If you were alive in 2005, you almost certainly saw Walk the Line, the mega successful biopic directed by James Mangold and featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as country legend Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash, already a country star in her own right when they met.
Johnny and June died, eerily just four months apart from each other, in 2003, so they weren't around to weigh in on how they saw themselves portrayed on the silver screen, but their clan of children sure could.
Dismayed at the erasure of their mother Vivian Liberto, Johnny Cash's first wife, from Walk the Line and the extreme focus on his second marriage, Johnny's four daughters, Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara, decided Johnny Cash's story wasn't complete without a deeper look into Vivian's life and tumultuous marriage to the star.
Their documentary My Darling Vivian, released in 2020, seeks to right the wrongs they feel Walk the Line did to her memory and tell the story of Johnny Cash's maligned and forgotten first wife.
Johnny Cash's Four Daughters Think Their Mother Vivian's Story Needs To Be Told
While fans are familiar with the ups and downs of Johnny and June Cash's fiery marriage, we know less about his relationship with his first wife Vivian Liberto.
Vivian was just 17 years old when she met Johnny Cash in 1951 at a roller skating rink in San Antonio while he was in basic training for the Air Force. Johnny Cash's daughters tell an amusing anecdote about how Johnny Cash pretended to bump into Vivian in order to strike up a conversation.
After dating for three weeks, the pair were forced into a long-distance relationship as Johnny was deployed to Germany for three years, during which time they frequently and feverishly wrote love letters back and forth to one another.
These love letters form the basis of much of what Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara know about their parents' romance, and they insist it is every bit as passionate as their dad's marriage to their stepmother.
These letters are also documented in Vivian's 2007 memoir I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny Cash, but nothing can compare to seeing them brought to life on the screen, along with footage and photographs chronicling their love affair.
Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara Cash Say June Carter Cash Got Too Much Credit
According to the version of history that's laid out in My Darling Vivian, it seems that June Carter Cash has taken too much credit for raising Johnny Cash's four daughters Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy, and Tara.
Soon after Vivian and Johnny married, his ascent to (multidisciplinary) fame began, and he was away from home for longer and longer stretches playing concerts and recording music. Vivian was left alone to raise their four children without her husband, and the now-grown-up daughters say Vivian was amazing as a mother despite her loneliness and sadness about her marriage.
They say June Carter Cash took too much credit for raising them and for "saving" Johnny from self-destruction after he divorced their mother, a narrative that's only reinforced by Walk the Line.
These are the stories that Walk the Line leaves out: a beautiful and formidable woman who was devoted to Johnny even as he had affairs away from home and continued to break her heart.
Johnny Cash's First Wife Vivian Liberto Stood By Him During His Drug Addiction
While Johnny Cash's addiction is portrayed in Walk the Line with a few sloppy scenes of him staggering around, the reality was much darker than that.
The country legend's battle with amphetamines, barbiturates, and alcohol — and the infidelity the substances gave way to — destroyed his marriage to Vivian and his relationship with his daughters.
Rosanne Cash, the oldest of his four daughters, remembers the first time she thought her dad "different" due to drug use, and she recalls sensing that he was getting close to June Carter Cash even before the revelation of his affair with her.
Vivian Liberto Was The Victim Of Horrific Racism
Vivian Liberto was the target of racist attacks when many people mistook her Sicilian-American features for those of African-Americans. Mixed-race marriages were illegal at the time and racist hate-mongers were quick to attack her and Johnny.
The National States’ Rights Party in Alabama published nasty, hateful comments about the couple and staged a boycott of Johnny's music. Johnny Cash issued a statement clarifying that Vivian was of Sicilian descent, which enabled him to keep selling music in the South.
Privately, he even exploited this situation for his own advantage, citing it as a reason for his being away for long stretches. According to Johnny Cash's biographer Michael Streissguth, Vivian got a letter from Johnny saying, "'I'm sorry I haven’t been home, but I've been out fighting the KKK.'"
Given all that she went through, it's a shame how much Vivian was erased from Johnny Cash's story and even made out to be nagging and shrewish. A compelling story of a strong, devoted wife and mother, My Darling Vivian takes the first steps in setting the record straight.