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The curves. The elegance. The grace. She’s a gem in front of the camera.

You can see for yourself this weekend at the Carolina Theatre.

She’ll be on the big screen, along with a gaggle of young actors and the man hired by Walt Disney to make generations laugh — and wish they owned a pearl-white VW Beetle with a brain.

You know, Dean Jones. The actor from 1968’s “The Love Bug.’’

He’s now 78 , and he’s one of the stars of “Mandie and the Secret Tunnel.’’ So is she. But she’s a few years older. And according to the filmmakers, she’s a dream.

That’s Chinqua Penn Plantation.

In “Lolita,’’ the mansion’s last big movie role at least a dozen years ago, you saw three minutes of Chinqua Penn. Maybe.

But in “Mandie and the Secret Tunnel,’’ a children’s film released Tuesday on DVD, you’ll see at least 80 minutes of Chinqua Penn. And if you figure “Mandie’’ runs 103 minutes, well, that’s a chunk of screen time.

How did it happen? Her spiral staircase.

Joy Chapman and Owen Smith, two filmmakers from Georgia, were casing western North Carolina for potential locations for “Mandie’’ when they surfed the Internet on their cell phone with this search: “plantation homes in North Carolina.’’

A hit. Chinqua Penn.

When they clicked on the mansion’s Web site — and saw the spiral staircase, the furniture and the great room with the ceiling at least 30 feet high — they both thought one thing: “Holy cow, this kind of place exists in the South?’’

They drove straight to Chinqua Penn. A few hours later, as day turned to dusk, they stepped into a 33,000-square-foot, 27-room place built when Babe Ruth played baseball.

That’s all it took.

“It was almost too easy,’’ said Smith, 29. “Every direction we pointed the camera was beautiful. We left there knowing we wanted to show the house as much as possible. Every room looked like a set.’’

You can ask Chapman and Smith about that Sunday. They’ll be at the Carolina Theatre, along with a few of the film’s actors. They’ll talk about filming a period flick, set in 1899, about a young girl searching for her past.

You may recognize the title. It comes from South Carolina writer Lois Leppard. It’s the first story in Leppard’s 40-volume series on Mandie, a character based on her mother, Mahalia.

Watch the movie, and you’ll recognize North Carolina. There are scenes of Maggie Valley’s Ghost Town in the Sky, Stone Mountain State Park and the Moses Cone Plantation near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

But Chinqua Penn takes center stage.

After Chapman and Smith saw the mansion, they retooled a few scenes to include the country-meets-couture architecture of the home built in the 1920s by Jeff and Betsy Penn, Reidsville’s globe-trotting millionaires.

In October 2007, the filmmakers descended on Rockingham County for 13 days. They crashed at a local Days Inn, noshed on fried chicken and barbecue from Reidsville’s Caterfest and turned Chinqua Penn into one big sound stage.

Lights blew the place bright, cords snaked across the floor and a crowd of folks carrying equipment or sipping iced tea made the mansion feel more like a subway stop.

At first, it worried Lynn Umstead, Chinqua Penn’s marketing director at the time. She saw the crowd and the tables of food and thought, “Oh my Lord, something’s going to spill! The rug’s going to be ruined!’’

It didn’t happen. The filmmakers — and their cadre of crew and actors and actors’ families — followed the advice of Ann Toler, the curator.

And what did she say?

“Be careful wherever you go,’’ she told them. “And remember, you do not sit on a chair at Chinqua Penn.’’

They didn’t. They caught Chinqua Penn just right. And she’s beautiful.

 

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com

 

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