A few weeks late, I finally got to indulge in one of my yearly pleasures. Every year on the the 4th of July, Turner Classic Movies airs one of my favorite movies, 1776.
As its title implies, the story is based on events leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Originally a Broadway production in 1969, the 1972 adaptation primarily set out to make an entertaining musical. Despite occasional poetic license or characters breaking into song, the final production is pretty accurate.
History was always one of my favorite subjects in school. This movie was my first clue that what I’d learned in K-12 about the American Revolution was slightly lacking. My childhood memories paint a picture of a bunch of guys getting together and saying, “OMG, you want to split from Great Britain too? YAY!”
Or, in John Adams’ own words to a lesser-known Benjamin:
“[Ben] Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington – fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington and the horse, conducted the entire revolution all by themselves.”
At its heart, the movie is less about the signing and more about how men from different walks of life with VERY different agendas somehow agreed upon this radical document and ushered a fledgling country into the tumult of the next 242 years.
Musings 