I think it was Thursdays, but it might have been Tuesdays. I’m
pretty sure the day started with a T.
It was the best day of the week that year in elementary
school for me, because we could get optional chocolate milk with
our school lunch, and Robin Hood was on TV in the
evening.
Loved that show — the swashbuckling adventures of Robin
(Richard Greene), Little John (Archie Duncan), Maid Marian
(Bernadette O’Farrell, later Patricia Driscoll), and Friar Tuck
(Alexander Gauge), battling the corrupt (but always well dressed)
Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Wheatley), week after week. I have no
doubt it was that program that instilled in me the love for things
medieval that motivates me to dress up as a Viking reenactor on
weekends, even at my age.
My adult experiences with rediscovering beloved childhood
television programs have mostly been disappointing. When I get a
chance to see an episode (or, worse still, buy the DVD set), I can
usually expect a rude collision with shoddy writing, wooden acting,
and cheap costumes and sets.
So it was with some misgivings that I approached the
complete collection of
The Adventures of Robin Hood. But it was on sale at a
very low price at my local used book store, and I took the
chance.
I was pleasantly surprised. The acting is good, the
costumes not bad, and the sets (by artistic director Peter Proud)
were groundbreaking, achieving an illusion of variety on a limited
budget.
Still, for any conservative fan of this series, there must
always be the problem of the Legend of The Adventures of Robin
Hood. Not the original legend of “Bold Robin” based on English
ballads, but the (factual) political legend of how the show came to
be written.
Producer Hannah Weinstein was an avowed leftist, and made
a point of hiring expatriate American writers, notably several
members of the Hollywood Ten, like Ring Lardner, Jr. These writers,
living in England where the show was filmed, worked under
pseudonyms. They were happy to relate, in later years, how they
managed to smuggle redistributionist propaganda into American homes
during the Eisenhower years.
All true.
And yet, my own impression is that — at least a lot of
the time — the stories they wrote did not bear out their
principles nearly so well as they thought.
The very first episode, “The Coming of Robin Hood,” tells
how Robin of Locksley — no member of the proletariat, but lord of
an estate — comes home to find his property unjustly confiscated
by the authorities. His resistance to this injustice makes him an
outlaw, and much is made of the fact that the government has no
right to steal private property.
That’s not what I’d call a good start for a series
promoting Collectivism.
An episode called “The Salt King” in Season Three concerns
a nobleman who holds a monopoly on the sale of salt in
Nottinghamshire. His underhanded scheme to decrease supplies and
raise prices is the stuff that Progressive propaganda is made of,
I’ll admit. But, interestingly, the solution Robin and his friends
come up with involves not the nationalization of the salt wells,
but the threat of competition, when the individual landowners
convince the monopolist that they’ve found salt on their own
lands.
Another interesting episode from Season Three is “One
Man’s Meat,” in which a nobleman with nutritional theories tries to
force his servants and serfs to live on a miracle diet composed of
nuts and roots. Modern leftists, many of whom are vegetarians, will
probably be distressed to see Robin smuggling meat in to the
suffering castle occupants. He then proves by means of a blind
study (apparently having invented modern science single-handedly)
that the nobleman’s food is healthy for pigs.
And what kind of government is more likely to force
dietary laws on its citizens, anyway? Capitalist or
Communist?
An episode called “The Minstrel,” also in Season Three,
certainly sprang from the deepest hearts of the blacklisted
American writers. A minstrel composes a song making fun of the
Sheriff. The Sheriff, concerned that the city look good for an
upcoming visit by Prince John, outlaws all singing. Obviously this
is a poke at the United States, which had imprisoned some of them
(though technically they didn’t go to jail for what they’d written,
but for refusing to reveal Communist connections).
Yes, yes. I see the point.
And yet, if you were to look for a country that sent
people to prison (and even put them to death) for the content of
their writings, wouldn’t the most obvious parallel be a certain
world power located to the east?
A similar episode, “The Doctor,” from the same season,
involves a principled physician who is threatened with a show trial
(sentence predetermined) for the crime of treating Little
John.
I take the point, of course. Still, it seems to me that
while the Hollywood Ten’s treatment by the House Committee on
Un-American Activities may not have been the high point of American
constitutional jurisprudence, there was another world power whose
show trials were far more brutal, and whose victims generally ended
up dead, not living comfortably abroad, writing television
scripts.
All in all it seems to me that The Adventures of Robin
Hood wasn’t nearly the propaganda engine the writers wanted it
to be. The reason, I think, is simple. Good writing mirrors real
life. And real life is essentially conservative. These writers were
too good to really try to impose Marxist principles on their
stories.
Another notable element, through the entire run of the
series, is its treatment of the Roman Catholic Church.
Although in the ballads Robin Hood was always a faithful
Christian, his relationship with churchmen was ambivalent. His
alliance with Friar Tuck notwithstanding, “fat abbots,” who were
also feudal lords, were frequent victims of the Sherwood
robbers.
But in this series, churchmen are always friends to the
people, and the church promotes liberty 100% of the
time.
No doubt this was due to the broadcast standards of
English television in those days. Criticism of Christianity was not
permitted, particularly in children’s fare. The Communist, atheist
writers must have chafed under that restriction, but they bit their
tongues and wrote as they were told.
Because if there’s one thing Communists are good at, it’s
obeying government orders.
As long as it isn’t the United States government, under
Republicans.
I will admit, though, that my set of DVDs does live up to
the standards of the Soviet Union in one important
respect.
They’re shoddily manufactured. Half the episodes on the
last three discs are garbled and unwatchable.
The spirit of the Revolution lives on.
