As a young man I was shocked, SHOCKED, I TELL YA, to discover that Robert Stroud, the IRL “Birdman of Alcatraz,” was not the noble long-suffering man as portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the famous film, but a murderer who wrote pedofilic (is that a word?) ramblings when not caring for birds. Plus, he had a really goofy, plastered down, parted in the middle hairstyle when he was young.
Now, I’m inured to it, and anytime I see a film “based on a true story,” I always suspect that the real person being portrayed by the handsome actor is probably just as human and mundane and ugly as I am (in addition to their good qualities).
Who are the worst offenders in this Hollywood makeover?
Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank’s character in the tearjerker Boys Don’t Cry) was pretty rotten in real life. (This is in no way to imply that she deserved to be raped and murdered, but she was a lot less sympathetic than the movie character.)
I think the winner for my money would be Bonnie & Clyde. They were basically murdering whitetrash who couldn’t even turn to a life of crime and get anything right. Nasty people (Bonnie once shot a defenseless captive police officer in the head at point blank range and laughed how “his haid bounced just like a watermelon”). Frank Hamer, the Texas ranger played by Denver Pyle in the movie, was likewise one of the most maligned characters in a film- killing that pair was the best day’s work he ever did.
While it didn’t make an evil man good, the movie Night and Day not only made a very gay Cole Porter straight, it also cast suave, tall, handsome Cary Grant as Cole Porter, who was himself short, ugly, and awkward.
Perhaps “Whitewashed” was a bad choice of words. Make this thread about the most “Untrue To Life” portrayals of real people, criminals, godd guys, etc.
I’ve never seen the Babe Ruth film. How did it contrast with his real life?
Can you elucidate? Or just provide a comprehensive link? I saw the movie recently and am curious how he was whitewashed… while I was very sympathetic towards him, he also pissed me off considerably with his idiocy and am interested to read more if you can post or point me to it.
George M. Cohan was portrayed as a happy family man who did all his musicals all by himself in Yankee Doodle Dandy while in reality he was a multimarried tyrant who always had collaborators.
Alexander the Great was totally straight in the Richard Burton film. His true sexuality is a matter of much debate, but he at least dallied with men and eunuchs. Likewise Michelangelo received an orientation change in the novel and the film The Agony & the Ecstacy. (Hell, how can you mention S&M and Ecstacy and not suspect he was gay?)
Odd to mention Malcolm X in two threads today, but ironically Spike Lee cleaned him up a bit in his biopic; the reason I say ironically is that Malcolm X himself didn’t try to trim the truth in his autobiography. (Lee for example didn’t mention Malcolm’s pimping activities, pool sharking, or address some of the not-quite-true moments of the autobiography [e.g. Malcolm had met white Muslims many times before Mecca & had known about Elijah Muhammad’s sexual indiscretions for years before he took action).
The movie (and book) PT 109 is considered very very loosely based on the real JFK’s WW2 experiences.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/not_guilty/brandon/1.html mentions him a bit. There are others I won’t link to because they don’t verify their statements. Basically he was a very accomplished check forger and petty thief who burned quite a few people who put trust in him and abused substances like a pro. (The ethics of dating- in fact becoming engaged to- uninformed teenaged girls is something I won’t go near as to its ethics.)
There were several lawsuits over that movie from the people portrayed in it, incidentally. Teena’s mother particularly hated it (though I don’t believe she sued).
John & Yoko: A Love Story was filmed with the permission and consultancy of Yoko Ono and you can tell it in almost every frame. It basically paints a picture of John as an out of control drug abusing loser (oh yeah, he happened to be a Beatle once) while Yoko is seen as the rational pillar of stability who selflessly sacrifices herself to get him help and make him happy. (She was by all objective accounts as big a junkie as he was.) The Beatles scenes did keep afloat the Hollywood Cheap Fake Beard Makers Union through a time when TNT wasn’t making cheesy Bible movies, however.
What’s Love Got to Do With It? took some significant liberties, one of the largest being that I.R.L. Ike was not the father of Tina’s first child and they did not marry until years after her second child (who was Ike’s) was born.
Stand By Your Man, a movie based on the life of Tammy Wynette, skipped over Tammy’s even numbered husbands.
The one I heard about was Harry Harcourt “Breaker” Morant, subject of the movie Breaker Morant and the book The Breaker (which formed part of the basis for the film. Even the author of The Breaker now says that Harry was a pretty nasty guy, and he didn’t know all about it when he wrote the book.
Great movie, by the way.
Actually, the real challenge would be to find a movie bio that really was close to reality. We have a friend who’s into Scottish history, and who ays Braveheart is hilarious. After watching Gladiator I yanked out my copy of Gibbon, which puts the lie to that film. Spartacus as great drama, but rotten history. I’ve commented about the difference between Lawrence’s real life and the film Lawrence of Arabia in another thread. For years I was impressed by the way Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons used Sir Thomas Moore’s own words and writings in the dialogue — but a friend told me about an episode of THe History Channel’s series contrasting movies with reality (which I have yet to see), and apparently that’s pretty bogus history, too.
Thanks… I have it bookmarked for later perusal since it’s so lengthy. Incidenatally – as I don’t want it to seem like I condone it – I completely forgot over his seduction of Lana while she was still unaware but was disturbed during their initial sexual encounter.
The closest they got to the subject was when the soldiers looking for Michaelangelo asked the madam of a whorehouse, who went off in gales of laughter at the very though of him darkening HER doors…
The recent movie about Ray Charles managed to whittle down his twelve children by seven women to a much smaller brood.
John Wayne managed to play Davy Crockett (The Alamo), Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (How the West Was Won), and Genghis Khan (The Conquerer) and I have a feeling none came very close to the original.
Now for the winner. I haven’t seen it, but I’ll bet Passion of the Christ breaks all records for lack of historic accuracy. Look at its source material! ;j
Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, was assumed to have been gay until a few years ago, when correspondence was found showing he’d had a clandestine 20-year affair with a married woman…simultaneously explaining that he was not gay and why he was never “openly” heterosexual.
Ever since I learned that story I’ve been very dubious of posthumous “gay” labels on historicl figures. Especially when they lived 500 years ago.
He wrote love letters and sonnets to, among other males, Tomasso Cavalieri and Gherardo Perini. (Tomasso he depicted in homoerotic scenarios as Ganymede (e.g. Ganymede [Tomasso] being ravished by Jove [in the form of an eagle] and again ). His male nudes are all much more developed and attentive than his female nudes (which are very rare) and his family was sufficiently bothered by his love letters and poetry that they changed the gender (from masculine to feminine) of the object before allowing them to be published posthumously. When his model Cecchino di Bracci (fifty years his junior) died in his teens Michelangelo wrote more than fifty poems of mourning (referring to himself as widowed in one) and designed and financed his tomb. He wrote such quotes as this
which may seem a bit “gayer” if one considers the term for “armored knight” was Cavalieri and that he was writing this to Tomasso Cavalieri, or this one
While there is no proof he ever physically consummated a relationship with a man (i.e. he was never captured in an incriminating sculpture), that he had such leanings has much evidence. Add to this the fact that he never married or seemed to have any great romantic love for a woman, and in fact wrote in one of his love sonnets
There is evidence that he was bothered by his feelings (being after all a devout Catholic whose work quite heavily involved the Old Testament) but that he acknowledged them.
Why does everyone forget the scene early in the film, when Porter is working as a pianist in the sheet music section of a department store? At lunchtime, his female co-worker coyly asks him why he doesn’t seem to be interested in women, to which Porter only manages to clear his throat and stare at his sandwich.
There is another time, when Contessina de Medici is visiting his studio. She asks Michelangelo why he never married, and then looks at a nearby nude male figure he is working on. He reads her thoughts, and says, no it’s not that.
I nominate for the whitewash awards the portrayal of convicted murderer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! as the victim of lowlife scoundrels and bad breaks. The story of the real Barbara Graham is more sordid.
While it’s probably not the worst offender, A Beautiful Mind, does a pretty good job of making John Nash seem like the prototypical misunderstood or tormented genius. Details regarding his sexual irresponsibility, his parenteral irresponsibility, his antisemitism, his tendency to ‘use’ people, and his general nastiness are either totally omitted or presented in such a way as to make you think, “underneath it all, he really has a heart of gold”.
This was an unpleasant guy waaaaaaay before his mental illness set in.
![Ganymede [Tomasso] being ravished by Jove [in the form of an eagle]](http://www15.tok2.com/home/dorian/Greek/Twelve/Jupiter/Ganymede/michelangelo.jpg){kind=link}
