One Cheer for Ted Turner
The esteemed editor of this journal, Paul Kengor, wrote a fitting R.I.P. for Ted Turner, the billionaire media mogul who died recently at the age of 87. He was a man of many contradictions, as Kengor pointed out — “an innovator, an entrepreneur, a free-market pioneer,” a southerner, who called himself a socialist, and an atheist to boot who was apparently downright hostile to Christianity. Kengor rightly credits Turner for creating Turner Classic Movies (TCM), but he omitted one more worthwhile endeavor of Turner’s — his film production company that funded the making of two great Civil War movies: Gettysburg and Gods and Generals.
The portrayal in ‘Gods and Generals’ of the Battle of Fredericksburg is unforgettable.
Gettysburg appeared on the big screen in 1993. It was based on Michael Shaara’s historical novel The Killer Angels. The movie starred Martin Sheen as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Tom Berenger as Gen. James Longstreet, Richard Jordan as Gen. Lewis Armistead, Jeff Daniels as Col. Joshua Chamberlain, Sam Elliott as Gen. John Buford, Stephen Lang as Gen. George Pickett, Brian Mallon as Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, and Kevin Conway as the fictional Union soldier Buster Kilrain.
But the real stars of the movie were the reenactors who recreated the combat scenes of the movie — on McPherson’s and Seminary Ridges, the struggle for Little Round Top, and the Confederate assault on the third day of the battle known to history as Pickett’s charge. The combat scenes are intense and riveting, especially the fighting on Little Round Top. The soundtrack by Randy Edelman is haunting at times, and at other times inspirational. Director and screenwriter Ron Maxwell created an instant classic, but none of it would have happened without Ted Turner’s money.
Gettysburg’s success led to Turner funding a second movie that appeared on the big screen in 2003 — a prequal that told the story of the Civil War from its inception to the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville — titled Gods and Generals after the novel by that name written by Michael Shaara’s son, Jeff. Gods and Generals starred Stephen Lang as Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert Duval as Gen. Lee, with Brian Mallon returning as Gen. Hancock and Jeff Daniels returning as Joshua Chamberlain. Once again, the real stars are the reenactors who recreated the combat at First Manassas, Antietam (in the director’s cut but not on the big screen), Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Ron Maxwell directed the movie, and Randy Edelman and John Frizzell created the soundtrack.
The portrayal in Gods and Generals of the Battle of Fredericksburg is unforgettable. Union brigade after brigade assaults a stone wall at the base of a hill called Mayre’s Heights where Confederate soldiers mow down the attackers and Confederate artillery positioned on the hill rains down on the helpless Union formations. In one scene, a Confederate brigade of Irish soldiers is forced to shoot at the famed Union Irish Brigade — and they do so with tears in their eyes and salute the bravery of their ethnic brothers.
The final battle in Gods and Generals is Chancellorsville, where Lee and Jackson, though outnumbered three-to-one, divide their armies and surprise the encamped Union army. It is a remarkable southern victory but comes at a high cost — the loss of Gen. Jackson, who is wounded by friendly fire and later dies of those wounds. Lang’s portrayal of Jackson is also unforgettable — a God-fearing man who at one moment weeps after visiting a field hospital and the next moment tells an aid that the way to win the war is to kill all the Union soldiers.
Turner, unsurprisingly, made a cameo appearance in both movies as a Confederate officer. There were plans to film a third movie, tentatively titled The Last Full Measure, after another novel written by Michael Shaara, but Gods and Generals was not the box office success that Gettysburg was, and Turner pulled out of the project. That movie would have portrayed the clash between Gen. Robert E. Lee and Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant from the Overland Campaign in Virginia during the spring of 1864 to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. My guess is that if the same team — Maxwell and Edleman — had worked on such a film it, too, would have been a classic that completed the story of the Civil War on the big screen.
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