Movies filmed in NC
With the upcoming release of Nights in Rodanthe (IMDB), a film based on the book by Nicholas Sparks and set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I’ve been curious about other movies that were filmed in the Tar Heel state. Thankfully, we’ve got a copy of The North Carolina Filmography by Jenny Henderson here in the library, an index with over 2,000 listings of films all or partially shot in North Carolina.
Some larger name films that were partially shot in NC include:

- Hannibal
- Patch Adams
- Nell
- Forrest Gump
- The Fugitive
- Last of the Mohicans
- Mr. Destiny
- Dirty Dancing
- Bull Durham
- Days of Thunder
- The Swan
- Shallow Hal
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
To my delight, I also stumbled on a few films in the index you may not have heard of, including:
- Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974, Charlotte)
- Pitch a Boogie Woogie (1947, Greenville)
- Somebody Moved My Mountain (1974, Asheville, Winston-Salem)
- Cannibal Vampire Schoolgirls (1995, Wilmington)
- Alien Outlaw (1986, Kernersville)
- A Child of the Wild (1917, Hendersonville)
July 25th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I noticed “Pitch a Boogie Woogie” on the list, and thought I would share this from the Guide to the John Warner Papers held by East Carolina University:
“Pitch a Boogie Woogie,” released by Lord-Warner Pictures, Inc., in 1948, was the first movie made by a production company based in North Carolina. The film, which had an all-black cast of mostly local Greenville, N.C., performers, enjoyed success in the Carolinas, but was never shown outside that area. Lord-Warner dissolved in 1949 and John Warner went to work for a local TV station. His brother William Lord, who changed his name from Warner in the 1920s, returned to New York.”
East Carolina’s library also has a postcard scanned and online that was used to promote the film, apparently: http://media.lib.ecu.edu/spclcoll/staffpick.cfm?id=115
In 1986, ECU professor Alex Albright rediscovered the film, and it was given national exposure.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Thanks for sharing this information with us Kevin, how interesting! I noticed that ECU has some other digitized materials from the collection online too, available here: http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/encore/search2.aspx?index=Collection&term=John%20W.%20Warner%20Papers