With disciplined education and experience, he was ready to employ his skills and begin his career. Walter went into general practice law on Hilton Head during a time when few in the legal profession had offices on the island. He was able to manage a wide range of legal issues, from family law to business and real estate transactions, with little competition. The ever-resourceful storyteller, Walter networked and socialized in the community with charisma and wit. He had all the endearing assets of a great attorney, including being a naturally gifted writer and innovative thinker.

In 1975, he wrote his first novel. The Lowcountry Incident. A Tale of Civil Disobedience was a story of eco terrorism inspired by a local story of a corporate initiative to develop an industrial process plant on the banks of the Colleton River. Walter’s next writing project was a screenplay for a TV series called, The Lifeline. It was about the ironic lives and properties of those living on either side of Calibogue Sound. Could two vastly different socio-economic worlds on Daufuskie and Hilton Head come together and exist in a cohesive society? He pitched the pilot to SCETV. 

They accepted the script, but the public television station’s funding dried up. After Walter wrote the screenplay, he realized that film intrigued him. Screenplays are more multidimensional than novels. They have structure and depth. They are universal blueprints for producers, directors, cast and crew to interpret with visuals rather than just words.

At a pivotal point in Walter’s career, he withdrew from the law profession and changed course. He understood the exponential growth on Hilton Head and decided to start a business to capitalize on the tourism industry. Thousands of day trippers and weekly visitors drove to and from the island every day, and Walter wanted to capture the attention of that market. He opened Marlin Outdoor Advertising in the late

1980’s with its first billboard on Hwy 170 in Okatie. Over the decades, via fee simple deeds, perpetual easements and leases from landowners, Marlin now has over a thousand faces all over SC and GA and is the largest independently owned billboard company in both states. Walter enjoys business. It gives him joy. He likes taking on a new project, researching new locations, and preparing the site development. The billboard business is, in fact, a lot like film. Both require production of a product based on innovation and evolving dynamics.

As he continued to grow his outdoor advertising business, Walter wrote another screenplay and submitted it to a production company. This time, he negotiated 50% ownership of the film. Sand Dollar was a dramatic and action-packed movie about smuggling marijuana in the Lowcountry. Sound familiar? It was sold to the largest independently owned film company in Hollywood. The producer accepted the screenplay as a TV series; however, due to difficulties at the production company, they were not able to proceed with the agreement.
After a few years of traveling and raising his girls, Elle, Lane and Maren, Walter had more freedom to create. He read about a local director from Augusta named Chris Forbes from and article written by Michael DeWitt in the Hampton County Guardian about a movie Forbes was premiering in Hampton. 

Walter was interested and met Forbes in Hilton Head to discuss his next film. Forbes asked Walter to be the Executive Producer of his next epic drama, Sherman’s March to the Sea about the massive, heartbreaking event that changed the way modern warfare was fought forever. As history explains, Sherman’s March, also called the Savannah Campaign, was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21, 1864, by William Tecumseh Sherman, major general of the Union Army.  62,000 Union troops marched from Atlanta to Savannah. This movie, however, is not a documentary. It’s an epic tale with a subplot about rival calvary generals, Judson Kilpatrick and Fighting Joe Wheeler feuding from Augusta to Savannah. Another subplot portrays a woman who sees her daughter raped and murdered on a plantation by foragers following Union Troops and signs up to be a spy for the Confederate Army to get vengeance.

The rising action and climax of the film illustrates the major event that some call the Betrayal. Others call the Massacre, but it’s best known as the Tragedy at Ebenezer Creek. As Union Troops passed through plantations, it was common for newly freed slaves to follow them in hopes of receiving their 40 acres and a mule promised to them by Sherman. You could say Sherman’s March was America’s first freedom march. But the march took a tragic turn when Sherman lifted the pontoon bridge at Ebenezer Creek, a tributary on the Svannah River, leaving hundreds if not thousands of African American families to drown.

Forbes utilized real-life reenactors who owned the muskets, horses, and uniforms for the movie. Sherman’s March to the Sea premiered in Augusta, GA at the Poison Peach Film Festival on January 9, 2022. So, what is next for Walter Czura? Perhaps producing a contemporary action drama about drug smuggling in the Lowcountry? He already owns 50% of the screenplay, why not? Walter candidly grins, “I think I’ll call it, The Final Load.” Get your popcorn cinema fans. Walter Czura has more to come.