Country music icon Johnny Cash’s life has been well-explored over the years. The 2005 film “Walk the Line” focused primarily on his relationship with fellow icon June Carter, but doesn’t focus as much on Cash’s first wife and the mother of his four daughters.
Vivian Liberto was born and raised around San Antonio. She gets her story told in a new documentary called “My Darling Vivian.”
Director Matt Riddlehoover told Texas Standard host David Brown that his interest in telling this story was partially personal.
“My mother-in-law is Kathy Cash-Tittle, Vivian and John’s second eldest daughter. So I had heard stories about Vivian over the years that, you know, weren’t quite matching up with what I had seen in the 2005 film ‘Walk the Line,’ because I think like most of the general public, I took that as the peek behind the curtain. And that’s what was and what happened. And when I was hearing about my mother-in-law’s upbringing and about her mother, none of it seemed to pair with the narrative in that film,” Riddlehoover said.
He said the biggest oversight in the current historical record is that Liberto considered Cash the love of her life and “loved him until her dying day.”
“And that’s something you don’t see in the very few portrayals of her that existed before this film,” Riddlehoover said. “Very supportive, but just incredibly ill-equipped to deal with substance abuse. And the long absences.”
