A few more goofs
Because of strictly enforced blue laws, you could not buy a mixed drink in a Memphis establishment until 1972. In 1958 if you wanted to drink booze or wine or anything stiffer than 3.2 beer or Pepsi in a Memphis establishment, you brought your own bottle in a plain brown bag and a bartender kept it behind the counter until you left. Memphis "bars" charged $1.50 for a "set-up fee" (i.e, a glass of ice, which included soda or other ingredients depending on the drink you wanted the bartender to make). If all you wanted to do was hide your bottle in your coat and just order a glass with plain ice, the charge was still $1.50 and up. No alcohol of any kind could be served after 11-PM.
The movie features a car chase that supposedly occurs in downtown Memphis on State Street. The only State Street in Memphis is in a South Memphis residential area a long way from downtown, and it's only a block long. Scenes that are purported to take place in "downtown" Memphis don't look anything like the area, which sits smack at the edge of the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River and Arkansas, none of which are ever seen.
The outdoor shots don't look very much like the Mississippi Delta area, which is replete with pine, poplar, and magnolia. While southwest Tennessee is heavily forested, it's almost as flat as Kansas -- but it doesn't look that way in the movie. It looks prtty much like North Carolina, which is where the film was shot.
Accents: the only Southern accent in this movie is Keely Smith's, and hers is a kind of hybrid that sounds part Texas + part South Carolina, but certainly isn't from the Delta area. Otherwise I fail to detect a single valid Southern accent throughout, especially in the Tennessee scenes. All the gals are too clean-cut and the other locals are too articulate to be convincing. Some bio data about Mitchum states that he was skillful at mimicking regional dialects: I have seen a great many Mitchum movies and can testify that like many Hollywood actors he simply can't work a deep South accent at all.
Accents #2: If you want to hear a really bad attempt at talking "Southern", listen to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind -- a movie where the only Southern accents you hear are from the slaves (although Hattie McDaniel, who sounds Southern, has an accent from Kansas rather than Dixie). Scarlett's is the way a Southern accent sounds in Burbank, CA., not in Georgia. You can hear some real drawls in movies like "Easy Rider" or "The Sugarland Express", where directors used locals for bit parts. Many people think actor Robert Taylor shows signs of a Southern accent, but his twang is from Oklahoma. Bill Clinton's twang is from central Arkansas, where linguists often distinguish that accent as "rural Midwestern" rather than "Southern". Note that G. W. Bush's very strange accent is not Southern, but is an acquired mishmash that ain't quite genuine; Bush is from Connecticut but sounds like he's from either Tulsa, Oklahoma or even somewhere around Hope, Arkansas, which must be an embarassment for all concerned. If Bush really wanted to sound like a college-educated Texan who actually learned something in class, he'd sound more like LBJ.
One of the few examples of a non-Southerner who does a great accent, i.e., the more refined type of deep South coloration you hear from well-educated Southerners, is by Jessica Tandy in "Driving Miss Daisy". How someone from Britain managed that accent is a testimony to Jessica's skill, because she does "Atlanta" most convincingly. While these accents are almost always overdone, Morgan Freeman in that same movie spoke with a just-right middle-class Afro coloring (Mr. Freeman grew up in Mississippi). Dan Akroyd's Atlanta "bid-nessman" drawl wasn't exactly right-on but he gets credit for coming mighty close, especially for a Canadian.
If you wanna hear how a Memphis accent normally sounds, get your copy of My Cousin Vinny and listen to Mitchell Whitfield, who played the district attorney. He doesn't sound so much like Goergia or Alabama as he does west Tennessee/northern Mississippi. Mr. Whitfield grew up in Memphis, and he has that accent exactly right in the movie.
Other accents that seem to be extremely difficult to emulate by non-natives are those from New England and the New York City area. Why actors who speak those accents correctly are seldom used in movies is a mystery. If you thought Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny did such a fabulous job with that Brooklyn accent, it's likely because she was born there. If you think Vinny sounds like he's from Brooklyn, you're off; he's from Jersey, and he sounds like it.
Nitpicky