South MS the first U.S. destination for legendary filmmaker’s “Hidden Gems” travel show

Peter Greenberg travels the world, reporting on ‘Hidden Gems’ in places like Ireland, Saudi Arabia and now South Mississippi.

“America’s Hidden Coast: Mississippi” is the first time Greenberg, an Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer, has this produced this travel show in the United States.

A sneak peek was presented Wednesday at the Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, where the audience got to see the stunning photography and hear the captivating stories from Coast natives.

“It can intrigue people,” said Greg Haney, chairman of the Mississippi House Tourism Committee, after watching the hour-long show that takes viewers out on the water, to the barrier islands, to a ghost town, a sunken island and a turtle rescue.

The show will broadcast at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9 on Mississippi PBS television.

It then will roll out — to a potential audience of close to 103 million viewers — on other Public Broadcasting stations, Amazon Prime and Apple TV, he said.

It’s the first U.S. destination featured

Greenberg already was familiar with South Mississippi, when he met Patricia Meagher, director of communications at Coastal Mississippi tourist promotion agency, who suggested he feature the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

In 1972, he got a job reporting for “Newsweek” magazine, driving from Houston to Mississippi in his orange VW bus.

Coming to Mississippi for the first time back then, “It was all hidden to me. And I knew it was hidden to my audience,” he said.

He thought about Meagher’s request for a “Hidden Gems” show and said, “You know what? We’ve never done one in the United States. Let’s do the first one in Mississippi.”

He now has several travel shows on radio and television. For these “Hidden” shows, the premise is: “No gift shop, no tour bus, no brochures, no guidebooks, no Trip Advisor stickers. We’re taking you the audience to the most amazing experiences that nobody knows about, but they’re all accessible to them.”

“It shows the character of the Coast,” said Judy Young, executive director of Coastal Mississippi, and is a great jumping off point for future projects on the characters of the Coast.

What viewers will see

The local audience knows about many of the places on the show. The national and international audience does not, he said

Local viewers may be unhappy that while Greenberg says there are 12 cities on the Coast, he doesn’t feature them all.

“I do not promote tourism. That’s not my job,” he said. His job, he said, is to present information to people so they can make informed and intelligent decisions about where they want to go and what they want to do.

So he takes the audience to the days of Hurricane Katrina, when Nikki Moon was forced to hold on to a tree to stay alive.

Among his other features are:

▪ He goes out onto the sand with Harrison County Supervisor Rebecca Powers, where he drove one of the the sand cleaning machines that groom all 26 miles of beach every day.

▪ At Ocean Adventures Marine Park in Gulfport, he learns about the rehabilitation of dolphins and sea turtles, and meets Tofu, a turtle that was cared for and released back into the Gulf minus his back flipper.

▪ He learns to deal blackjack at a Coast casino, took a sunrise sail on a Biloxi schooner and played “How Great is Our God,” on the organ at 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis, saying he felt the history of legendary musicians like B.B. King and Ray Charles, who had taken that stage before him.

Exploring hidden places

He went places many people in South Mississippi never experienced before and met storytellers — South Mississippi “characters” — who shared nearly forgotten history:

▪ He journeyed to Logtown, now a ghost town on the Pearl River.

▪ He went to look for the Isle of Caprice off the Mississippi Coast. Once known as the “Monte Carlo of the South,” the island now lies under four feet of water. Susan Hunt, whose grandfather ran a resort on the island, said she and her sister Martha Tripp still paid the $8.22 in taxes on the land this year, just in case the island should surface as it’s done before.

▪ Greenberg rowed up to Horn Island, as legendary artist Walter Anderson did when he would escape civilization. Ronald Baker, who was raised on Deer Island off the Coast of Biloxi., loaned Greenberg a 60-year old skiff for the scene and apologized that it was leaking.

▪ On Horn Island, he explored and sketched with Walter Anderson’s great-grandson, Matt Stebly.

“I can think of worse places to be,” Stebly said as the cameras capture the island’s beauty.

“Me too,” Peter replied.

Catching dinner

Greenberg closes the show with a pop-up dinner he caught himself on the King Arthur shrimping boat with owner Ron Barker, who’s been shrimping the Coast for 43 years.

The hosts were ‘Michael and Stephanie Paoletti, who cooked the seafood dinner on The Lot in Ocean Springs. Everyone featured in the show came to dinner, Greenberg said.

What he was looking in the show filmed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was to find a place where history still lives in resilient communities, he said.

He was welcomed by the glue that holds the Coast together, he said, “Genuine hospitality.”