Child Marriage

I wrote the article on the making of this film for FILMFAX magazine. I researched the topic of child brides of the time and can answer some of your questions. America became aware of the problem of child marriages in the 1930s because of one shocking story. It was the most sensational child marriage ever and brought a swift end to the custom.

In January, 1937, the news came out of Sneedville, Tennessee that a 22-year-old backwoods man, Charlie Johns, had married a neighbor girl, Eunice Winstead, age 9.

The press went wild. The story was featured in newspapers for weeks. A newsreel company even went to the scene and had actors recreate the marriage. Eunice and Charlie were featured in the February issue of LIFE magazine. All sorts of religious, women's, and civics groups spoke out against the marriage but were further appalled when they discovered that the marriage was perfectly legal.

The marriage had been conducted without the knowledge of the girl's family. Charlie had his buddy get him a marriage license giving Eunice's age as 18. Eunice herself didn't even know she was going to be married that day, by the way. Charlie just decided the time had come to marry this, his longtime girlfriend, so when they saw the local Baptist pastor approaching on the dirt road, Charlie paid him a little fee and the man married them on the spot. (The pastor got a lot of hate mail over that.)

But once her family found out, they consented reluctantly, saying the pair had "pulled one over on us". There was some objection in their families but the marriage was kept intact. Had the parents wanted, they could have had it annulled, but they felt the two loved one another and the girl "loves him and knows her own mind", so it was okay. So little Eunice went to live with him at his parents' home, a mile from her own.

Tennessee's governor said the Winstead-Johns marriage "disgraced the whole state", so in about a week after the marriage, Tennessee lawmakers unanimously changed the law. Many other states found that their own laws allowed for girls as young as 12 and boys as young as 14 to wed with parental consent. According to census records, there were a few thousand of these marriages, far more than anyone had realized. Laws were immediately updated to raise the age (generally) to 16 with parental consent.

For the rest of 1937 and on into 1938, newspapers carried photos and updates on Eunice and her progress as a housewife, although she and her husband tried to shun reporters. She became a household word, so to speak, and in reporting other news of underage marriages, the articles sometimes mentioned her name without explanation, since everybody knew who she was.

You can Google her name and see some pictures of her then. She had her first child at age 14. She had nine throughout their 60-year marriage. She passed away in 2006. Charlie died in 1997.

But the research I've done generally indicates child brides didn't marry under duress. They did it for a variety of reasons but usually just to seek a better life. Of course, such brides were mainly lower class and poorly educated. Often the men just wanted a wife they could dominate. There's no way to determine how often pedophilia was a motive as well. Parents had the right to annul the marriage but apparently didn't bother unless there was abuse. Some parents were in such hardship they were glad to have one fewer mouth to feed.

The ages of the men were generally under 35. Mostly they were in their early 20s. There was one report of an 80-year-old man living in a shack deep in the hills who managed to marry a 10-year-old girl, mainly to serve as his housekeeper, but since new laws prevented such marriages, she was rescued and taken home. Newspaper accounts of child brides after the spring of 1937 frequently reported the bride was sent home and the groom arrested.

News of child brides, usually 14 to 16, made news right up through the war years.

But the story of little Eunice provided the inspiration for CHILD BRIDE, which its makers hoped would capitalize on the public's fascination with underage marriages. But it missed its chance. It was shot in the summer of 1938 but wasn't released until 1943 due to the producer's financial problems. But that's another story.

"Truth is its own evidence." - Ralph Waldo Emerson