Wild River is a 1960 American drama film directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet. It was filmed in the Tennessee Valley, and was adapted by Paul Osborn from two novels: Borden Deal's Dunbar's Cove and William Bradford Huie's Mud on the Stars, drawing for plot from Deal's story of a battle of wills between the nascent Tennessee Valley Authority and generations-old land owners, and from Huie's study of a rural Southern matriarchal family for characters and their reaction to destruction of their land, and the controversial employment of African-American laborers by the TVA. It marked Bruce Dern's film debut. The film was selected for National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2002.