# Historical inaccuracies that are not minor **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 16, 2012, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057 "2012-05-16T03:11:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/161 "2012-05-25T03:09:48Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > _A Man for all Seasons_ whitewashes Sir/St. Thomas More a bit. It’s doubtful, for example, that the families of the Protestants he burned to death when he was in power under Henry VIII would be that moved by his persecution under the same king. (There’s also some character merging (e.g. Thomas Howard, D. of Norfolk is a composite of the real Thomas Howard and other characters) and subtracting (e.g. More had more children than just Alice- in fact his most important early biography was written by his son), but that’s to be expected when you’re cramming so much into two hours.) > > _1776_ is one of my favorite movies and, while it takes liberties with (but never declared independency of) history for dramatic purposes, it stays generally correct. However, it’s actually one of the movies that, due to time constraints, had to _remove_ historically accurate material that was in the original drafts: a Mohawk Indian who came to negotiate with Congress during this time and spoke in a perfect Oxford English accent, the junket to New Jersey during which Franklin and Adams and another delegate had to share a bed in a crowded tavern, and a couple of randy goings on outside of Congress with some of the members. > As far as historical changes, they were mostly to condense the constantly coming and going dozens of members of the Congress into a few who you could remember and keep track of, and a few characterizations were changed. Perhaps the most serious things changed biographically would be the role of James Wilson and the climactic moment when he switches his vote; we don’t really know _why_ he changed it, and he was really not in the shadow of Dickinson (who was his former law professor but they weren’t chums; incidentally, Dickinson’s considerable holdings were mostly in Delaware and in his political career he was usually the representative from DE, not PA, though he was representing PA in 1776). Also, Caesar Rodney, while he did leave due to health reasons related to his skin cancer, wasn’t really at death’s door like he was in the play/movie, he was just severely uncomfortable; he in fact lived for several more years. Also, Thomas Jefferson’s wife never actually came to Pennsylvania and was in fact recovering from a stillbirth in 1776, but I don’t think any fan of the show minds as we got a great number out of it and you get to see the Tom:Martha dynamic and compare-contrast it with John:Abby without both relationships being telepathic. > > _The Lion in Winter_ implies that Eleanor is very rarely “trotted out to court”, but in fact she spent months at a time at a time at various courts in France and far away from the castle in England where she was officially a prisoner. Admittedly, she was under guard when there and could not leave the castle without an “escort” whose number one job was to make sure she didn’t escape, but, she did have a lot more freedom than Christmas and Easter away from her confinement (which, of course, was luxurious by the standards of the time; house arrest in the royal quarters beat freedom in a peasant’s hovel). Not so much an error as not mentioned: Geoffrey was Count of Brittany by right of marriage, not through pre-inheritance from Eleanor and Henry as is implied. Also not in the play because it did not go far enough: when Henry II died [during a campaign against Richard… again] Richard released Eleanor asap from her confinement, and tossed Alice into her former quarters. (Eventually she was freed as part of a treaty, and she married and had a family and all and faded from history.) **a Man for All Seasons** wasn’t meant to be straight historical drama – Robert Bolt was trying to make his points, as well, and chose the story of Thomas More to do it. Nevertheless, Bolt is always much more historically accurate than Peter Schaffer. An awful lot of this play uses actual quotations or writings by the original people as lines. Whenever i say that this play is pretty close to reality, people inevitably say :“But it doesn’t say anything about More doing X”. Which is true, but completely beside the point – bringing up X might be great for a historical completist, but wouldn’t help Bolt make his dramatic points. And, moreover, he didn’t deny it, anyway. So burning Protestants (did he do so? I hadn’t heard), if he did, or the martyrdom of John Fisher, or whether More was really strictly legal in his silence or making an indirect statement about the legitimacy are pretty much beside the point. I loved **1776** when I saw it on stage, and in the movies. I think I like the fact that they finally treated the Founders as real people, rather than demigods, made a huge difference. Peter Stone spent a lot of time researching this, in places like Rutgers University library, and the play, like AMfAS, includes many actual quotes. David MacCullough, however, seems to dislike the play. He’s never mentioned iyt in his writings, although you’d think it merited a note in his _John Adams_. On the other hand, he dredges up the same quotes Stone used in the play, more often than chance would give them, I suspect, and gives the actual circumstances, to highlight when Stone has used the quote in a different circumstance, or put it in the mouth of the wrong person. Again, this strikes me as pretty damned irrelevant – the quotes are the legitimate thoughts of folks from back then, and the errors introduxced by this are minor. There are plenty of other quibbles you could more legitimately introduce. James Wilson wasn’t the spineless nonentity the play suggests. Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, was a mch more interesting person, and so on. But the play makes up for it by introducing so much real history – Franklin’s illegitimate son, his gout, the petty bickering in Congress (the bit about Melchior Meng’s mule really happened), and other tidbits I never heard of before this. **The Lion in Winter** definitely isn’t real history, and I never mistook it for that. It was obviously a witty and intelligent fantasy based on a real historical situation, and was worth it for the verbal fencing and maneuvering. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/162 "2012-05-25T03:20:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, what about the classic Old-World pistol-duel, where the gentlemen take 10 paces in opposite directions, turn and fire? That ever happen IRL? Is that how Burr killed Hamilton? Re-reading the Burr-Hamilton duel entry, and… maybe it did look like that. > [@](#): > > Hamilton performed a series of deliberately provocative actions to ensure a lethal outcome. As they were taking their places, he asked that the proceedings stop, adjusted his spectacles, and slowly, repeatedly, sighted along his pistol to test his aim. “Taking their places” doesn’t necessarily mean pacing away from each other, but I wasn’t able to find an explanation of how that duel or duels like it were actually conducted. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/163 "2012-05-25T03:46:33Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > Even Lowland Scots have generally looked down on Highland Scots. They must have to stand on their tiptoes. [rimshot] ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/164 "2012-05-25T03:53:15Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > _1776_ is one of my favorite movies and, while it takes liberties with (but never declared independency of) history for dramatic purposes, it stays generally correct. However, it’s actually one of the movies that, due to time constraints, had to _remove_ historically accurate material that was in the original drafts: a Mohawk Indian who came to negotiate with Congress during this time and spoke in a perfect Oxford English accent, the junket to New Jersey during which Franklin and Adams and another delegate had to share a bed in a crowded tavern, and a couple of randy goings on outside of Congress with some of the members. > As far as historical changes, they were mostly to condense the constantly coming and going dozens of members of the Congress into a few who you could remember and keep track of, and a few characterizations were changed. Perhaps the most serious things changed biographically would be the role of James Wilson and the climactic moment when he switches his vote; we don’t really know _why_ he changed it, and he was really not in the shadow of Dickinson (who was his former law professor but they weren’t chums; incidentally, Dickinson’s considerable holdings were mostly in Delaware and in his political career he was usually the representative from DE, not PA, though he was representing PA in 1776). Also, Caesar Rodney, while he did leave due to health reasons related to his skin cancer, wasn’t really at death’s door like he was in the play/movie, he was just severely uncomfortable; he in fact lived for several more years. Also, Thomas Jefferson’s wife never actually came to Pennsylvania and was in fact recovering from a stillbirth in 1776, but I don’t think any fan of the show minds as we got a great number out of it and you get to see the Tom:Martha dynamic and compare-contrast it with John:Abby without both relationships being telepathic. At least they got all the song-and-dance numbers right. (Except that, historians are pretty sure Franklin was a **baritone.)** ---
**Author:** ![Barrett\_Bonden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5e9695/32.png) [@Barrett\_Bonden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barrett_Bonden)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/165 "2012-05-25T04:00:22Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > the junket to New Jersey during which Franklin and Adams and another delegate had to share a bed in a crowded tavern, and a couple of randy goings on outside of Congress with some of the members. [QUOTE=Adams] Wake up Franklin; we’re going to New Brunswick! [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Franklin] Like hell I am, what for? [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Hopkins] The whoring and the drinking! [/QUOTE] 😃 ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/166 "2012-05-25T05:25:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > At least they got all the song-and-dance numbers right. (Except that, historians are pretty sure Franklin was a **baritone.)** Don’t make light of Ol’ Ben’s singing. When it came to show tunes, Franklin was worth 100 Washingtons. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/167 "2012-05-25T10:59:12Z")
I love it when we discuss currency events. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/168 "2012-05-25T11:05:55Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > When I visited Scotland a few years ago, I don’t remember seeing anybody wearing a kilt who wasn’t involved in something that was aimed at tourists. Next time go to downtown Glasgow on a day with a big sports match. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/169 "2012-05-25T12:24:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > At least they got all the song-and-dance numbers right. (Except that, historians are pretty sure Franklin was a **baritone.)** Actually, the most disappointing historical truth is that, although Franklin was a wit, really did write all that stuff in Poor Richard’s Almanac, and did all that scientific work, he apparently wasn’t at all as he was portrayed in **1776**. His contemporaries complained that he didn’t take a very active part in debates and in the Continental Congress. When he was later in France, according to McCuloch, he often seemed to not do anything positive to advance the status of the fledgling nation. (Nevertheless, Franklin was immensely popular over there. He must’ve had a good sense of what would work, eve n if that was “not much”) All in all, I get the impression that Franklin mostly just sat there and operated more behind-the-scenes, rather than being an easy, epigram-spouting Central Figure ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/170 "2012-05-25T12:27:11Z")
> [@Barrett\_Bonden](#): > > 😃 Having grown up near New Brunswick, and seen the still-extant tavern at which they would have stayed, this scene always fascinated me. When the film played in nearby East Brunswick, this line brought down the house. Peter Stone’s original script for **1776** had a scene where Franklin and Adams shared a room in that tavern. Adams wrote down an account of it, which McCulloch mentions in his book on Adams, and which undoubtedly served as inspiration for the scene. Apparently te scene didn’t go over well, and Stone excised it before the show hit Broadway. But I’d love to read it, someday. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/171 "2012-05-25T13:25:51Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > And the Brits seem to forget that the Enigma code was first cracked by the Poles. Earlier, simpler machine, but same principles. Yes and no. What you say is true, but the addition of extra wheels made it a really far more difficult code to crack (Ultra). Alan Turing deserves a hell of a lot of credit. I’m not sure the principles were quite the same. > [@Jackmannii](#): > > The movie U-571 would have been grossly inaccurate had the heroes been British. Nothing like that ever happened in WWII. > > The U-boat capture was not a grand deception operation, but involved routine anti-sub warfare. The recovered Enigma and other secrets were due to a British boarding party going into the abandoned sub and hauling out stuff over a period of hours. It took bravery to go into a sub that might or might not hold a hidden German crewman determined to go down with the boat (which was damaged and could have sunk at any time (and those involved were decorated later), but as a movie plot, it stank. A true account would have had theatregoers dozing in their seats after the first 15 minutes. Those who were decorated were actually drowned when the sub went down weren’t they? That to me seems pretty daunting and enough to keep audiences going to sleep. And there was also the previous ruse to capture the code books from the German weather trawlers off Lofoten Islands. There was a lot more to cracking Ultra than stealing a machine from a sub (as Dropzone correctly points out- there was also French input). ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/172 "2012-05-26T02:30:15Z")
The movie _All the President’s Men_ exaggerated the role of the press. > **[Watergate myth – Media Myth Alert](https://mediamythalert.com/category/watergate-myth/)** > > Posts about Watergate myth written by W. Joseph Campbell > [@](#): > > And on another occasion, Woodward declared more bluntly: > > “To say that the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.” > > \ > > So, too, is the subsidiary myth that Watergate reporting — and the cinema’s depiction of the Post’s coverage in _All the President’s Men_ – made the field seem so alluring that enrollments in college journalism programs surged as a result. The movie _Good Night, and Good Luck_ greatly exaggerated Murrow’s role in bringing down McCarthy. > **[Murrow-McCarthy myth – Media Myth Alert](https://mediamythalert.com/category/murrow-mccarthy-myth/)** > > Posts about Murrow-McCarthy myth written by W. Joseph Campbell > [@](#): > > Far from being fearless, Murrow, it can be argued, waited till the risks had subsided before taking on McCarthy. By March 1954, McCarthy’s capacity to stir dread was in decided retreat. > > \ > > “In the days and weeks after the See It Now program,” I write, “Murrow said he recognized his accomplishments were modest, that at best he had reinforced what others had long said about McCarthy. > > “Jay Nelson Tuck, the television critic for the New York Post, wrote that Murrow felt ‘almost a little shame faced at being saluted for his courage in the McCarthy matter. He said he had said nothing that … anyone might not have said without a raised eyebrow only a few years ago.’” > > Murrow, moreover, told Newsweek magazine: “It’s a sad state of affairs when people think I was courageous” in confronting McCarthy. ---
**Author:** ![Toxgoddess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Toxgoddess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxgoddess)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/173 "2012-05-26T04:13:31Z")
In the show “The Tudors”, I couldn’t get past the fact that the actor playing Henry VIII, eye candy and theatrically accomplizhed as he was, was too young for Henry. He was portrayed as about the same age as Anne Boleyn and only a few years older by the time he marries Catherine Howard. Henry was almost twenty years older than Anne. By the time he married 17-year-old Catherine, he was in his fifties and grossly overweight. Catherine was accused of infidelity and historians think she was probably guilty. If he had actually looked like the actor in the series, perhaps she wouldn’t have bothered. ---
**Author:** ![Orca\_Eyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4491bb/32.png) [@Orca\_Eyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orca_Eyes)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/174 "2012-05-26T14:55:05Z")
I just love when they make up inaccuracies to sell movies to kids. _Anastasia_ was an okay film, but the inaccuracies were striking. Other than the whole “Anastasia lives” thing, there’s plenty. It claims that Grand Duchess Anastasia was 8 at the time of the Russian Revolution, when she was in fact a teenager. And her grandmother, Marie, moved to Denmark, not Paris, after the Revolution (after all, Marie was a Danish princess by birth). And Anastasia was no beauty - IRL she was short and rather fat. The only thing that they got right about her appearance was her red hair (though IRL it was not as pronounced). At least the whole Rasputin being crazy was somewhat accurate, but only in the fact that he was crazy - he wasn’t green and didn’t have a bat sidekick. One of the worst is in this Italian cartoon called _Titanic: The Legend Goes On_. It features a rapping dog aboard the Titanic in 1912. Rap didn’t exist until many decades later. (There is another cartoon about the same subject, also from Italy, that contains its own fair share of inaccuracies - such as a giant octopus being tricked into sinking the Titanic. But that one’s mistakes are so bad you’d laugh.) See this if you don’t believe me: [Titanic: The Animated Movie - It's PARTY TIME - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxHNztg0X3s) On par with that movie is _The Magic Voyage_, an animated movie which is about Christopher Columbus. What disturbed me was that it perpetuated the myth that Columbus wanted to prove the world was round. In fact, he just wanted a quicker route to Asia. But what’s worse is the addition of a talking woodworm (that looks nothing like a worm), a fairy princess, and a Mayan temple in what is supposed to be New York (I thought he landed in the Bahamas IRL), with stereotypical Native Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/175 "2012-05-26T15:16:16Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > Yes and no. What you say is true, but the addition of extra wheels made it a really far more difficult code to crack (Ultra). Alan Turing deserves a hell of a lot of credit. I’m not sure the principles were quite the same. The math and algorithmic principles were the exact same, the problem simply turned into a question of computing power. The Polish “bomb” could theoretically crack even Ultra, but it would e.g. have taken a month to crack one daily cypher. At which point every message written on that day would be open to decyphering, but… yes. Turing’s machines (and the factory-like organization of the work at Bletchley Park; along with other methods to extract information for coded messages, such as analysis of recurrent expressions, formatting syntax etc…) streamlined the process tremendously and performed far more computations per minute, to the point that they could more or less have the day’s code cracked before nightfall. So to say that “the Poles had cracked it first” is indeed misleading, in that they did, but it didn’t matter because they didn’t have the resources to crack it quite hard 'nuff. [QUOTE=CalMaecham] (Nevertheless, Franklin was immensely popular over there. He must’ve had a good sense of what would work, even if that was “not much”) [/QUOTE] He did a lot of fucking. That’ll make you popular in France 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/176 "2012-05-26T15:39:22Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Next time go to downtown Glasgow on a day with a big sports match. Well [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz1AcVYOk3o&list=FL9_aa1rww74sPEpQWgzO6iA&index=278&feature=plpp_video) is downtown Paris, but same idea. The football supporters have made a whole new national dress out of kilts. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/177 "2012-05-26T17:12:22Z")
In the movie _The Wind and the Lion_ Candice Bergen played a widow kidnapped in Morocco in 1904, along with her two children, by a Barbary chieftain, played in the movie by Sean Connery. While there was a kidnapping, it was of a man, Ion Perdicaris, along with the son of his wife Ellen. She’d divorced her husband to marry Perdicaris, a man who was of Greek extraction and, although claiming US citizenship, had renounced it for Greek. Teddy Roosevelt sent warships and troops to rescue Perdicaris, although he may have already known the man would have been released anyway. > **[Ion Hanford Perdicaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Perdicaris)** > > Ion Hanford Perdicaris (April 1, 1840 – May 31, 1925) was an author, professor, lawyer, painter, and playwright. He was a humanitarian and human rights activist. He fought for the rights of Moors, Arabs and slaves. He was active in the anti-slave movement in the United States and abroad namely in Morocco. Ion fought to change the Protégé system in Morocco. Ion became an international celebrity because of the Perdicaris Incident. > Born in Athens, Greece, he grew up in Trenton. He briefly attended... ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Norder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/178 "2012-05-26T17:21:40Z")
> [@Orca\_Eyes](#): > > One of the worst is in this Italian cartoon called _Titanic: The Legend Goes On_. It features a rapping dog aboard the Titanic in 1912. Rap didn’t exist until many decades later. I think that once you accept the notion that dogs can talk you give up the right to complain that what they are saying is unrealistic. Of course it’s unrealistic. It’s a talking dog. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/179 "2012-05-26T19:23:23Z")
> [@Toxgoddess](#): > > In the show “The Tudors”, I couldn’t get past the fact that the actor playing Henry VIII, eye candy and theatrically accomplizhed as he was, was too young for Henry. He was portrayed as about the same age as Anne Boleyn and only a few years older by the time he marries Catherine Howard. Henry was almost twenty years older than Anne. By the time he married 17-year-old Catherine, he was in his fifties and grossly overweight. Catherine was accused of infidelity and historians think she was probably guilty. If he had actually looked like the actor in the series, perhaps she wouldn’t have bothered. Possibly a winner. Jonathan Rhys Meyers actually had washboard abs in his first scene with Catherine Howard. The real Henry was well over 300 pounds by that time and had all manner of physical infirmities (many of them probably related to diabetes but assigned to other causes). The complete budget 1970s BBC miniseries with Keith Michell, adjusted for inflation, probably wouldn’t have equaled Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s salary for 6 episodes of this show, but with said low budget and few outside shots and nothing remotely like today’s prosthetic makeup they managed to take Michell from an able bodied slim teenager to somebody believable as morbidly obese, barely able to walk, and suffering from erectile dysfunction on his wedding night. ([Scene from the movie](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jWzK4xxMOE) with Michell- also low budget, but the takeaway being Michell was in reality in his early 40s and of average weight; it would have been very possible to make Meyers look the historical part without bankrupting ShowTime.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057/180 "2012-05-26T20:49:54Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Actually, the most disappointing historical truth is that, although Franklin was a wit, really did write all that stuff in Poor Richard’s Almanac, and did all that scientific work, he apparently wasn’t at all as he was portrayed in **1776**. His contemporaries complained that he didn’t take a very active part in debates and in the Continental Congress. When he was later in France, according to McCuloch, he often seemed to not do anything positive to advance the status of the fledgling nation. (Nevertheless, Franklin was immensely popular over there. He must’ve had a good sense of what would work, eve n if that was “not much”) All in all, I get the impression that Franklin mostly just sat there and operated more behind-the-scenes, rather than being an easy, epigram-spouting Central Figure Well, he was pretty **old** by then, wasn’t he? (And older still at the Constitutional Convention.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-inaccuracies-that-are-not-minor/622057.md?page=10)