Little Old Southern Ladies
by SANDRA B. KELLY

One of the partners immerses herself in purple. The other favors red, although lately she’s been feeling like wearing more yellow.

They like to refer to themselves as “two little old southern ladies,” mocking description they overheard from someone who didn’t believe they could really stage a film festival in Roanoke.

But, hey, watch out for these two: Little old southern ladies no way describes Sandra Eubank and Barbara “Bootie” Chewning. 

If the two didn’t understand there is strength in numbers, they’d still be running competing casting companies. Even now, they butt their immaculately trimmed blonde-gray heads together on occasion.
Sandra and Bootie, one a veteran registered nurse who works in intensive care settings and the other a former school board member and veteran community activist, are the Roanoke Valley’s Hollywood connection. They are also the area’s connection to the South Korean film industry based on what happened after the Blue Ridge Vision Film Festival 2003 they staged last April. 

The festival was their first, and events and winners were highlighted on the festival website where a Korean filmmaker spotted it. He called seeking help with a documentary on the much-sought-but-never-found Beale Treasure supposedly buried near Bonsack.

Sure, the women said. Come on over. That’s how Sandra and Bootie came to be on television in South Korea. Of course, everyone in the cast except them was speaking Korean; “We were pointing and saying ‘It’s over yonder,’ ‘’ Bootie jokes.

“We’ve done three Beale treasure films,” Sandra said. 

They not only set up the shooting access and cast for the South Koreans, but took the film crew to research the treasure story that claims Thomas Beale hid more than $20 million in the hills of Bedford County in 1823. 

Sandra and Bootie, co-founders of the Blue Ridge-Southwest Virginia Film Office, are troopers in every real sense. If a last-minute cast member is needed, they stand in. 

Bootie relishes the limelight. She has participated in the Vinton Players and The Showtimers. After she was widowed in 1987, she even spent some time in Hollywood where she got work as an extra in several shows, including “Cagney & Lacy,” “Moonlighting,” and “Baja Oklahoma” with Peter Coyote. 

Recently, Bootie was cast by Sandra in “Stormcatchers,” filmed in West Virginia. Bootie plays an old woman, but she got four pages of dialogue.

At home, Bootie stages karaoke gatherings at her house for family and friends. 

Sandra, with her full nursing schedule and other duties as a trainer for nurses, enjoys curling up in her purple bedroom with its electrically controlled bed and the surround-sound large screen television. 

She said she is more inclined to stay behind the scenes and is currently writing a script, but she does fill in when pressured, and she regularly shoves her husband, Don, into roles. He portrayed a “professor” in the television commercial that brought Sandra and Bootie together in one company three years ago.

THE CONNECTION

A Coca-Cola representative had called Sandra’s company, S.R. Eubank & Co. and wanted a 300-member cast for a commercial put together in three days. She had just had knee surgery, but she got the casting call set up in a couple of days. She had called another casting company owner to help, and that person invited Bootie, then owner of The Casting Group, along to the call event.

After a “What’s SHE doing here?” reaction and a “I came to help” from Bootie, the two worked together on the casting. Because Sandra was in a knee cast and couldn’t be active on the set when the commercial was shot in Lexington, Bootie again helped. The commercial was filmed at Virginia Military Institute to be run during the Super Bowl.

What an event! they recall. The Screen Actors Guild was on strike at the time. Sandra and Bootie got “scab mail.” They also got together and merged their companies, keeping Sandra’s company name.

“Sometimes we don’t see eye-to-eye on anything,” Bootie confesses. 

“But we’ve gone too far and invested in too many people” to not resolve differences, Sandra said.

When they set out to do the film festival, “failure was not an option,” she said. 

The festival featured a new award, the John Payne Lifetime Achievement Award named for the late actor John Payne who was born in Roanoke. Actress Patricia Neal was the special guest along with Mary McDonough, an actress (“The Waltons”) and a producer and director.

Some of the films screened at the festival were ones the women helped cast. Others they have seen go on to more recognition; Kevin Hershberger’s “Wicked Spring” about the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 came out on DVD in December. 

And there was that call from the South Koreans in May just after the festival. 

“Clearly, we went international,” Bootie said.

“We had inquiries from France saying, ‘I heard of you,’” Sandra said. 

The only disappointment for the two has been the reluctance of Roanoke city to lend its name in support of the festival and their film office. Other area governments have. 

“We would appreciate and love to have Roanoke city,” Bootie said. “We’re not looking for money, just cooperation.”

LIFELONG LOVE OF FILM

Sandra Eubank always loved films. Her favorites as a child were “Ben Hur” and “Gone With the Wind.” She remembers seeing “Ben Hur” at the large American Theater in downtown Roanoke.

In her playacting, though, she was always a medical character, so nursing won out as a career.

Bootie, curly-haired as a child, said her mother to treated her like “a little Shirley Temple.” Bootie took dance lessons and would dance and sing “Marsey Dotes” on cue. She still will.

Now, as grandmothers (six for Sandra and five for Bootie), the two women still love movies, and they’d especially love to bring more of the movie business to the region.

“We’re just ‘two old Southern women,’ ” Sandra said. “We intend to turn what some view as a handicap into a marketable asset.”

“I want a movie studio in Roanoke.”

Two little old Southern ladies ought to be able to pull that off, they said.