Eugene Walter

A special allowance was made by the Mobile Parks Department for his burial at Church Street Graveyard, which had been closed since the 1890s.

Eugene Ferdinand Walter, Jr. (November 30, 1921 – March 29, 1998) was an American screenwriter, poet, short-story author, actor, puppeteer, gourmet chef, cryptographer, translator, editor, costume designer and well-known raconteur.

During his years in Paris, he was nicknamed Tum-te-tum.

His friend Pat Conroy observed that Walter had lived a "pixilated wonderland of a life."

Walter was labeled "Mobile's Renaissance Man" because of his diverse activities in many areas of the arts.

Throughout his life, he maintained a connection with Mobile by carrying a shoebox of Alabama red clay around Europe.

Walter was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, which he described as "a separate kingdom. We are not North America; we are North Haiti."

He claimed that he ran away from home at the age of three and was raised by his paternal grandparents.

He and Truman Capote became acquainted in Mobile, attending matinees at the Saenger Theatre downtown together as children.

His grandparents both died while he was about ten years old.

After largely living on the streets for a time, he was eventually taken in by Hammond Bokenham Gayfer, heir to Gayfers Department Store in downtown Mobile.

Gayfer died in 1938, again leaving Walter to fend for himself.

During World War II, Walter spent three years in the Aleutian Islands as an Army cryptographer.

He relocated to New York City afterward and became a resident of Greenwich Village during the post-WWII years.

During this time he pioneered an early form of happening by staging a spontaneous and unannounced group performance with his friends in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art.

Walter then gained transatlantic passage of a freighter carrying ice cream to Europe during the late 1940s.

He lived in Paris during much of the 1950s, where he helped launch the Paris Review, living across the street from the publication's office and contributing to the earliest issues with text, art and interviews.

His short story "Troubador" appeared in the first issue.

His Paris Review interviews included Isak Dinesen and Robert Penn Warren.

His books include Monkey Poems (1953), The Byzantine Riddle (1980) and The Untidy Pilgrim (1954), a novel recently reprinted by the University of Alabama Press.

In 1960, for Transatlantic Review, he interviewed Gore Vidal.

Eventually, Walter moved from Paris to Rome at the request of Marguerite Caetani, Princess di Bassiano, to edit her literary journal Botteghe Oscure.

After a falling out with the princess, he acted in the films of Federico Fellini and translated Italian films into English.

His dinner parties in Rome became much talked about; those that attended included T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Judy Garland, Anaïs Nin, Leontyne Price, Gore Vidal and Richard Wright.

Living in Rome during the 1960s and 1970s, Walter was a translator for Federico Fellini.

For different film companies, he translated hundreds of scripts.

He appeared as an actor in more than 20 feature films, notably as the American journalist in Fellini's 8½ (1963).

For Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965), he played the role of the Mother Superior and collaborated with Nino Rota on the song, "Go Milk the Moon" (cut from the final version of the film).

Rota and Walter teamed again for the song "What Is a Youth" for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968).

He also played the role of the priest in The House with Laughing Windows.

Walter returned to Mobile in 1979.

He also compiled several cookbooks: Delectable Dishes From Termite Hall (1982) and the bestselling American Cooking: Southern Style, part of Time-Life's Foods of the World series.

Hints & Pinches (1991) is an encyclopedic coverage of more than 150 herbs, spices, chutneys and relishes.

He died on March 29, 1998, of liver cancer at the University of South Alabama Medical Center.

Practically destitute at the time of his death, his friends raised the money for his sendoff.

His wake was held at the old Scottish Rite Temple, where attendees painted and wrote their goodbyes on his closed casket.

His funeral service was held at the nearby Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, followed by a jazz funeral procession in the rain to his final resting place in Mobile's historic Church Street Graveyard.

The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink (2011), which Walter described as "an ardent survey of Southern beverages, and how to prepare such, and a grand selection of Southern dishes employing spiritous flavorings," was edited by Donald Goodman (executor of Walter's estate) and Thomas Head and published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Gabrielle Gutting, who teaches literature at Florida Atlantic University, is currently working on a biography of Eugene Walter.

Walter contributed to numerous magazines, including Food Arts, Gourmet, Old Mobile and Harper's Bazaar.