Minor figures who've been portrayed multiple times in film

Yeah, I was just thinking that. Minor but essential people associated with huge figures - Eva Braun, say. That’s probably too easy.

My Blue Heaven is a sort of retelling of the same story as Goodfellas, so Henry Hill was sort of played by Steve Martin.

If groups count, there has been more than one movie about the commandos who raided the heavy water plant in Norway during WWII. Ditto for the Desert Rats of North Africa.

The story of Billy the Kid has been filmed multiple times. The films are often highly fictionalized, but many of them include peripheral players in the Lincoln County War. Lawrence Murphy, John Tunstall, Alexander McSween, Dick Brewer, and Charlie Bowdre have appeared in several films. (Each of them has a Wikipedia page, if you want to look them up.)

There have been several movies about the Titanic, so I’m willing to bet other members of the crew have been portrayed as well, especially Captain Edward Smith, Signals Operator Harold Bride (played by young David McAllum in A Night to Remember), and First Officer William Murdoch (reputed to have blown his brains out as the ship was sinking).

Günter Wendt. He’s the guy who escorted the astronauts to the capsule and closed the hatch on every manned NASA mission from from Freedom 7 in 1961 until Apollo-Soyuz in 1975. He’s depicted in almost every film or TV show about the Space Race.

The Laramie Project and The Matthew Shepard Story portrayed several of the same real-life characters, including Matthew Shepard’s parents.

Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and Minister of Armaments, has been portrayed in several films. Despite the power he wielded, he was always a second-tier Nazi after the likes of Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler.

Mrs Hudson (Sherlock Holmes’ landlady.)

She’s not a real life character. Though its does remind me that one of my ancestors may qualify. sort of? Alfred Wilkes Drayson is my great-great-great-great-uncle (I think 4x great?) and he was the absolute nutjob who got Arthur Conan Doyle into spiritualism (as well having have batshit ideas about astronomy). The character of Colonel Moran in Sherlock Holmes is thought to be based on him, who has been portrayed many times in the various movies.

Professor Moriaty could be based on his academic nemesis (who called him out on the fact his crazy astronomical theories were in fact crazy and made no sense, not to mention calling bullshit on all the spirtualism) Professor Simon Newcomb.

Clyde Barrow was a 2 bit thug that stole cars and robbed grocery stores and gas stations. His success at banks was limited.

He would have been lost in history without his girlfriend Bonnie who accompanied him.

I think Clyde was a psychopath. He was extremely unstable.
Movies kept the myth of Bonnie & Clyde alive.

Johnny Dale Sylvester was a sick kid that Babe Ruth sent well wishes to during the 1926 World Series. The story goes that Ruth promised Johnny to hit a home run, which he then did.

https://apnews.com/article/84c2bd0913e71c8dc5add2fbda04c914

Johnny’s story has usually morphed into a legend that Ruth visited him in the hospital, and personally promised to hit a homer. This tale has made it into several movies: The Babe Ruth Story, Pride of the Yankees, and The Babe. There’s apparently even a documentary.

Don’t forget the SCTV version:

I looked for but couldn’t find the sketch where the Babe (John Belushi) promised a homer to a sick black kid – and failed to deliver. “But little Henry Aaron pulled through and broke Ruth’s lifetime home run record.”

I don’t know… Band of Brothers wasn’t published until 1992, and that’s the first I’d heard of Easy Company, etc…

As for the OP, I suspect Davy Crockett has been portrayed a LOT in film, both as the most famous person to fight and die at the Alamo, but as a famous frontiersman and congressman.

Category:Cultural depictions of Davy Crockett - Wikipedia

Damn! Beat me to it! :angry:

Yeah but the actions they carried out (such as the assault on the guns Brecourt Manor and defense of Bastogne) were pretty well known and depicted in earlier films, so even if they weren’t explicitly called out as “Easy Company” they would have been portrayed, I think?

I’d definitely wouldn’t consider him a “minor figure”, he’s definitely a famous historical figure and not an obscure one.

In the “in my own head rules” for this thread, if I recognize the name, it’s not a minor historical figure.

He’s not as infamous as the other senior Nazis (they are uniquely infamous among historical figures, you don’t even need to say their names, pushing 100 years after their rise to power they are still visually recognisable). But he’d still count as a major historical figures IMO

Clyde was a product of the Texas penal system. While at Eastham Prison Farm, Barrow was repeatedly raped by another inmate known as Big Earl. Eastham was a dorm style prison, kind of like what you saw in Cool Hand Luke, and the other prisoners and even the guards knew what was going on, some of them even teased him about it saying he must like it. This is where Barrow committed his first murder, luring Earl to the showers and bashing his head in with a pipe. Barrow wasn’t exactly an angel before his sentence, but the man who came out of Eastham wasn’t the same one that went in.