There is a 1970s British miniseries, “Dickens of London”–elderly Dickens (played by Roy Dotrice) on a visit to New York flirts with a young American lady and recalls his childhood, struggling youth, and early success. Dickens’s feckless dad is also played by Roy Dotrice.
The 1951 movie *The Man With A Cloak *stars Joseph Cotten as Poe. (It also stars a very young Leslie Caron.)
I said a good Poe biopic. 
Johnny Depp probably would get the part and he has the chops; Tobey Maguire looks more like Poe to me.
I’d like to see a biopic made about Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist. The Russians found him so troublesome they fear him still, decades after they had him murdered. The thing is, I would like this to be an honest biopic; not a fawning hero-worship piece nor simple character assassination as a Nazi collaborator.
It should also be noted that, per the link above, Victoria Woodhull was a fox. Ye gods!
Can you tell us more, or are you actually working on a book or movie script?
I’m fairly new here, so I don’t know your profession.
I do enjoy reading your posts.
I could but you’d lose interest along about the 74th page.
The short answer (believe it or not) is this:
Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for two years, charged with treason, and then released on bond, but he was never brought to trial. There have been many excuses offered for why the charges were ultimately dropped: Constitutional issues, backroom deals, the chance that he would get an acquittal which would hugely embarass the government, etc., but none really hold water.
Another thing that doesn’t really hold water: when Davis was arrested he was on the run from Union forces trying desperately to get to Florida where he planned to join with Judah Benjamin and take the first boat heading… well, anywhere really- to form a CSA government in exile. When his encampment was surrounded in Irwinville, GA it was a tragic comedy of errors in a way- he was come upon by two different companies of Federal troops from two different regiments coming from two different directions- one from the southwest of Georgia and the other one from the northeast- and each group thought the other group was Confederate stragglers and opened fire. In the confusion Davis attempted to flee to the woods (wearing a shawl to cover his head, which became the famous rumors that he was in a dress)- so even hopelessly surrounded by Union forces he attempts flight.
Once the Union forces recognize “hey, you’re on our side” (after a couple of guys have been shot) they pursue the tall figure heading for the woods. One mounted Union soldier rides ahead of Davis, cocks a revolver at him and orders him to freeze or die. Davis makes a lunge for the man- the only reason he wasn’t shot dead is that his wife Varina threw herself twixt him and the pistol and the soldier didn’t want to kill an unarmed woman, and in this confusion within the confusion reinforcements arrived and escape was absolutely impossible. (Davis later claimed he was trying to take the soldier’s horse to escape- personally I think it was more or less a “Kill me, I don’t care” move- either way, he resisted even when surrounded by a hugely superior force.)
Davis is taken into custody. He’s old (really only 58 but ill health made him much older in “actual years”), half blind, and has a cold, yet when he’s taken to his dungeon cell in Fort Monroe and his jailer orders his legs shackled, Davis fights so hard that he ultimately has to be restrained by six men to be chained. (There’s such an outcry over this that the jailer orders them removed after a few days, and he’s moved to a nicer cell; his prison ordeal was bad in the sense that- well, he was in prison- but compared to Andersonville or Point Lookout he was at Club Med.)
So the point of all the above: would you say that it’s logical to assume Davis was a flight risk? I think so.
For a year his wife is forbidden to leave the state of Georgia- that’s how tight security is with them. (She doesn’t even have any connection to Georgia- it’s just where they were captured- but she can’t leave the state- can’t even leave Savannah at first without permission- she even has to get special permission to send her small children and mother and former slave to Canada.) She’s forbidden to write to Davis at all in the first few months, and when they are finally allowed to correspond it’s with two caveats:
1- They are ONLY to discuss personal matters- like Higgins tells Eliza Doolittle, “talk about the weather and your health”
2- EVERYTHING they write to each other can and will be read by Davis’s jailers
Okay- does it sound like Davis is still under scrutiny? Oh yeah.
In May 1867 Jefferson Davis is released from prison on a $100,000 bond, not a penny of which is put up by himself or any member of his family. (The war had left him and his family essentially destitute.) The bond is forfeit if he does not show himself for trial. Other than that, he’s free to go and do as he likes.
Okay- bear this in mind: if he forfeited on the bond, it would not cost him 1 penny, and of the people it would hurt- most were NYC Yankees he couldn’t stand. If he goes to trial, a guilty verdict is extraordinarily likely- Mary Surratt had been hanged two years before just for owning a boarding house where she might have overheard parts of a conspiracy and in spite of pleas for clemency from the public, the Pope, and the judges who passed her sentence! (Admittedly that was in a military court, but Davis could be tried in a military court as well- there were several motions to do so- and the U.S. government could easily rig those, and even if he were tried in Richmond the U.S. government could definitely see to it there was a conviction- only takes a few not too subtle threats to jurors and attorneys). If Davis is found guilty, the penalty for treason or conspiracy is death- he’ll hang, no question of it.
But meanwhile he can leave the country unchaperoned.
Davis: Hey, since I’m out, can I leave the country?
U.S. Government: Oh sure! No problem. Go to Rome, London, Egypt, move like Harlow in Monte Carlo or hell, be the first man on Antarctica for all we care, no worries. Just drop us a line from time to time and come back so we can have your trial, and when we convict you we’ll either hang you or, if we’re merciful, send you back to prison for the rest of your life. Have fun- if you go to Paris, try the sauces, you’ll thank me when you come back to be hanged. Bye now, bon voyage!
Davis: Are you going to send an armed escort with me?
U.S. Government: Of course not! We trust you completely, you’re a southern gentleman after all. We know you’d never take advantage of the fact that you’re completely beyond reach of our extradition just to avoid a little thing like hanging and imprisonment, because you’d never make a group of rich Yankees you don’t know lose money that’s essentially chicken feed to them- well, to all but one, but that’s a long other story. You go to Europe, have fun- not sure if Eurrail has been invented yet but if it is get a pass, see where the Eiffel Tower’s going to be in a few years, catch the London Zoo, maybe take the kids on a wine and beer cruise from France to Greece! You go have fun- make it a second honeymoon with the Mrs. even, cause remember when you come back we’ll hang or imprison you.
DAVIS: Am I allowed to see ex-Confederates who are now in positions of social and political and economic prominence in England and France?
U.S. Government: Do you tell us who we can and cannot see on vacation? Of course you can see them. Tell Judah Benjamin and John Slidell and all those others who have the ears of the British Parliament and Napoleon III’s government and can get you sanctuary we said hi! Tell them “we sure do wish they’d come back so we can hang 'em, but we understand why they don’t- that was a good trick on us!” Jeff, seriously, soon it’s going to be peak season and you want to avoid the riff-raff, go on to Europe.
=-=====================
Okay, that’s not a verbatim exchange, but it is essentially what happened. A man who has no property and no prospects left in the U.S. is allowed to leave- with his family- to nations where there’s no way of getting him extradited back should he decide to stay there, and the only penalty if he doesn’t return to the country where he’ll be tried and hanged or imprisoned is that some rich northerners will lose some money.
Sounds a bit odd doesn’t it?
But I’ve got a theory…
That conspiracy in a sentence rather than the much much MUCH longer post that I’d originally thought of riding:
I think Cornelius Vanderbilt was behind Davis’s release because he had use for him in a Central America project he was working. Why I think this is where the mountains of evidence comes from, including coded messages in the Davis’s correspondence, a whole series of weird “coincidences”, and a Davis freed slave who acted as a “for your ears only” go between. It fell apart for several reasons, among them a major industrial accident, Vanderbilt becoming distracted by NYC endeavors, a rogue agent of Vanderbilt’s, and last but not least the fact that nobody realized how much of a self involved ideologue Jefferson Davis was (the “would gladly have hanged if it meant he could have his moment in the sun” part) or the degree to which he was connected to Mississippi or, on the more human level, how an extramarital affair he began with a friend’s wife while in prison was clouding his judgment.
Founders of great religions: We’ve had The Ten Commandments about Moses, and multiple Jesus biopix . . . A Muhammed biopic would be complicated by the taboo on portraying him . . . But there has never been a biopic, AFAIK, about Siddharta Gautama the Buddha. Nor about Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism – his story was truly amazing! Nor about Confucius or Lao-Tze.
L. Ron Hubbard . . . no, jeez, that’d be riskier than Mohammed, considering how many big-name Scientologists there are in Hollywood and how touchy they can get! :eek:
Muhammad Messenger of God, in which the title character is never seen (but frequently addressed) and the main character is his uncle Hamza (played by Anthony Quinn) opened to mixed reviews. (Trailer)
Some said it was intriguing filmmaking, while others took 134 hostages in Washington D.C.. Not sure where Siskel and Ebert logged in.
There’s talk of a remake- no really, there is.
A movie about Jefferson Davis that would draw in both Civil War buffs and Teen Hijinx Commedy fans is the story of the Christmas Eggnog Riots by West Point cadets of 1826. Davis was involved up to his neck but unlike many others got off Scott-free. Lee was not at all involved, of course, but was in his room doing his homework. Forshadowing greater events in later years.
A dark, funny movie could be made about the death of Tusko the Elephant in 1962 at an Oklahoma zoo. What sort of thought process inhabits the scientific mind that demands to know the answer to the burning question “Hey, what if we got an elephant high on LSD?”
There have been a couple of movies about the U.S. Army Camel Corps that Davis authorized, but one was a Disney comedy and the other was a James Garner vehiclewhere his stealing a camel came in handy. IRL it was fairly comedic, with an “Arab” master camel drover who turned out to be a Greek charlatan and others who had no expertise with camels but just wanted free passage to America, thus nobody had a clue how to deal with the very temperamental animals once they got here. (One mule drover who was used to beating mules who wouldn’t obey learned a very valuable lesson in why one doesn’t do that to a camel.)
But actually the idea was successful at the same time: camels did outperform the army mules and horses when tested.
I’d like to see a movie about the Battle of Chickamauga. It irks me how Robert E. Lee and the Battle of Gettysburg are the only aspects of the war most people seem to think about when there was an ENORMOUS other theater of the war that had some of the most interesting characters in the war. On Stone Mountain the enormous relief is of Lee and Jackson and Davis, a monument less to war than historical romanticism and ignorance: there was a major campaign within earshot and all around that mountain and it involved neither Jackson (who was quite dead by that time) or Lee (who of course had his hands full in Virginia and really didn’t care that much about anything outside of Virginia except of course how it affected Virginia), and while Davis did indeed come through Atlanta several times during the war he was hated by most Georgians.
On the Confederate side at Chickamauga were led by Braxton Bragg, a man so insane he’d once recommended his own court martial after an exchange of angry letters with himself, and Leonidas Polk (Episcopal bishop and West Point grad who saw no problem with owning hundreds of slaves or disobeying direct orders- the southern patrician class incarnate), or the brilliant Forrest who not only threatened to kill Bragg but got away with it and is a great storytelling device for teaching tactics (since he was still learning them himself). Lots of great Union stories from that battle also including Thomas “The Rock of Chickamauga”, and the follow up battle of Lookout Mountain introduces Sherman and Grant to the mix and sets up the rest of the war (Grant going to command in the east and Sherman going to Atlanta).
Plus it was just one vicious helluva fight- a chance for some of the most kick ass battle scenes ever filmed. Repeating rifles were used by both sides (the rebs only using those they’d managed to snag from dead Union soldiers), some of the worst hand-to-hand fighting in the war, some amazing equestrian endeavors by both sides, descriptions of bodies piled rebel on Union on rebel on Union several feet high, and lots of individual stories about people who lived there and individual stories on both sides that are interesting. Plus it’s a beautiful region of the country; while it couldn’t be filmed on the actual battlefield (they’d have to knock down 24 million monuments) there’s any number of places in the north Georgia mountains and NC it could be filmed that has similar terrain.
In the spirit of ‘Mad Jack’ I’d love to learn more about the real life of that unnamed battleaxe wielding crazy son-of-a-bitch that held off Harold’s men at The Battle of Stanford Bridge all by himself.
THAT guy is an army of one.
There was a BBC mini-series about the English Civil War titled By the Sword Divided. I liked it.
Historical intrigue surrounding Mad Charles VI of France, done the way A Beautiful Mind did, flirting with mental illnes vs. reality…
Heh. Sounds like the Hanafi Siege would make for an interesting movie in its own right.
I want to see a huge epic biopic about Granuaile O’Malley. She was an Irish chieftain in the 17th or 18th century (can’t remember exactly which) who stood up to the British as they were trying to change the entire heirachy of Ireland. She went to the Queen and requested in person that the British stop suppressing her people. There are several legends about her including one in which she kidnapped the son of a Duke (?) because he would not allow her and her crew to stay the night in his castle during a particularly bad storm. She said that she would return him one year and one day later, and damned if she didn’t. I would want to see someone along the lines of Cate Blanchett in the part of Granuaile. An actress with a lot of strength of presence and voice, someone commanding yet beautiful. And of course an equally strong actress, along the lines of Dame Judi Dench, in the role of the Queen. It would be spectacular!!
I also second the idea of an mini series ala Band of Brothers about the Civil War.
In development per IMDB.
As of 2007, a feature film based on Grace O’Malley’s story is in development. It will be penned by Anne Chambers, author of the biography Granuaile: Ireland’s Pirate Queen, and Sarah Lawson, who will also produce the film under her company, Lawson Productions. Its predicted release is 2009, and is backed by the Irish Film Board.