Tammy (film series)

For the "Tammy" movie of 2014, see Tammy (film).

The Tammy movies are a series of four light-hearted American films about a naive young lady from Mississippi. They were produced by Universal between 1957 and 1967, and based on the character created in Cid Ricketts Sumner's 1948 book Tammy Out of Time.

The main character of the first three films, Tambrey "Tammy" Tyree, is portrayed as a kind and friendly country girl who finds romantic love. Her rustic southern dialect shows her isolation from modern culture, as well as her rural upbringing but, in the original novel, Tammy Out of Time, Professor Brent discovers that she uses speech expressions going back to Chaucer, and much of her vocabulary is from the Elizabethan era “as is true of some of the mountain folk of Kentucky and Tennessee.”[1]

Tammy and the Bachelor was the basis for the 1965-1966 television series Tammy. In the series Tammy’s last name was Tarleton, and she lives on a houseboat with her grandfather and uncle, but finds work as the secretary of wealthy Mr. Brent.[2] Four episodes of Tammy were reedited into the last Tammy movie, Tammy and the Millionaire.[3]

  1. ^ Allison Graham, Framing the South, pages 59-60, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
  2. ^ Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946 – Present, 1st Edition, page 612, Ballantine Books, 1979
  3. ^ Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies Video Guide, 1991 Edition, page 1143, Plume, 1990