That Darn Cat: When Hollywood Came Calling

Written by Katey Rich

Photo Creds: SC Film Commission/Disney, Explore Edgefield

When the Disney production of That Darn Cat set up camp in Aiken and Edgefield in the early months of 1996, it was a thrilling exposure to Hollywood magic for those of us who had never imagined seeing our quiet hometowns onscreen. As it turns out, the film’s star Christina Ricci was also experiencing something totally new. “That town square was like nothing I had ever seen before,” Ricci, who was 15 back then,  told me recently of filming in downtown Edgefield. “At that time I hadn’t spent that much time in the South. I remember thinking, ‘This is a Southern town.’ ”.

Talking to Ricci about That Darn Cat, a movie she remembers fondly if vaguely nearly 30 years later, is the fulfillment of a dream that began back in 1996, when my friend Katherine Coleman and I wrote a fan letter and tucked it in the door of one of the production trailers parked in downtown Aiken. Katherine included her mailing address and a few weeks later received a signed photograph of Ricci in the mail. (Ricci credited her mother, Sarah Ricci, for that: “My mom always had the headshots with her.”) Ricci was generous with her time but didn’t have a ton of specific memories about filming That Darn Cat, besides the fact that she was a cat lover excited to act opposite one. But she’s not the only one for whom memories have faded of this remake of a 1965 film starring Hayley Mills. 

A veteran Disney publicist who worked at the studio for more than 50 years remembered working on the first film but not much about the remake. A representative for the film’s costume designer, Marie France, said she was not available for an interview but “she remembers Aiken as a lovely town.” But for those of us who were in Aiken and Edgefield in 1996, That Darn Cat has a lasting legacy. “I have not seen That Darn Cat in decades, but in the 1990s, it was one of the biggest things to happen to our small city,” Brittany Skiles Cook, a childhood friend, tells me “at least in the eyes of one elementary school girl.”

When Disney+ launched a few years ago, my sister and I sat down our children to show them what felt like a magic trick pressing play on a real Hollywood movie and showing the Aiken County Library, the familiar water tower and the downtown square of Edgefield, where much of the movie’s action takes place. Though major movies like The Big Chill, The Prince of Tides and Forrest Gump had been filmed in South Carolina throughout my childhood, That Darn Cat was the first time the movie industry ever came anywhere close to Aiken, a place that I was convinced was as far from Hollywood as anywhere on Earth. 

Dan Rogers was working for the South Carolina Film Office when those big, Oscar-winning movies came to the state, and he’s still there today, a walking treasure trove of 

history about South Carolina and the movies. “The Big Chill put us on the map,” he remembers now. “It gave Hollywood a sense that there’s a state called South Carolina that this really good movie was made in.” When the team for That Darn Cat came calling to Rogers’s office, they were looking for a picturesque small town that could stand in for the Boston suburb where the film was set. Why come all the way to South Carolina for a movie set in Massachusetts? “They knew they would be shooting in the winter, and snowing, when you’re filming, screws up everything.”

The Edgefield town square that Ricci remembers so well was what charmed the film crew as well, who loved it there so much they kept the name for their fictional town. Nearby Aiken and Augusta, with hotels and offices for the production, made it an even easier sell. Rogers shared with me production documents that show the South Carolina office at 139 Laurens Street in downtown Aiken — now the Carriage House Inn — and the art department headquartered on Highway 19, around the corner from Aiken High. 

“In the town at that time, they opened up their arms and said ‘Let’s make this work,’” Rogers says. “They knew it would be a disruption, but it can be really fun. It’s kind of like life, too. You can look at it as a disruption, or you can look at it as a learning opportunity, or something I’m never going to experience again. Most towns in South Carolina, because they haven’t experienced it before, embrace it.”

Everyone is curious when film production comes to town for obvious reasons. Ricci has witnessed it many times. “Any time you’re out on location, people stop and watch,” she says. “I get it though. When I was very little they were filming something in a town I was in once, and I went and watched.”

In Aiken and especially Edgefield, where a lot of the film takes place outdoors in the  town square, there were observers for nearly every scene, carefully wrangled to stay out of view of the camera. My mom and sister were driving through Edgefield and caught the filming of a nighttime action sequence at one of downtown’s vintage gas stations; they came home thrilled to be able to tell the tale of their brush with real Hollywood drama. Set in the present day and not even changing the name of the town, That Darn Cat was a pretty simple transformation compared to some other productions Rogers has helped. To film 2004’s The Notebook in downtown Charleston, for example, “they had to remove 47 parking meters, since they didn’t have parking meters in the ’40s. They had to take down all the street signage and the stop sign and everything. “It’s a big deal, and it requires a lot of coordination and money.” 

Film productions don’t come to South Carolina at the rate they used to, thanks to the extensive tax breaks and massive soundstages now on offer in Georgia. Rogers stays busy — the week we spoke, he was helping the crew for HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones set up a shoot in Columbia — and sometimes finds himself guiding visitors toward the real-life locations for shows like Outer Banks and movies like The Patriot. 

Will downtown Edgefield ever become a tourist destination for That Darn Cat super-fans? Those of us who grew up watching the production are at least trying to spread the word to the next generation. “On a recent visit to Aiken, we drove by the library, and I told our three kids about the time it was in a movie and how the water tower was painted,” Brittany Skiles Cook says. “My daughter is currently obsessed with cats, so I thought she would appreciate the history lesson.”

As for Ricci, she can sometimes be hard on herself watching her performances from her time as a child actor. “Some of them I’m really bad in, which I think is funny,” she tells me. “Even to this day no one is willing to admit it. It’s OK, I was young! We can all be like, she wasn’t so great in this one.”

That Darn Cat marked the end of Ricci’s child actor period. The same year it was released, in early 1997, she also appeared in the dark drama The Ice Storm, and the following year brought the even grittier Buffalo 66 and The Opposite of Sex. She can admit now that by the time That Darn Cat came along, she was ready to move on. “I was 15, I was into Criterion Collection films,” she says, describing the kind of arty movies many future film buffs get into around that age. “I didn’t want to be making That Darn Cat. It was one of those things where we needed money and I made the movie.”

Today, though, she can look back on it fondly, particularly her performance as exactly the kind of sarcastic teenager she was at that age (even if she wasn’t solving crimes with a cat in real life). “That Darn Cat is fine because I was an annoyed teenager. I was fine in that one,” she says. “I have affection for it now. I can see how certain movies are adorable, and people love them.” Most people who love Ricci’s child performances will reference Casper or Now and Then or especially The Addams Family. She’s probably far more used to giving interviews about all of them. But I’m so grateful that she took the time to reflect back on one that’s not nearly as well-remembered — except for in two towns that never forgot the time Hollywood came calling.