Back in the '70s, there was a made-for-TV movie called Death Race (IIRC, Lloyd Bridges, Roy Thinnes, and Troy McClure’s older brother Doug) in which a Sherman became an Afrika Korps MkV Panther.
Aside from the obvious differences between the two, the Panther didn’t enter service until Operation Citadel (the Battle of Kursk) in July 1943, a couple of months after the Germans left North Africa.
I thought this very strange, since they had managed to procure two flyable P-40 fighters in British and American markings, respectively, for the production.
As an aside, I think the Sherman was first used at the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942.
In one episode, Potter warned Hawkeye and BJ to get haircuts before a temporary CO who was a “stickler” for regulations arrived.
I can see where surgeons on a 24/7 schedule in a combat zone might let their hair get longer than normal. But where the hell was Hot Lips getting her '70s blow-dried styles from?
I think the most glaring anachronisms I’ve seen are in Shakespeare. Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear come to mind immediately. The first is based on the life of a king that actually lived in the 11th century. But consider this line: “Till he disbursed at Saint Colme’s inch Ten thousand dollars to our general use.” The first dollar (or thaler) was a coin minted in Bohemia in the town of Jáchymov from 1520. The city’s German name, Joachimsthal, IE, St. Joachim’s Dale, led to the coins being called Joachimsthaler, shortened to thaler, from which “dollar” was derived. But wait. It gets better in Hamlet. This play is based on a legend from Viking times, yet Hamlet is a typical Renaissance man; he and other characters in the play have attended university (these didn’t exist, at least not in the modern form, for most or all of the Viking period). There is a mention of “Switzers”, I.E., Swiss mercenaries. Switzerland was founded, or began to be formed, only circa 1291. But the real gems come in King Lear. Oh boy. This play is set in pagan Britain centuries before Christ. At least that’s when “King Leir” was supposed to have lived (this mythical or pseudohistorical character, who likely never existed, would date, if real, to around the 8th century BC). Yet the world of the play is almost identical to the contemporary Jacobean England of Shakespeare’s time. The anachronisms are manifold. For example, one character adopts an alias and pretends to be a madman, calling himself “Tom O’Bedlam”, a reference to Bedlam or St Mary Bethlehem Hospital in London. Perhaps the worst anachronism is when the Earl of Kent, in disguise, asks Lear to take him as a servant, and describes himself as someone who “will eat no fish”. In this way he is saying that he is not a Catholic (and thus does not keep fasting days), many centuries before any kind of Christianity existed.
As someone interested in history, I have made a habit of watching biographical, historical, and period films and TV shows and analyzing them for their historical accuracy. One very noticable anachronism that comes to mind is from the series Mayday (AKA Air Crash Investigation) in the episode about the 1977 collision between two Boeing 747s at the airport at Tenerife. Inside the air traffic control tower, there is a modern personal computer of the type common in, say, the late 90s/early 00s.
The only series I regularly follow is the Canadian period police procedural Murdoch Mysteries. In general, this show takes wild liberties with history, being a sort of reverse steampunk show. Ok, fine, but although it is set in Toronto in the late 19th to early 20th century, there are scenes that clearly show modern city infrastructure. For example, there is a scene in a residential neighborhood, taking place circa 1907, when a criminal makes a getaway in a car. In that scene, you see modern electric streetlights along each side. In general, I find the appearance of the show too natty to accurately depict the Victorian and Edwardian era.
The classic 1966 Czechoslovak film Closely Watched Trains has one of the main female roles with a ponytail and bangs, and the other in a lightly styled mid-60s hairstyle. No attempt whatever to recreate a 1940s hairstyle. I recall watching an episode of the Czechoslovak crime TV show Thirty Cases of Major Zeman which would also have been set in the period shortly after World War II. In it, there was a young woman with long hair worn down and combed out straight. This is highly inaccurate for the period. At that time, most grown women curled their hair (unless they were from some very old-fashioned village in that country, which wasn’t the case); those who didn’t and who had it so long generally wore it in a bun, twist or elaborate updo.
A very common inaccuracy I see in period movies is women wearing their hair down in periods when social etiquette dictated they wear it up and in some cases covered. So for example, if you watch a film set in England around the time of Henry VIII and a woman, certainly a married woman, has her hair down, this would be a glaring error. At that time, women were generally expected to cover their hair with a cap or hood once they married. I recently watched the 2019 Spanish film Elisa & Marcela, which is set at the turn of the 20th century and is based on the true story of two young teachers who had a lesbian relationship and who were married in church after one of them posed as a young man. Throughout the movie, the two young women wear their hair flowing down, whereas at that time, they would have been expected to wear it up by about the time they reached marriageable age.
Don’t get me started on Braveheart. The film is full of anachronisms, fictionalization and bad acting. The “Highland dress” of William Wallace is fantastical (and the real Wallace was not a Highlander) and the belted plaid (the big “kilt”) may not have been worn that early. The way bagpipes are portrayed is also wrong. There is no record of bagpipes being played in war in Scotland before the 16th century; in the film you hear them during a battle scene and early on you have a piper playing a lament after Wallace’s father dies. The pipes are perfectly modern (they would have been simpler in the Middle Ages) yet the soundtrack of the lament is that of modern Uillean pipes (played mainly in Ireland). I read that Mel Gibson thought that Uillean pipes sounded better in Ireland where the filming took place. If that was true, then, duhhhh.
As an expert on the history of bagpipes, I can give you other examples where these are portrayed inaccurately. Some of this would be pedantic and I would be speaking from a position of someone who knows a lot about an extremely narrow topic; all the same, I’ll allow myself to mention one example here. The 1948 David Niven movie Bonnie Prince Charlie about the 1745/6 Jacobite rising has several scenes with bagpipes in them. The first one is when the clans rally to Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s side; various clans are shown arriving, led by pipe bands, each band playing a different tune. This is completely wrong. At that time, there were no pipe bands; pipers seem rarely, to have and besides the Chief’s piper, the clan as a fighting unite may not necessarily have been even able to rally so many pipers at a time. The instruments used were specially made for the film; they are all lacking one drone (the three pipes that rest on the shoulder - the ones in the film have only two), which was presumably done to attempt to make them more historical; however, the pipes are otherwise turned like any other modern instrument, rather than the simpler style of basically all pipes made prior to circa 1780. Moreover, at that time, the number of drones would have varied, with some pipers already having all three; I could be even more specific in explaining this but in general, what was shown in the film is not an accurate portrayal of how the average Highland bagpipe looked in 1745. Also the music they play in that scene (presumably recorded in a studio) is modern marches ( “The Hills of Glenorchy”, “Hot Punch”, “The Haughs of Cromdale”, “Kenmure’s Up and Awa’, Willie”, and “Black Donald’s March”), whereas in those days, they would probably have played piobaireachd, a distinctive form of music that was mainly composed specifically for the pipes and sounds different from a modern military march,
Yeah, you’re probably right. But I still don’t like how the upper classes appropriated a working class (or at least middle-class) hero like Robin o’ the Hood and turned him into just another knight.
Is the CN Tower or the modern Canadian flag anywhere in the background? This happens all the time in Due South. (Not really a period piece, but it’s supposedly set in Chicago.)
The Tudors had a lot of gorgeous naked women lounging around different noblemen’s palaces. Every one had perfect hair, skin, and modern figure.
I seem to remember bagpipes playing in Mary, Queen of Scots when Mary (Vanessa Redgrave) is celebrating a victory over Protestant rebels. I could be mistaken here, since I haven’t seen the movie in decades, but I do know that Mary supposedly never met Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson) face-to-face.
I don’t recall seeing the CN Tower in any scene; however, downtown Toronto is not used for exterior scenes as it is vastly different from how it looked then. Many if not most of the exterior scenes are filmed in other locations with a more old-fashioned look to them than most of modern Toronto and perhaps on soundstages in certain cases. As for the modern Canadian flag, I can’t specifically recall seeing it; generally you see the Union Jack portrayed.
I recall that Deadwood originally scripted period-style cussing, but it was quickly decided that it made the characters sound like bad imitations of Yosemite Sam, so they went with modern-day profanity.
I hate it when modern documentaries show WWII battle maps with the positions of US and Canadian forces marked with 50-star and Maple Leaf flags. Clearly the producers and graphic artists have no idea that things have changed over the last 75–80 years.
Larry Hagman had a 50-star US flag in his office In The Eagle has Landed. . (Yes, you can see the difference even when it’s draped.) Took me out of WWII and back into the '70s immediately.
Far worse was Margot Kidder’s saloon in the James Garner vehicle Nichols, set in 1914. Little 50-star US flags were everywhere!
I actually really like this show just because the early Middle Ages had historically gotten short-shrift in media in favor of settings in later eras, there’s been a couple of fun shows set in the 9th century of late and Last Kingdom is one of them. But yeah, if you actually have watched through all the seasons, it’s fairly obvious there’s certain things that get pulled from some sort of “standard director/producer middle age bag of tricks” that they never thought about whether this was appropriate for the setting. That’s a common problem with works set at any time in the Middle Ages though–a roughly one-thousand-year time span during which military, agricultural, transportation etc technology was continually evolving. It’s been hard to debunk in pop culture the misunderstanding that unlike what some historians in the 18th and 19th centuries thought, societal progression wasn’t “frozen” in time from the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the Renaissance, and stuff that might be fine in a movie set in 1300 isn’t fungible to something set in 875.
One thing contributing to bad teeth might be nutritional deficiencies–for example, scurvy(from a lack of Vitamin C) can cause gum disease and loss of teeth.
What percentage of people have teeth that need correction from “regular life”? As a bit of background, I was born in the 50s and have never had a limited diet (i.e. I eat what typical Americans eat), I’ve typically brushed my teeth daily for my entire life as far back as I can remember, and I floss…maybe a couple times a week. I have never had a cavity, root canal, never required braces, and my wisdom teeth all came in fine and did not require any surgery. My sister who was closest to me in age had a lot of cavities growing up, and I remember one time my mother asking the dentist why the disparity in cavities considering we ate the same food and had the same dental hygiene regimen.
The dentist basically replied, and I’ve never dug much into it, that “some people just don’t really get cavities.” Since I’ve never had any special dental treatment, I have to think even if I lived in pre-modern times my teeth would be decently healthy? I wouldn’t have access to modern toothpaste, but lots of pre-modern societies had various effective daily teeth cleaning technologies.
