Review: My Darling Vivian
Having four kids with a music legend would not seem like a fast-track to obscurity.
But that was more or less the reality for Vivian Liberto who, in the pre-Internet days of the 1950s and 60s, managed to first emerge as the love of Johnny Cash’s life — and in very short order, mother to their daughters Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara — before being completely overshadowed by Cash’s blockbuster second marriage to country music star June Carter.
The wildly poignant, in-depth new documentary My Darling Vivian aims to restore Liberto’s good name — trampled for dramatic effect by the popular biopic Walk the Line and for real by Carter’s subsequent omnipresence in Cash’s life — while illustrating the woman’s grit as she raised her brood more or less alone as her husband’s star soared.
Indeed, as Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara tell it, Liberto and Cash’s love story was one for the ages . . . at least initially.
The pair met in 1951 in Liberto’s hometown of San Antonio Texas, where Cash — serving with the United States Air Force — was stationed. Just three weeks later, Cash was dispatched to Germany. The move triggered a volley of love letters between the two that made Romeo and Juliet look like lightweights. The pair married a month after Cash’s Stateside return in 1954; daughter Rosanne arrived the following spring.
The next few years were a blur; Liberto popped out babies and tended a homestead menagerie as Cash toured the globe, hobnobbing with the stars of the day. It was all bound to end badly and it did, in a way. Cash became a phenom albeit one saddled by drug dependence, while Liberto — private, stoic, and almost alien in her beauty — raised four children who unequivocally adored her. Really, who was the superstar in this epic?
Abundant archival home movies allow filmmaker Matt Riddlehoover — whose mother-in-law is Kathy Cash Tittle — to powerfully illustrate Liberto and Cash’s life as it happened. But the film’s narrative thrust comes from the pair’s daughters, who are interviewed extensively and whose technicolor anecdotes imbue this story with remarkable depth, shape, and texture. If this tale had unfolded today, Twitter would have exploded.
A must-see for Cash fans, My Darling Vivian — the title borrowed from a salutation in one of Cash’s many missives to Liberto posted during his assignment — is also highly recommended for anyone who loves a good love story, both romantic and filial. Valentines don’t come more persuasive than this.
My Darling Vivian is available on VOD via Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema (https://www.hotdocscinema.ca) until August 27, and Vancity Theatre (https://www.viff.org/).
An up-to-date virtual screening list can be found here: (mydarlingvivian.com/watch)
"My Darling Vivian" tells the little-known story of Vivian Liberto, the first wife of Johnny Cash.
My Darling Vivian joins a notable canon of films about famous country music couples:
Blaze (2018): Ethan Hawke directed this terrific “reimagining” of the late (some would say doomed) Texas cult figure Blaze Foley which is like a country song writ large, all heartbreak and booze.
I Saw The Light (2015): Kind of meh and inexplicably starring Briton Tom Hiddleston (Jake Gyllenhaal was too busy?) but notable for chronicling the dazzling, brief life of Hank Williams.
Walk the Line (2005): Multiple Oscar noms (and one win, for Reese Witherspoon as June Carter) capped this Hollywood biopic of Johnny Cash, which painted our man as the hippest cat this side of Elvis.
Coal Miner's Daughter (1980): Until the hotly anticipated Dolly Parton biopic lands, this dramatic look at the life of Loretta Lynn stands as the quintessential rags-to-riches country music saga.
