There seems to be a trend in recent years to push back against the “whitewashing” of historical figures with “warts and all” biopics which can often, as you suggest about Cobb, go too far in the other direction.
The recent John Goodman starrer about Babe Ruth, for example, seemed more dedicated to portraying its subject as a depressed, alcoholic, emotionally needy glutton than showing us why he was a sports hero worthy of a biopic in the first place.
Thanks!
Braveheart also tinkered with Robert the Bruce’s motives. Bruce failed to back Wallace at first not because Bruce was insufficiently patriotic, but because Wallace was a known supporter of Bruce’s rival Balliol (the Toom Tabard).
Lincoln also became suicidal when said bedmate left to be married and again upon the verge of his own first marriage date (the wedding had to be postponed). I have no idea whether or not he was gay but there is more to the theory than sharing a bed. As for Michelangelo, if writing letters proclaiming your love to men who you’ve drawn portraits of being ravished by a male deity doesn’t imply that somebody is probably gay then no offense but you would be every gay teenager’s dream parent.
I haven’t seen the movie Monster but I know that the family of the first victim was furious as there was no evidence that he raped her in real life.
In the original miniseries of Helter Skelter, Manson family member turned prosecution witness Linda Kesabian is portrayed as a good kid who got mixed up with sex and drugs and bad people when in reality she was pretty psychotic herself. While she didn’t participate in the murders she did assist and she spent years in correctional and psychiatric facilities afterward for various crimes.
The real Mama Rose from GYPSY, while portrayed as difficult and demanding and tunnel visioned in the play/movies, was in reality an absolute nightmare who Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc literally paid to stay the hell away from them after they became famous. They could not stand her- she was abusive, manipulative, thoroughly selfish and just generally a not-nice person. (Among other things- while married three times, she was bisexual and frequently had affairs with members of both sexes to advance her daughters- there was no Herbie in real life.)
Gypsy’s son, Eric Lee Preminger (source of the above info), described his first ever meeting with his grandmother. He was a teenager when there was a knock at their penthouse door and a tiny woman identified herself as his grandmother and asked to speak with Gypsy. He went upstairs to tell his mother and her expression became total panic… “My mother is here… Oh JESUS CHRIST YOU LEFT HER ALONE! Get back there and make sure she doesn’t steal anything!” Gypsy then got dressed, came downstairs (where sure enough her mother wanted money), paid her off and basically threw her out and told her not to come back.
(Then evidently Mama Rose went into the best number of the piece as a bare stage turned into an lights and her lit up name came from nowhere to score the big finish.)
Of course Shakesepeare deserved special mention here:
Henry VII probably wasn’t the noble young man he was portrayed as in Richard III (and many historians believe he was responsible for the murder of the princes as, unlike Richard, he had a lot to fear from their superior claims to the throne)
Henry VIII was most definitely not the same as his portrayal in S’s play
Malcolm was not the sweetheart (and MacBeth nowhere near the villain) that he was portrayed in MACBETH (but, unlike MacBeth, he WAS a direct ancestor of King James I & VI)
That movie, though well made, bugged the hell out of me. It seemed more a feminist apologia for a serial killer than an honest biography.
The historically set plays of Peter Shaffer are all off (though they were never intended to be documentaries). The real Salieri was in fact a very jovial fat man in love with his wife and the father of an enormous family who never had any real delusions of greatness or hatred of Mozart. Only during senile dementia did he make negative comments about Mozart, but he also made odd comments about other things. Meanwhile, Amadeus (as mentioned in another thread here) didn’t exactly die in poverty as the play and other sources describe- he was buried in a pauper’s grave but so were many members of the bourgeoisie as burial was incredibly expensive, and he had an income of almost 1000 florins the year he died [which was more than 10 times the average income of his time]).
Meanwhile in Royal Hunt of the Sun, the Incan emperor Atahualpa is portrayed as a noble (if illegitimate) enlightened ruler who bonds with (the illegitimate nobleman) Pizarro who ends up putting him to death because of the evil Hernan de Soto. In reality Atahualpa was a butcher who killed several of his brothers (and made his brother the previous emperor literally eat dog dung in the streets of Cuzco) and the roles of Pizarro and de Soto are reversed- it was the latter who wanted to free the emperor once his ransom was paid while Pizarro insisted they kill him for heresy anyway.
Of course Shakesepeare deserved special mention here:
Henry VII probably wasn’t the noble young man he was portrayed as in Richard III (and many historians believe he was responsible for the murder of the princes as, unlike Richard, he had a lot to fear from their superior claims to the throne)
Henry VIII was most definitely not the same as his portrayal in S’s play
Malcolm was not the sweetheart (and MacBeth nowhere near the villain) that he was portrayed in MACBETH (but, unlike MacBeth, he WAS a direct ancestor of King James I & VI)
Sampiro, as you correctly note, the plays of Peter Schaeffer aren’t history, but he never meant them to be. Most of his plays (and the resulting films) are about the philosophical relationship between God and Man. [BRoyal Hunt of the Sun** isn’t about Pizarro and ther conquest of the Incas – it’s about Pizarro’s losing his faith and seeking it in Atahuallpa. Amadeus isn’t about Salieri and Mozart, it’s about God and Man (the conflict was done a lot better in the stage play, I think, where you get inside his version of Salieri’s madness, than in the movie, wherre they tried to get historical, confusing everyone). That’s why it isn’t called Mozart, or Salieri, but Amadeus (“Beloved of God” – but Why? Salieri wants to know). And Equus isn’t about the real case of a stable boy blinding six horses in his care that inspired the play, it’s about God and Man.
Thanks for clearing that up. :rolleyes:
So is Bullwinkle really about a moose and a squirrel?
You could make a similar observation about the movie Bonnie and Clyde, mentioned earlier. It wasn’t intended to be history, but rather a populist hero myth *a la[/] Robin Hood. You can’t make a modern Robin Hood story while at the same time presenting a warts-and-all biography. I put that one down to artistic license.
The discussion of Cobb prompted me to stumble onto this page, which seems to reliably summarize biographical details of Cobb’s life.
That’s a popular misconception.
It’s actually about Man and God.
There’s no question Wuornos’ character was softened a bit for the movie, but she still wasn’t someone I wanted I wanted to have over to dinner.
Don’t forget “The Producers”.
While the Romanovs (Nicholas, Alexandra and chirren) really were by all accounts a loving and happy family and while the children and servants and Alexandra really didn’t deserve to be executed in a basement (whether Nicholas deserved execution is up to debate), I think several movie treatments have given him particularly a pass on his policies that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his people from starvation, war, disease, etc., which he could have at very least ameliorated. (This is not to say that the Bolsheviks were better, of course, but there was a reason for the intense hatred of him [cue Tevye and crew’s Anatevka).
Nick’s ancestor Peter the Great came off very well in the 1980s miniseries about him; gone was the intense cruelty he could exhibit (e.g. when his nobles grew sick watching an autopsy on his European tour he made them chew threw the tendons of the deceased with their teeth) and his execution of his son was quite botched dramatically and historically (plus his sister Sofya looked as much like Vanessa Redgrave as I do).
On the subject of appearance, I hate to mention it as it probably sounds bitchy but this is where many movies really whitewash. The mother of Ryan White, for example, is dark haired and obese but was played by Judith Light in a movie about her, while Patty Duke portrayed a woman I slightly knew in one of the made for TV movies- the real woman was missing teeth and would make Loretta Lynn sound like QE2, but in the movie it was all Patty. (Patty’s autobiographical movie omits the consummation of her marriage to Michael Tell, who was the biological father of her son Sean [though Patty still denies it].)
Thanks for that. Good site.
Something I thought was interesting: George S. Patton’s children went to see Patton to gather material, having already contacted a lawyer to sue for defamation. (As Patton had a very rich mother and a very rich wife, I don’t think they were doing this for money.) Instead they dropped the suit after seeing the movie- they loved it. I’m not sure what they were expecting. (The movie did whitewash him a bit, writing out his womanizing for instance, but did include his willingness to have men killed unnecessarily for his personal glory and of course one of the famous “slap” incidents and his P.I. comments before there was such a term, so it wasn’t hagiography.)
Sampiro, re. the character missing teeth played by Patty Duke–are you talking about the middle-aged lady (forget her name) who joined the Army after her husband became disabled? I’m sure the military took care of her dental care, though.
I see no problem with mentioning appearances as long as we’re not doing it just to be bitchy and mean. I admit I laughed heartily when I saw photos of the two very unattractive people who blossomed into Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. Likewise, the real reporter’s toupee was not nearly as ludicrous as that worn by Dom DeLuise
Sir Rhosis
Patton was based on Omar Bradley’s autobiography. Bradley and Patton despised each other, and Bradley’s book didn’t make any effort to give Patton the benefit of the doubt. (And part of the mutual dislike was Patton’s old money wealth vs. Bradley’s poverty.) Patton’s kids were rightly suspicious. Luckily, the filmmakers did a little extra work and made a great movie.
Ironically, Bradley made millions off the movie about a man he hated. And Patton’s family never got a penny.