Happy Fourth of July

I wish I could "love" that post instead of just "liking" it. I hope our fellow LP'ers had a safe and fun holiday, and that @iamsally 's boys had a wonderful birthday!

 

I'll just say this; I will never drink again. OY! Alright, I probably will drink again, but not for awhile. We BBQ'd burgers and enjoyed a fireworks display which the city does every year. We can see it great from our back yard.

 

We just had a quiet day at home. I grilled up some brats for dinner, and attempted to keep the dogs calm once the fireworks started. Jaeger doesn't always fare so well, and I ended up with him spooning me the majority of the night. To give you an idea of size...this is our big baby.

Now imagine him being cuddled up to you all night...LOL!!

 

Edwards and Stone's 1776. The uncut edition, (all two hours and 46 minutes of it, including the "Cool, Considerate Men" production number that Jack Warner had suppressed [at President Nixon's request!], and ordered destroyed [the supposedly destroyed footage was found in an abandoned salt mine that all the major Hollywood studios use for their archives, and restored to its proper place in the current DVD release]).

While I have most of the songs (and half the dialogue) memorized, and have seen a live stage production, I think it was the first time my dad had seen it in any form.

 

I never could enjoy that old film. I tried on a couple of occasions, but I just couldn't get past all the historical inaccuracies or the music for that matter. But I guess some people really liked it. Cheers!

 

You have to understand: Sherman Edwards, although he did, as I recall, make his living as a history teacher, did NOT intend 1776 as a history lesson. It's a musical comedy, that happens to be about the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He intended it not to teach history, but to get people excited about history.

And so naturally, he simplified things. His John Adams is generally acknowledged to be a composite of John Adams and Sam Adams. He left out the little detail about Caesar Rodney being asthmatic, in addition to the cancerous growth on his jaw (even though anybody who knows that will recognize his asthma attack). He took a lot of poetic license. John and Abigail Adams didn't have some sort of long-distance telepathic link; those conversations were in John's imagination, fueled by the steady stream of letters he exchanged with Abigail. The historic Martha Jefferson didn't travel to Philadelphia, much less arrive fresh as a daisy, and ready to sing a show-stopping aria (in full belt, at some points) the next morning (but think about the last verse, "When Heaven calls to me . . ." Clearly a nod to history). James Wilson was not a milquetoast. The Resolution on Independence had already been adopted (and Dickinson had already left, and enlisted) by the time most of the debate on its exact wording (including the removal of the slavery clause) happened.

But all of those historical liberties were taken in the name of heightening the tension of a story in which everybody already knew how it turned out, before they walked into the theatre. And while, as a history lesson, it gets (at best) a D-, as a musical comedy, the level of historical accuracy is surprisingly good.

It originated as a Broadway show. "Sit Down, John" and "Piddle, Twiddle, and Resolve" were intended to let the audience know, from the start, that they were in for a good time, not a history lesson. "The Egg" was written because Edwards and Stone realized that they needed something to lighten the mood after "Mama, Look Sharp"; one or the other of them saw the poster art, with a young bald eagle emerging from an egg, holding the Stars and Stripes in its beak, with the Union Jack painted on the eggshell, and was instantly inspired.

The only reason why it became a movie (and certainly the only reason why it became a movie so faithful to the original Broadway show) was because Jack Warner saw it on Broadway, and fell in love with it. And he took it on as a personal project, sinking his own personal wealth into it. And he insisted on using as much of the Broadway cast as possible.

I saw it live in the auditorium of a Y (a YWCA, as I recall), in Boston, near Copley Square. I had already seen the movie, in an edited-for-television version, on a pair of 3/4" videocassettes, during my junior year of high school; as I recall, it was shown right after the unit on the Revolutionary War.

And I was amazed at how the historical Caesar Rodney turned out to be even more heroic than the fictionalized version. Had he not been toned down, he might have upstaged the stars.