Other Films of the Revolution and the Young Republic

Other Films of the Revolution and the Young Republic

Robert Goldstein and "the Spirit of '76"

The Revolution:
First in War First in Peace Last at the Box Office

Where the patriots eventually caused too many disasters for Britain and eventually persuaded King George to let them go, literature has been kinder to the Patriots than the box office. Even The Scarlet Coat (Redcoat) which takes a view of the Andre Affair sympathetic to the British followed in a tradition of box office disasters. Where American literature even before James Fennimore Cooper produced notable pieces of fact and fiction about the conception of the nation, the theatre until the time of the Patriot (2000) produced few successes in turning the icons into flesh and blood and retrieving them from shadowy myths.

Robert Goldstein, the father of all American Revolution films, came to a sorry end in the holocaust, but not before he was jailed exiled and then ignored by the country whose heritage he sought to preserve

see The Tragic Odessey of Robert Goldstein

In 1917 Robert Goldstein produced the Spirit of 1776 and went to jail as an anti-English agitator for his trouble. Since that time the subject has been approached with caution and sparingly treated on the Silver and small screen.

Those few that followed were mainly box office disasters with only an occasional glimmer of success.

The Disney production, The Swamp Fox, was among the few notable successes. Francis Marion was commemorated in a Longfellow poem which at one time every school child could recite on command.

His band is few
Its leader bold
The British soldier trembles
When Marion's name is told

However even as early as the writing of the poem, reservations about the subject were voiced. Another famous writer suggested that "British soldier" be struck in favor of foe-men so as to avoid offence. Longfellow asked, exactly what do you think we rebelled against?

The real life Francis Marion lived up to all Longfellow's claims for him.

Prior to the second battle for Charleston an obscure, deliriously drunk American major fell off a second story balcony. Returned home to nurse a broken leg Major Marion was not among the Americans who surrendered. As the British swept through the Carolinas, Marion gathered a small band together to organize resistance through hit and run raids and ambushes.

The popularity of Longfellow's poem had firmly secured a place for Marion in the pantheon even before Walt Disney painted it on the small screen with Leslie Nielsen as the legendary swamp fox who strikes by night and flees without a trace.

The TV show was a long running success. It is ironic that many of those who watched the show would later face an enemy who employed the Swamp Fox's tricks against them.

Goldstein envisioned the silent film 1776 as a cascade of historical tableaux from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown. Famed producer DW Griffiths remade the film Goldstein dreamed of in the silent feature America (1924). To avoid censure for anti-British thoughts DW Griffiths made the chief villains American Tories and ending the war in reconciliation between lovers who took opposite sides. In spite of impressive battle footage America flopped at the box office. DW Griffith's theme of reconciliation was borrowed by the film version Drums Along the Mohawk and the Howards of Virginia.

This theme may cause an occasional film to pass censorship but rests on an historical fallacy. Indeed reconciliation never occurred. Though many dedicated Rebels including the historical Swamp Fox proposed rehabilitation of the Tories, Tory lands were confiscated and the Tories ordered to flee. Here in the out-East the controversy periodically ends up in court over the forfeiture of Robbins Island.

Arundel

Rabble in Arms

Oliver Wiswell

Kenneth Robert daringly praised Arnold's talents and the courage and excoriated the insiduousness of his critics. Roberts never published a version of Arnold's treason, but Arnold reemerges in bitter tale of the Tory Oliver Wiswell as a British Loyalist Commander.

The plight of the displaced Tory, those who adhered to the Crown or those who rebelled against the rebels, caught between being the English they weren't and the American they had refused to become in itself would make an interesting yarn, but it is perhaps up to our second-cousins in Canada to decide when that time is ripe to present it to the silver screen.

American historical romance writer Kenneth Roberts brought the story of the Tories to print in the bitter tale of Oliver Wiswell but neither it nor any of his other writings on the Revolution made it to film. Others of Robert's books were reduced to film scripts. Indeed Kenneth Roberts is the only author who has a single book made in two separate movies. Lydia Bailey was the basis for the film Lydia Bailey and Tripoli. The former concerns the Haitian uprising against the French and delves into racial issues the American public may not always be ready to understand. The latter film makes more of a mockery out of America's War with Tripoli (1804) than it really was. Howard Da Silva later to star in the musical 1776 as Dr Benjamin Franklin played a Greek mercenary in Tripoli.

The more famous Robert's Northwest Passage the story of Rogers Rangers in the French and Indian (Seven Years) War did make it to film; the segments of the book which treat with the onset of Revolutionary agitation and the American War were deleted from the movie.

If we believe CNN's talking heads, wars are more talk than anything else. And what better spokesman did America have than the glib Benjamin Franklin who dazzled the French into joining the American cause. PBS produced Franklin the Diplomat in 1974 with a different actor playing Franklin every week. Naturally along the way, William Daniels managed to appear in his signature role as John Adams. In its time the Franklin series was more famous than the Adams Chronicles, though the latter survived the test of time.

Dr Franklin did say there never was a good war or a bad peace. In the Vietnam War era, TV produced THE YOUNG RADICALS, an attempt to harmonize the anti-heroism of the peace movement with the interest in the historical event as the bicentennial approached. The plot centered around pacifists who refuse to fight but who spy for the Americans. Why a pacifist would lean to the Americans who were spoiling for a fight and not the English King who was trying to restore peace and order is a fundamental contradiction the series did not explain. Generally such a spy is merely an opportunist. The show lasted two seasons and drew no major audience. The Lord President of the Society Edward Sommersett is the only known fan of the series.

The genuine spy stories of the Revolution would challenge a cold war espionage tale for sex and seduction. Women did much of the spying for the American cause; their contribution is generally glossed over. Yet like many other yarns their tales remain untold.

The Birth of a Nation: D.W. Griffith, Director (Rutgers Films in Print)

The Birth of a Nation

Although the Revolution has held its own in the print media, the Civil War has racked up many more titles in the motion pictures than the Revolution.

DW Griffiths, the acknowledged father of the US motion picture theatre, was an unabashed unbowed rebel -- from the wrong war. His classic Birth of A Nation which adopts an extreme White Supremist perspective in its retelling of the Civil War from the last Southern offencive in the Shennandoah Valley to the end of Reconstruction is regarded as both as a major achievement in the theatre equivalent some say to the invention of language and as an utter embarrassment to evolving liberal sensativities.

The suppressed Goldstein film Spirit of 76 from my studies was far better crafted and more clearly defined the historical romance in cinema.

President Wilson who jailed Goldstein and lauded Griffith would have reluctantly credited the truth of Birth of A Nation and affirmed Griffith's outrageous racism. NEVER TRUST A LIBERAL

Since the invention of TV, TV stations have generally refused to air Birth of A Nation.

Sex isn't that a dirty word! But if the founders had renounced it, where would the little Americans have come from? Jefferson in Paris tried to deal with that issue. Somehow despite the exciting background of the French Revolution and Jefferson's less than hidden relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings, the film writers managed to produce an incredibly boring film. Watching hamburgers broil on the grill at the annual Independence Day picnic of the Jefferson-Hemmings clan is far more exciting despite an accomplished cast including Nick Nolte as Thomas Jefferson and Thandie Newton as Sally Hemmings.

All Devils' work! The English did remake Devil's Disciple with Patrick Stewart better know for his role as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek-Next Generation. Regrettably Lionheart has not re-released the made for TV film in America.

What of the Indians many of whom allied with the British, where is their story told?

The Six Nations (Iroquois) adhered to the Empire in the American Revolution. In the TNT production "Broken Chain," the sad story of the highly civilized and democratic Iroquois is retold on the small screen. As white settlers rose up against the crown, Iroquois war chief Joseph Brandt led daring raids deep into New York and Pennsylvania. Influenced by Sir William Johnson (Pierce Brosnan), an Englishman sympathetic to Iroquois, Brant said in many circles to be Johnson's illegitimate son led Iroquois warriors against the Americans at Oriskany and Wyomi[ss]ing. The most horrifying raid in the Cherry Valley invited terrible retribution and ultimate destruction of the Iroquois nation.

The A&E production Tecumseh broke ground in retelling their story in the post Revolutionary era of the Young Republic.

Some of the greatest American leaders never lived in the White House; some never lived in any house; and many fought against the US. Tecumseh would have founded the Indian nation that the English wanted as a buffer state between the expansionist, aggressive United States and British territories remaining loyal to the crown.

Tecumseh is the Machiavellian leader par excellence. He preys on the Indian's superstitions; yet uses the White Man's medicine to predict eclipses and cement his sway over the Indians restive over US encroachments.

America needs leaders like you says William Henry Harrison (David Clennon) to Tecumseh. The chief has no use for the arriviste American nation. He wants to preserve the old ways: hunting and fishing.

Yet as much of a rationalist as Tecumseh is he lives in the shadow of a deadly prophesy: he will fall in battle but if not raised by an Indian he and the Indian nation he would found will down for the count -- for good. And this dire prophesy comes true at the Battle of the Thames.

Not recommended for the timorous US - er who believes in flowery (meaningless) speeches and empty oratory. Highly recommended for those who would like a study of leadership, the objective historical account was nicely complimented by an excellent performance by the cast especially David Clennon as the future president Wm Henry Harrison.

The Young Republic is also featured in Man Without a Country, based on Edward Evert Hale's compelling short story of an officer implicated in Burr's treason condemned by a court-martial never to hear again of the United States. Although the deathbed recantation of error by the traitor Nolan is splendidly acted in the older version, the 1937 version is a corny production of a griping story. A remake for TV starring Cliff Robertson shows considerable improvement; regrettably it has not been re-aired.

In the interim between Independence and the Second War with Britain, the leaders of the new nation recognized the need for a professional officer caste of native born Americans. The founding of the military academy is commemorated in The West Point Story starring future president Ronald Reagan.

The greatest film of the Young Republic without doubt is Buccaneer starring Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte and Charlton Heston as Andy (By Gawd) Jackson. Jackson's stalwart defense of the City of New Orleans brought to an end both conflict with Britain as well as the Revolutionary period. The battle scene where British Regulars marched directly into the withering fire of entrenched American riflemen accurately recounts the decisive American victory even if the film segment of the engagement lasts longer than the actual attack itself.

Other Movies of Revolution and Republic © 2003 by HA Andrews ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
HA Andrews is RPPS Commandant and maintains the RPPS Cultural Service.

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