“To Kill a Mockingbird,” one of the most-read books in the world, was written by Monroeville, Ala., native Harper Lee. The fictional setting of the 1960 book was a small town called Maycomb, which Lee confirmed numerous times in her lifetime was based on Monroeville, now a quaint town with plenty of “Mockingbird”-themed sites for tourists.

But the 1962 movie “To Kill a Mockingbird” was not filmed in Monroeville. Not any part of it was filmed anywhere in Alabama, despite what you may have read online.

Scroll through the gallery above to see photos of the Alabama premiere of the film and of Depression-era Monroeville.

The error is most often repeated in lists of movies filmed in Alabama (like this one) and writers of those lists are likely getting their information from Internet Movie Database, IMDb, which is an oft-used database of film information that is edited by a volunteer staff of movie buffs.

It is a great site to visit when you want to find the name of that actor that’s just out of your mind’s reach, the plot summary of a particular movie or what year a movie was released.

If you visit the IMDb page for “To Kill a Mockingbird” and scroll down to the “Filming locations” heading, you’ll find “Monroeville, Alabama,” at the top of the list. Yet the entire movie was filmed in a fake town created on a Universal Studios backlot in California, a fact backed up by Harper Lee and Gregory Peck, who portrayed Atticus Finch in the film. Peck went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.

The movie was filmed in California from February to May 1962. In the March 26, 1962, edition of The Birmingham News, Peck was interviewed on set about why the movie could not be shot in Alabama.

“It’s impossible to find a town that would look like the [19]30s; they’ve all got chain stores and TV aerials now,” Peck said. “The logical place to shoot it would be Monroeville Ala., Miss Lee’s hometown. But the streets are paved now and we needed dirt streets, the way it used to be. So we built our own town here at the studio.”

Harper Lee, known by her first name Nelle to friends, visited the California set in January, just before filming began. She later told The Birmingham News that the house based on her own childhood home “looked so real that I wanted to sit down in a rocking chair and fan myself.”

“The town is so good,” she said, “that I’m afraid people will think it was filmed on location.”

Peck, his wife Veronique Peck and director Robert Mulligan visited Monroeville in early January 1962 to get to know Lee and get a feel for the town, according to The Monroe Journal.

The Monroe Journal reported in April 1962 how set designers were able to reproduce a small Southern town on 11 acres in California.

“The make an Alabama town in Hollywood, an expedition of photographers and sketch artists made a thorough study of Monroeville to get a perfect background for Miss Lee’s story,” the article said. “The setting of Maycomb, Ala., was made more realistic when some wooden homes built at the turn of the century, which had to be removed for California freeway extensions, were taken to the studio.”

The film premiered Dec. 25, 1962, at Fox Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, now Saban Theatre, and went into wide release in March 1963.

A special premiere was held at the Melba Theatre in Birmingham on Wednesday, April 4, 1963, with the child stars of the film – Mary Badham and Philip Alford – in attendance.

Lee remained friends with Gregory Peck until his death June 12, 2003, at the age of 87. She wrote to Alabama Supreme Court justice Gorman Houston on June 20, 2003, that she’d heard the news that Peck had died. She wrote: “Greg was a prince of a man. He was a rarity: a thoroughly good person. If he ever had an unkind thought, he didn’t express it. I shall always feel his loss. We were friends for more than 40 years!” Lee died in 2016.