This simple-hearted, elegiac tale of a young girl who witnesses the brutal and bitter effects of prejudice and the hope that love and kindness can bring to a small Southern community strikes all the right notes in what is a cinematic masterpiece. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird stars Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer and paragon of decency, steadfastness, and virtue who has been assigned to defend a black man accused of raping a white girl. His young daughter Scout (Mary Badham), whose adult voice serves as the narrator of the story, spends most of her summer days and free time playing and roaming the neighborhood with her older brother Jem and trying to solve the mystery of the reclusive “Boo” Radley, whom the children have never seen. As little Scout tries to make sense of why a grown man would shut himself off from the world and why a community of grown men would be willing to hang an innocent man, her love and respect for her father—a good man who has had to make sense of these incongruities himself—grows even more. Gregory Peck earned an Academy Award for Best Actor in what is a career-defining role. The film also won Oscars for Best Art Direction (Black and White) and Best Adapted Screenplay and received Oscar nominations for Best Actress (Mary Badham), Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Original Score, Best Director (Robert Mulligan), and Best Picture.