a rung or two further up the social ladder than Agee's pop. From the front door's magnificent leaded-glass sidelights and transom to the oak Corinthian columns flanking the parlor entry, this house would have been the showplace of Agee's "solidly lower middle class" block on Highland. And these aren't the only period features this place has to offer. There are five fireplaces, a built-in china cabinet, a window seat in the dining room, oak floors downstairs, and some unique three-panel doors with egg and dart molding. Upstairs the floors are heart pine and the doors all have transoms. Two of the three baths have clawfoot tubs and there are tons of beadboard wainscoting in both the downstairs bath and the big eat-in kitchen. One of the most unique features is the original embossed lincrusta wallpaper in the foyer and dining room—which is absolutely amazing considering the place was a boarding house for 60-some years.

Even more amazing is that, just a couple of month's ago, the folks over at HGTV taped a segment of Restore America in the house—82 years after its most famous resident directed his first movie.