A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : SAGA OF BESTSELLER : Hollywood’s Politically Correct Wind Blew Cold on a Once-Hot Book . . . but the Story Isn’t Over

It was a question that prompted much soul-searching in Hollywood’s film industry: Can art exist in a vacuum? Or, more specifically, should a movie be made of the controversial best-selling book “The Education of Little Tree”?

High-powered filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and the team of Peter Guber and Jon Peters had expressed interest.

The book was first published in 1976, then was re-released in paperback by the University of New Mexico Press in 1986--selling only 2,000 copies its first year out. But in its second year as a paperback, those sales doubled. Then, largely by word of mouth, sales zoomed and now total a staggering 600,000 copies.

It was billed as a true story--a touching narrative about an orphaned boy who goes to live in Tennessee with his Cherokee grandparents in the 1930s. The American Booksellers Assn. earlier this year voted it the book they most enjoyed selling.

Then in early October, while still No. 1 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, came allegations that the book was a work of fiction authored by a rabid racist.

An Atlanta history professor who was researching a biography of former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace said in a piece he wrote for the New York Times that “Little Tree’s” author, Forrest Carter, who died in 1979, was actually Asa (Ace) Carter, a white supremacist who wrote speeches for Wallace including the memorable words: “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.” He also said that the book was a work of fiction.

The disclosure of the author’s dual identities prompted the New York Times Book Review to shift “Little Tree” from its nonfiction list to its fiction list. And in Hollywood, a number of producers who had scrambled to outbid each other for the movie rights pulled out of the bidding.

But now the winner of the film rights is about to be announced and it appears that producer Jake Eberts and director Roland Joffe (“The Killing Fields,” “The Mission”) have the inside track.

“We’ve been told by representatives of the (Carter) estate that they want to go with our offer,” said Ben Myron, president of Joffe’s production company, Lightmotive Inc. in Burbank. “However, the deal is not closed. We don’t have a signed contract.” Eberts and Joffe declined to discuss the deal until it was closed.

Eleanor Friede, Carter’s editor at Delacorte Press, who conducted the negotiations, would only say: “Somebody has won. . . . It’s not a deal until the contract is signed.” However, she said she did not expect any complications and added that the deal could be concluded shortly.

But can “Little Tree” be successfully made into a film without the attendant controversy over Asa Carter?

One bidder said the question he grappled with was whether he could, in good conscience, split the book off from the personal history of the author.

“I liked the book very much,” said David Ward, who wrote “The Sting.” “There was a simple elegance about it. It seemed to be a book about rural American values.”

Ward, who with producer Bernard Schwartz pulled out of the negotiations, said that while the book itself was not expressive of racist or anti-Semitic sentiments, he wondered to what extent a movie of “Little Tree” would glorify the name of a man who seemed to be racist and he wondered whether any money would “go back to an organization like the (Ku Klux) Klan.”

Another person who dropped out of the bidding said the risks in marketing such a film would be enormous.

“The NAACP would be picketing,” said the producer, who asked not to be identified. “The Anti-Defamation League would be demonstrating. That would be rough going.”

Some who took part in the negotiations said the whole experience was an emotional roller coaster tinged with intrigue, with the price demanded by the author’s estate constantly “going up and up and up.”

Months before the controversy surfaced, several producers had inquired of Friede if Asa Carter’s widow, India, would be willing to make a deal. But the widow mysteriously would not come forward.

“She doesn’t hide, but she is private,” said Friede, who said India Carter resides in Abilene, Tex., and in Florida.

“She doesn’t talk to anybody,” Friede explained. “I’ve been doing a movie deal (with her) without a telephone. I finally persuaded her within the last month before this all broke to get a fax. She doesn’t use a phone. She is not comfortable using a phone and that is her privilege.”

“We and other people were prepared to go and talk to her but we couldn’t find her,” said Robert B. Radnitz, who produced such films as “Sounder” and “Cross Creek.”

“The fact that none of us could ever talk to Mrs. Carter, there was something wacky about this,” Radnitz added. “(We asked) why can’t any of us talk to this woman?”

Friede said that after the controversy broke, she went to see Carter’s widow.

“I spent two days with India Carter, whom I had met just once more than a decade ago, and she searched her memory for the sources of the stories in ‘The Education of Little Tree,’ ” Friede explained. “She had heard these stories many times, as Forrest retold them to their four children as they were growing up.

“The author was inseparable from his grandfather from the age of 4 or 5,” she continued. “Granpa called him Little Sprout. When he grew taller, Granpa called him Little Tree, because he loved trees and talked to them.”

India Carter told Friede that it was “regrettable that a worthy writing is attacked solely on the basis of who wrote it,” and added: “Many of the ‘quoted’ conversations in the newspaper articles are total fabrications. I particularly note the accusation that he was anti-Semitic--I can say with a clear conscience that that is not true.”

But Dan T. Carter, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who revealed the Forrest/Asa Carter identities in the New York Times, maintains that the work is total fiction. Carter, who has said he may be a distant relative of Asa Carter, said that after his article appeared, he received a phone call from an unnamed Hollywood producer who wanted to know more about Asa Carter.

“He (the producer) was mainly trying to get me to say, ‘Well, this guy really wasn’t so bad, right? He was just a segregationist who got carried away and roped into writing Wallace’s speeches, right?’

“I told him, ‘That is not true. He was on the far fringes of white supremacy in the 1950s. He was a right-wing racist radical.’ ”

Carter said the producer ended the conversation saying: “This is worse than I thought.”

“I just can’t wait until this film comes out,” Carter said. “Maybe they can do this as a comedy.”