(Inspired by the Ernest Shackleton thread) I remember seeing a stage show about her life during the 1970’s, which I thought was thrilling. There’s also been a TV movie, A Woman Called Moses, in 1978, and what a believe was a documentary, Harriet Tubman: The Quest for Freedom, in 1992. But that’s it, as far as I can tell.
Her life would be a terrific movie. Maybe the success of 42, about Jackie Robinson, will inspire someone (Spike Lee? Oprah Winfrey?) to make it.
Totally agree, and I’ll also throw out Dred and Harriet Scott as great biopic subjects.
With both Tubman and the Scotts, the sketchiness of the historical record would work to Hollywood’s advantage. Scenes can be embellished and backstory added without doing violence to a copiously documented history.
She was a character in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; does that count?
Weird thing: of 3,982 historical errors that don’t even include vampires in that movie, seeing Harriet Tubman on a Louisiana plantation for some reason bothered me the most.
Interesting things about Tubman: she was narcoleptic, led troops into battle (possibly the first woman to do so with the U.S. military), and was one of the few people who liked Mary Lincoln better than Abraham.
I’d really like to see a good movie set around John Brown- he’s a fascinating and enigmatic character and far more divisive today than most radicals of his era. And Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass (and John Wilkes Booth, and most major transcendalists) would have cameos.
Really? What other terrorists do you think they should make a movie about?
(I kid, I kid!)
Harriet Tubman would be a wonderful subject for a movie,a ndI’d love for it to be done by someone who places a moderate value on historical accuracy. That is, don’t let the history get in the way of a good story, but do let the history suggest unusual and nontraditional directions for the story.
Harriet Tubman, not surprisingly, was illiterate and spoke with the voice and dialect and grammer of a field slave. I mention this because she herself was very self conscious about it in later years. After the war she was offered small fortunes (not that small for the time probably) to go on the lecture circuit, but in spite of being the bravest and most famous and most accomplished person there she felt miserable speaking in front of audiences who were mostly educated middle class and above (at least for the time-place) white people. She only occasionally spoke in public and she did so strictly for money- not for herself but for the home she built and managed for the indigent.
She also turned down lucrative offers to write her memoirs. I’m not exactly sure why- one excuse I’ve read is fear that it would get some people in trouble even many years after the war and that she had probably done things that might have gotten her into legal trouble herself. Plus, since it would have all been ghost written, it probably would have been sanitized and then wrapped in purple prose and melodrama like so many of the pop-memoirs at the time.
It would not be at all surprising if she killed somebody in one of her missions, and regardless of how noble the justification slavery was legal at the time and she could probably have been indicted for it even after the Civil War. She admitted holding pistols on members of the parties she was leading to freedom to make them fall in line or when one wanted to go back to the plantation (because if one went back it could damn the rest of them), so the “real story” is probably a very very interesting one that we’ll unfortunately never know.
I don’t know enough black actresses to know who could play her. It would take someone fairly young.
They could do a movie like Dustin Hoffman did Little Big Man. That is, have a framing sequence of the elderly Harriet, and then flash back to her roots.
I was going to suggest that Tyler Perry could cross over from middle-class black melodramas and comedies into the mainstream to make this, but then I realized he’d want to play Tubman himself in drag and then my brain just shut down.
The Russell Banks book Cloudsplitter about John Brown is being made into an HBO move with Scorsese producing.
it is a very good book, but Banks does state that it is a work of fiction and not a history book.
I have some theories about why Tubman has not had a good movie or full length documentary done on her. Decades of juvenile biographies - from the late 1940s through to today - have softened the seriousness and reality of Tubman’s life as worthy of adult attention. As a Tubman biographer I can assure you that there is a lot of information about Tubman in the historical record. It is a myth that she did not leave much behind for us to use to recreate her life story. Much of what has been mentioned on this thread for instance are myths and 20th century imaginary stories and impressions of Tubman. For instance, she loved to speak in front of audiences. She loved to tell her story. She wanted action, however, and she expcted her audiences to act. This did not always happen. She was not offered large mounts of money ever for anything she did or said. She earned about $1200 for her first biography, written in 1868. The three following versions of her biography brought her very small sums of money - Sarah Brodaford, who wrote all of them for Tubman, received no compensation, and usually the prinitng costs were paid for by friends and supporters. She was a busy woman, with a household full of dependents. She worked as a domestic, farmer, and businesswoman, to provide for her family and friends in need. Lots of people, white and black, helped her. But she was always uncomfortable asking for help for herself. She was not invited to go on a lecture circuit - she was too busy trying to return to Maryland to rescue more family members - and besides, they did not pay those lecturer’s very well (except for maybe Fred Douglass, but event hen it wasn’t much of a living). She did speak at a few public meetings, were teh hat was passed around to the audience for them to help raise money for her causes. Those early biographies are good, though flawed, and they may have indeed been sanitized somewhat. Then again, some of it was certainly hyped up, too. And they are very racist, too, sothey must be used with caution. She never killed anyone on her missions, but she admitted that she would have if provoked in order to save the whole group. She carried a pistol for protection from slave catchers. We have testimony from one man who admitted after the Civil War that she pulled th epistol on him when he grew weak and tired and wanted to go back.
Tubman had epileptic seizures, not narcolepsy, that were the result of her near fatal head injury she suffered at 13. Tubman never met Lincoln - she regretted it after he was killed. SHe had been furious with him for not using black troops sooner, not setting the slaves free sooner, and not paying black soldiers their rigthful equal pay.
A Woman Called Moses is a terrible movie - except CicelyTyson is stunning as Tubman. Based on the book of the same name, it is a work of fiction that has marred Tubman’s story for thirty five years. Full of misinformation, myths, and racism.
President Obama signed an Executive Order at the end of March designating the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Dorchester County, MD. But we are hoping to get a full fledged National Park, too, that will include her home site in Auburn NY where she spent the last 50 years of her life. She died in 1913.
Hopefull this attention will push someone to make a movie Spike Lee and Oprah have already said not to a movie. Anyone got any ideas???
Just don’t have Quentin Tarantino do it.
Historical movies are generally not made from “topics”–no matter how fascinating. They are usually based on historical novels or popular nonfiction books–including biographies. The more recently these books have been in the public eye, the better. Movies (or good TV miniseries) are quite expensive & backers need to be convinced their investment would be worthwhile.
Ms Larson’s biography is highly rated. (I just nabbed a used copy.) But it came out in 2004–so it isn’t new. Somebody needs to place a copy in the hands of an interested filmmaker (or showrunner). I’d watch it!
Harriet Tubman is my very favorite black historical figure. My FAVORITE. As a teen, I used to downplay her, out of anger and frustration that the only thing we learned about black history in school was Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman. I was young and idealistic and on fire for more controversial figures like Malcolm X. Only later, with much reading and research, did I learn that the watered down version of Harriet Tubman (and Dr. King, for that matter) did her no justice.
I would kill to see the movie done well. And NOT starring Viola Davis. She is becoming the new Cicely Tyson when it comes to shucking and bowing her way through movies, and I don’t want Harriet played that way.
There are a number of significant historical figures without so much as a good biography. Other than an YA one published around 1960, Robert H. Goddard has no formal, full-length biography.
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I would kill to see the movie done well. And NOT starring Viola Davis. She is becoming the new Cicely Tyson when it comes to shucking and bowing her way through movies, and I don’t want Harriet played that way.
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Octavia Spencer did a great deranged-diva version of herself playing Harriet Tubman on 30 Rock. I wish I could link. IIRC it was in her contract (in the movie within the show) that Harriet could walk through walls and that there be product placement for Octavia Spencer’s website visible.
Viola Davis wishes should be the new Cicely Tyson!
I wish Hollywood could tolerate more than a couple of A-list black women at a time. There’s no shortage of excellent black actresses in the world. Seems like the few powerful parts out there are always doled out to the same pretty faces.
And even while I’m typing this, I’m imagining Angela Bassett as Harriet Tubman. 'Cuz isn’t she the one that gets all the “strong” roles?
There are a ton of slave stories out there that are waiting to be told (and retold, in the case of Harriet). Like, I’d love to see Nat Turner’s story placed out on the big screen. Jamie Foxx would have made a good Nat Turner.
True.
Not gonna lie…I do totally think she would nail the part. But your point is very well taken.
The Nat Turner story is one I have long longed to see on film. I would have rejected Jamie Foxx as the actor, but after Django, I’ve been won over. I’m convinced he can handle not over-acting strong characters.
Spike Lee doesn’t get to say anything about anyone making any movie until he apologies for that piece of shit he directed called Red Hook Summer.
When did he become Commissar of Blackness?