As a young girl, my grandmother Nancy Penn Smith Hannum inherited a kingdom she spent a lifetime fighting to protect. Goodnight Ladies is a portrait of that life - of the woman herself and the legend she became. It is also a tribute - now on the 100th anniversary of Mr. Stewart's Cheshire Foxhounds -- to the legacy she leaves behind and to the vast treasure of land she worked so hard to preserve.

Goodnight Ladies was itself born from a larger film - Keeping Sound - which I began to make in 1998. Keeping Sound asked the question: "How does one keep sound, unbroken, free from injury?" The film opened with an image of an animated horse - a recurring "night-mare"which for years woke me from my sleep: "What will happen when my grandmother dies?" Keeping Sound went on to explore the honors and privileges, but also the burdens and responsibilities of family and tradition.

More than a decade later, Goodnight Ladies finds a somewhat different focus - evoking the human spirit, the thrill of the chase, the call of the hunting horn and the sheer determination of a remarkable girl named Nancy who, following in a line of Masters from E. H. Harriman to Plunket Stewart, came to take her place beside them.

Tough as nails and with a voice that could be heard for miles, Nancy Hannum left behind not only one of the world's most renowned packs of foxhounds but also a legacy that is felt today in every one of us who remembers her twinkling eyes and generous heart.

Christianna Potter Hannum

September 13, 2012

Born in 1919, Nancy Penn Smith Hannum grew up on Long Island, New York until the age of ten. In 1929, after the death of her father, R. Penn Smith, Jr., she moved with her family to Unionville, Pennsylvania.