# What real people have been the most inaccurately maligned on film? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 28, 2005, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550 "2005-03-28T03:58:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/21 "2005-03-28T09:57:25Z")
I’m not a fan of Eamon De Valera, but the suggestion that he had something to do with the assassination of Michael Collins, in the film of the same name, is just preposterous. ---
**Author:** ![Estilicon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Estilicon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Estilicon)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/22 "2005-03-28T10:12:58Z")
The entire crew of the Titanic specially Captain Smith and first officer Murdoch in that crap directed by Mr. Cameron. During the final hours of the ship Captain Smith was everywhere commanding the ship not walking up and down like a living corpse. Why would a man that is almost sure he is about to die receive a bribe? What possible use can he have of money at that moment? Murdoch’s reputation was destroyed by the film. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/23 "2005-03-28T11:31:27Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > After being set adrift by the mutineers in a 27-foot boat with 18 men, Bligh’s successful navigation of a small open boat, over 3,600 miles, working from his memory, with no charts or compass, and limited rations, is arguably one of, if not _the_, greatest accomplishments of seamanship ever. It was an amazing feat. But, I believe that Shackleton’s trip from Antartica to South Georgia Island is more impressive - the distance was less 800 miles vs. 3600, but the waters of the high latitude southern oceans are so deadly that they routinely destroyed ships, not simply covered over jollyboats. Bligh’s own reputation is not enhanced by the fact that he’s one of the very few Royal Navy commanders I can think of who was mutinied against _twice_. Back to the OP: Cardinal Richelieu was not the scheming monster out to control the French Monarchy he is portrayed in all movies based upon Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. He was ambitious, not personally, but for France, and effectively ran the nation, but it was with the support of Louis the XIII, and he was, for the time, a most enlightened ruler: loyal and generous to his people; given to mercy more than most of his contemporaries. ---
**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:** [March 28, 2005, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/24 "2005-03-28T13:15:47Z")
I don’t have any knowledge of his situation personally, and he _does_ seem to have been somethjing of a show-off, but apparently George Armstrong Custer was neither the fool he’s often been portrayed as nor an out-of-touch megalomaniac (as in quite a few scenes in **Little Big Man** ). ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/25 "2005-03-28T14:19:01Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Joan Crawford in _Mommie Dearest_- even Christina Crawford thought the movie went overboard. While few would deny that Joan had mental problems and was a substance abuser and could be a first order bi-yotch, the movie was an exaggerated retelling of a bipolar and embittered disinherited child’s most negative memories (which were disputed by Crawford’s other children). A pity that it will forever be a tail pinned on a great actress and people who have never seen her Oscar winning performance will still know “she’s the one with an axe who hated wire hangers, right?” _Thank_ you—saved me the trouble! So I’ll just go with the two hilariously awful bio-pics of **Jean Harlow** , both from 1965. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/26 "2005-03-28T14:25:34Z")
I said this in an earlier thread, but it’s worth saying again. There are many movies I’ve diosliked intensely, but very few that I HATED, and deemed immoral. One of them was “Gangsters,” a Brat Pack film showing a) what a cool bunch of guys Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were, and b) what an evil, corrupt hypocrite New York D.A. (later governor and presidential candidate) Thomas Dewey was. By many accounts, Dewey could be an arrogant, imperious snob, but come one! He fought to put Mafia bosses behind bars, where they belonged. He did so at great risk to his own life. For THIS, he was pilloried in the film. Meanwhile, a bunch of thieves and murderers are portrayed as glamorous young hunks. If THAT doesn’t make a film evil, I don’t know what would. ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/27 "2005-03-28T14:29:12Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Lt. William Bligh was, by the standards of the day, an enlightened and mild commander, and not the vindictive and petty martinet portrayed in either of the films of the _Mutiny on the Bounty_. Nor was Christian Fletcher the saint he is popularly considered to be. They portray Bligh more realistically in the 1984 movie **The Bounty**. Bligh was actually seen as something as a hero and celebrity when he returned to England. It was Christian’s family and some of his allies that started bad mouthing Bligh to the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/28 "2005-03-28T14:32:07Z")
**Mobsters!** Not “Gangsters.” :smack: Sorry about the goof. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/29 "2005-03-28T14:45:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But not, I think, a misrepresentation. (Historically speaking.) Acually yes, it was. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/30 "2005-03-28T14:51:14Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > My lit prof argues that it doesn’t matter how much they malign real people if it serves the story. [Begins writing “The Horrible Crimes and Infamies of Pepperlandgirl’s Lit Professor: A Novel”] ---
**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:** [March 28, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/31 "2005-03-28T14:55:50Z")
Regarding **Amadeus** , as I’ve said many times on the Board, Schaeffer doesn’t really write historical fiction dramas – he uses historical events as a peg to hang his musings on the relationships between God and Man on. So **Amadeus** isn’t even remotely accurate in depicting the lives of Salieri and Mozart, and Schaeffer knew it, and wasn’t trying to be accurate, any more than **Royal Hunt of the Sun** wasn’t accurately portraying the events between Pizzaro and Atahuallpa, or **Equus** was in the case of the British boy who blinded six horses. The problem is that they did a lousy job reporting this to people. I know that virtually all historical plays and movies play ariound with the truth, but Schaeffer’s do so more deliberately than most. And obviously not everyone’s in on the joke. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/32 "2005-03-28T15:18:16Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Fletcher Christian, wasn’t it? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/33 "2005-03-28T15:24:55Z")
Pontius Pilate was very inaccuately portrayed in _Monty Python’s The Life of Brian_🙂 ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/34 "2005-03-28T16:19:48Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > a) what a cool bunch of guys Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were, **astorian** , remember this is the same mentality that seriously, honestly suggested offering ‘Lucky’ Luciano a Congressional Medal for keeping the mafia from interfering with the WWII shipping efforts on the NYC piers (among other more positive contributions). :eek: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/35 "2005-03-28T17:32:55Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I said this in an earlier thread, but it’s worth saying again. There are many movies I’ve diosliked intensely, but very few that I HATED, and deemed immoral. One of them was “Gangsters,” a Brat Pack film showing > > a) what a cool bunch of guys Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were, and > > b) what an evil, corrupt hypocrite New York D.A. (later governor and presidential candidate) Thomas Dewey was. > > By many accounts, Dewey could be an arrogant, imperious snob, but come one! He fought to put Mafia bosses behind bars, where they belonged. He did so at great risk to his own life. For THIS, he was pilloried in the film. Meanwhile, a bunch of thieves and murderers are portrayed as glamorous young hunks. > > If THAT doesn’t make a film evil, I don’t know what would. But what you’re saying applies with equal force to the whole genre of Mob movies. Almost always, the story is told from the POV of the gangsters, which necessarily casts the police and public prosecutors in the role of villains. Even in _The Sopranos,_ which portrays most of the mobsters as the fundamentally dishonorable, dishonest, and stupid brutes they probably are in real life, the FBI agents investigating Tony’s family come across as, not corrupt, but somehow repellent and cold. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/36 "2005-03-28T17:51:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But what you’re saying applies with equal force to the whole genre of Mob movies. Almost always, the story is told from the POV of the gangsters, which necessarily casts the police and public prosecutors in the role of villains. Even in _The Sopranos,_ which portrays most of the mobsters as the fundamentally dishonorable, dishonest, and stupid brutes they probably are in real life, the FBI agents investigating Tony’s family come across as, not corrupt, but somehow repellent and cold. Everyone is a jerk on the Sopranos, so at least it’s consistent. In a lot of Mob movies, the Feds are the bad guys because they’re ruining everybody else’s fun. ---
**Author:** ![Dignan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f07891/32.png) [@Dignan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dignan)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/37 "2005-03-28T17:51:57Z")
I don’t remember the specifics, but I guess the surviving astronauts from the Mercury Seven weren’t happy with the way Gus Grissom was portrayed in Tom Wolfe’s book, _The Right Stuff_. Since they thought he got a bad wrap, they weren’t interested in being involved with the filming. I don’t know how (in)accurate the accounts in the book are, so I don’t know if they were fair or not, but the astronauts involved didn’t think so. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/38 "2005-03-28T17:57:29Z")
I guess a lot of people felt Cole Porter’s characterization in _Delovely_ was ridiculous. I thought the film was a waste of time myself. Depressing, and little else. A film I very much enjoyed, but have a somewhat jaundiced view of now is _Monster_. Having read more about Aileen Wuornos since the film, I don’t think nearly enough was done to drive home the essential point of how insane and cold-blooded a killer Wuornos really was. I see the dramatic value in making her character more sympathetic, and I know the film didn’t flinch from portraying the heinous motives of some of her killings. I just didn’t get much of a true sense of Wuornos’ raging misanthropy, or the preposterousness of some of the claims she made about her victims in trial. Quite the contrary, most of her victims were made to appear almost as if they had it coming. Wuornos possibly murdered scores of individuals, apparrently for nothing more thant he money to play sugar-mommy, and displayed little capacity for remorse in real life. I don’t doubt she was made into a monster by years of horrible abuse, but by the time she was perpetrating her most serious crimes, I think she may have crossed the line into full-blown sociopathy. In other words, a rather poor and unsympathetic subject, as-is, for a stirring biopic. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/39 "2005-03-28T18:42:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Many of his begging letters survive, but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a “mass grave”, but in a regular communal grave according to the 1783 laws. According to figures given in Solomon’s [Mozart: A Life](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060926929/qid=1112035443/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-7146742-3667959?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), I once calculated that Wolfie made ~$350,000-$500,000 (today’s money) the last year of his life, most of that coming from The Magic Flute, a new pension of 700 Kruger (or Kroner - I can’t remember, and being at work, can’t do anything about it), the Requiem mass, and a couple of other duties. Actually, the last year of Mozart’s life was his most successful, financially. Also, at no time in his life after he arrived in Vienna did he make less than today’s equivalent of $75,000, and he averaged about $200,000/year for his final decade. So the idea of a “poor, forgotten” Mozart is a myth. And since we’re on the subject (edit: well, not really since we’re supposed to be talking about film, but since I’ve already typed all that follows this parenthetical statement, I’m gonna let that stand. 😉 ) I’ve noticed a distressing similarity among Mozart’s biographers to affix blame to one person or another for Mozart’s flighty tendencies - some (like Solomon) blame his father, others blame his wife (I remember this one female biographer who hated Constanze so much that she all but blamed Constanze for his death), others blame both. In a way, this is part and parcel of the tendency to view Mozart as the eternal child, an innocent who was in the control of people and forces stronger than he. I’ve always thought that this was a disservice to Mozart himself, his biographer’s inability to understand that Mozart was an adult and he, himself was to blame for being an adulterous, drunken gambler. So it’s not just films. _Historians_ do the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2005, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550/40 "2005-03-28T19:00:59Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Regarding **Amadeus** , as I’ve said many times on the Board, Schaeffer doesn’t really write historical fiction dramas – he uses historical events as a peg to hang his musings on the relationships between God and Man on. So **Amadeus** isn’t even remotely accurate in depicting the lives of Salieri and Mozart, and Schaeffer knew it, and wasn’t trying to be accurate, any more than **Royal Hunt of the Sun** wasn’t accurately portraying the events between Pizzaro and Atahuallpa, or **Equus** was in the case of the British boy who blinded six horses. If that’s the case, then why doesn’t he just write about fictional characters? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-real-people-have-been-the-most-inaccurately-maligned-on-film/296550.md?page=3)