Cid Ricketts Sumner (1890–1970) was a novelist whose works inspired several Hollywood films. She also taught English at a Jackson, MS, high school and French at Millsaps College. Ricketts' most popular novels were Quality (1946), and Tammy Out of Time (1948). Quality became the movie Pinky directed by Elia Kazan and John Ford. It was ahead of its time in terms of addressing and opposing segregation. It tells the story of a young, fair-skinned black woman who attends nursing school in the north and passes for white. She falls in love with and marries a white man, and they move back South.
Tammy Out of Time was adapted to film in 1957 in Tammy and the Bachelor, starring Debbie Reynolds. The book was so popular that Ricketts wrote two more novels based on the first (Tammy Tell Me True, in 1959 and Tammy in Rome in 1965) and three more films were also released (Tammy Tell Me True in 1961 and Tammy and the Doctor in 1963, starring Sandra Dee, and Tammy and the Millionaire in 1967 starring Debbie Watson). There was also a short-lived 1965 TV series, Tammy, inspired by the films.
At MacDowell, a memorial gazebo with a dramatic view of Mount Monadnock was built and dedicated to Cid in 1974. The construction was paid for with donations from Fellows and friends who loved and admired one of the liveliest personalities to have walked our grounds.
