During this past weekend while attending the usual round of
holiday cookouts, I continued my custom of wishing family and
friends a happy Independence Day and continued receiving the oddest
looks in return. While it’s true that many people have a vague
notion of the holiday’s meaning — after all, there most be some
reason for all the red, white and blue — its true origin seems to
escape most folks.
You’d think that a holiday that takes its popular name from a
date would inspire more tribute to what actually occurred on that
day in American history; yet sadly that seems less and less the
case as that day grows more distant. Oh, there are crude
representations of George Washington advising us to declare our
independence from high automobile prices and other such rubbish,
but the events that led up to it remain blurry to a great portion
of this country.
Of course, we assume that school children probably have a
clearer idea about the origins of Independence Day, but I’m not so
sure. A niece of mine who just graduated high school told me that
she took a course on the U.S. Constitution, but that the reading of
the actual document was not done in class, but as a “take-home”
assignment. So how then could adults be expected to gain a more
genuine knowledge and love for our nation’s founding?
One way is to rent or watch the movie 1776, as I did
Friday night on TCM.
This film version of the wonderful Broadway musical provides
viewers the rare opportunity to be entertained and enlightened at
the same time. Although the 1972 movie pales in comparison to the
stage version and suffers from the artificial artiness so prevalent
then, it is nonetheless a treasure for lovers of American history.
Forget about HBO’s dreary miniseries, John Adams; if you want to
see a living, breathing Atlas of Independence, William Daniels in
1776 is it.
Long before John Adams was restored to his rightful place in the
American pantheon by authors like David McCullough, he was cast as
the lyrical leading man in the mind’s eye of a former high school
history teacher turned songwriter, Sherman Edwards. Together with
Peter Stone and a bit of literary license, Edwards produced a work
that, if watched just once, imparts a pretty good working knowledge
of the events leading up to the vote on American independence.
The more diligent viewer would be able to name the original 13
colonies and at least one of their principal representatives;
achieve at least a basic understanding of the arguments for and
against independence as well as the slave trade; name those on the
Declaration committee; and have insight on the state of General
George Washington’s Continental Army and even the weather that
summer in “foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.” Not a
bad haul for a few hours that might otherwise be devoted to the
viewing of “I Survived a Japanese Game Show.”
Of course there is some monkeying around with facts, most of
which is in order to advance the story line and can be easily
overlooked, as can the idea that our forefathers sang and danced
their way through that brutal summer; although legend has it that Washington could cut a mean rug. But
the movie’s real merit is that it manages to preserve the tension
of a story whose ending is already known. Today, our independence
is such an established fact that it’s sometimes easy to forget that
it was never a certainty and certainly not won easily.
As any lover of John Adams knows, he famously predicted that
“monuments would never be erected” to him. Yet Edwards and Stone
wrote their musical after many years of scouring historical
documents for direct quotes, most notably the monument left by
Adams and wife Abigail: the letters written by him and his
“Dearest Friend” over a period of 30 years. They
are not only a chronicle of the birth of a nation, but a love song
to their country and to each other. No dry historical account can
match their passion; only 1776 comes close. What’s truly
amazing is that a dramatization of the Adams letters themselves has
never reached the stage.
It is interesting that 1776 won the Tony Award for best
musical in 1969, besting the horrific, hippie-fest that was
Hair, proving that even in troubled times, true love of
country perseveres. So watch it every year with your children, your
grandchildren and anyone else you can get to sit still for a few
priceless hours, and maybe you can dream along with John Adams as
he sings,
