'My Darling Vivian': Johnny Cash's First Wife Profiled In New Documentary
Johnny Cash’s First Wife Profiled in New Doc ‘My Darling Vivian’: Vivian Liberto was a private figure whose 13-year marriage to the country singer was eclipsed by the shadow of “Johnny & June,” Rolling Stone, April 29, 2020.
Think of Johnny Cash and any number of images will spring to mind, not the least of which is his relationship with his wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash. While their love story has been elevated to epic status thanks to a number of media portrayals, like 2005’s Walk the Line, Cash’s marriage to his first wife Vivian Liberto has been a blind spot.
My Darling Vivian, a thoroughly engrossing, often heartbreaking documentary directed by Nashville filmmaker Matt Riddlehoover and produced by Riddlehoover and Dustin Tittle, aims to change that. The film looks at the promising beginnings and turbulent end of Liberto’s romance and family life with Cash via intimate, never-before-seen footage, photographs, and a wealth of personal letters the two wrote to each other while Cash served in the military. Featuring the candid memories of the couple’s four daughters — Rosanne Cash, Kathy Cash Tittle, Cindy Cash, and Tara Cash Schwoebel — the film is their love note to the enigmatic woman whom Rosanne says “faded into negative obscurity” after her 13-year marriage to Cash ended in divorce.
- Vivian and Johnny Cash.
My Darling Vivian is currently streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video as part of the SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection of features, shorts, and documentaries that were originally slated to debut at the canceled event. Here are six things we learned from the documentary about Liberto and her important place in Cash history.
Vivian Liberto’s fateful first encounter with Johnny Cash remains a source of debate among their daughters. In the summer of 1951, 18-year-old Cash was an Air Force trainee stationed in San Antonio, Texas, when he first met Liberto at a local roller rink. But the stories Cash told his daughters about how the pair actually first met vary, with Cash either winning a bet with friends that he would walk Vivian home that night (the version he told Rosanne), or deliberately knocking her down while skating so he could meet her (the version his younger daughters were told)...
Read More, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/johnny-cash-first-wife-my-darling-vivian-movie-991700/
More about the film, https://www.mydarlingvivian.com/