January 2011

Fur Trappers Westward (Arthur Barr Productions, 1265 Bresee Avenue, Pasadena 7, Calif.) is one of the outstanding motion picture interpretations of an historic subject. It meticulously follows the life of the early Nineteenth-Century “mountain men” from the keelboat journey up the Missouri River to the rendezvous for disposing of the catch of furs. Set against colorfully impressive scenery, the film illustrates clearly the methods of operation of the trappers, their activities, their hardships, and the dangers confronting them. Every aspect of the film—photography, narration, and characterization—stamps it as a magnificent explanation and an unsurpassed teaching tool.

The nonrevealing title of Dear Nancy actually hides a sponsored film (Breck Shampoos) that is a remarkably detailed document of early Nineteenth-Century life. The film provides a year-around view of typical activities of rural America by using the authentic settings of Old Sturbridge Village. Craftsmanship, routine work, and recreation are appropriately described in re-creating the atmosphere of a century and a half ago. The attempt to contrast that life with conditions in the middle of the past century does not come off so effectively. Association Films (347 Madison Avenue, N.Y. 17) is the source for this account.

A more explicitly titled film, Not So Long Ago , deals with similar subjects—the community organization and craftsmanship of our ancestors. This film from Cinavision, Inc. (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) uses the backgrounds of both Old Sturbridge and Colonial Williamsburg to explain features of our heritage. Susan Reed furnishes the musical accompaniment for this delightfully informative journey into the past.

Film makers enjoy resurrecting, with some regularity, pictures of past years or decades and assembling a new view of a bygone era. With good material and skillful editing, the historically minded producer can bring forth a vivid document of history. Often, however, historic materials battle with the purely nostalgic for a place of prominence in the compilation. Three recently released 16mm motion pictures are examples of different aspects of this process.

Modern History of Film Pioneer Life Western Americana American Transportation American Recreation Recorded Americana

It is generally known that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln was adjudged insane in later life. The circumstances of her sanity trial, however, are not so familiar and certain details have been lacking. A new document has now come to light which brings the tragic event into focus as vividly as if it were done in technicolor.

Ten years after the assassination of her husband, Mrs. Lincoln was in a shattered, unbalanced condition which nowadays would demand psychiatric treatment. The strain of being First Lady through the Civil War years—vicious public calumnies, the loss of two little sons, the murder of her husband as he sat by her side, and finally the death of still a third son—had transformed a naturally buoyant woman into a pitiful, frightened creature who walked the floor at night with bright lights burning because of imagined dangers, and entered a public dining room to look fearfully around and whisper: “I am afraid; I am afraid.”

The Virginia Exiles , by Elizabeth Gray Vining. J. B. Lippincott Company. $3.95.

A novel about 23 Pennsylvanians, who during the Revolution were banished to Virginia because they refused to subscribe to a loyalty oath.

Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age , by John William Ward. Oxford University Press. $5.

The mind of Nineteenth-Century America is explored in this book which is more of a study of Jackson’s time than of the man himself.

The Federalism of James A. Bayard , by Morton Borden. Columbia University Press. $3.75.

This biography of the prominent Federalist James A. Bayard of Delaware (1767-1815) brings to light many facets of Federalist politics.

The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta , by Yellow Bird (John Rollin Ridge), with an introduction by Joseph Henry Jackson. University of Oklahoma Press. $2.

The Great Reconnaissance , by Edward S. Wallace. Little, Brown & Co. 288 pp. $5.

This book is principally a retelling of the exploratory expeditions made in the Far West by that nowvanished organization, the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. The work began with a lengthy survey of the U.S.-Mexican border as it was established by the war with Mexico, continued on with various attempts to chart routes for transcontinental railroads, included the first surveys of the Grand Canyon region, and wound up with the entertaining and potentially valuable attempt to make the camel a beast of burden on the southwestern deserts. Altogether, these explorations were done competently and with a minimum of the kind of accidents that make headlines, and Mr. Wallace has provided a readable account of an interesting and little-known chapter in American history.

Humboldt: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt , by Helmut de Terra. Alfred A. Knopf. 386 pp. $5.75.

John Charles Frémont was one of the those skyrockets that arch up across the American sky now and then—a wild quick climb, a dazzling shower of sparks, and then a headlong plunge down into the darkness. Seen from a distance, the man seems to have had a minimum of solid substance, so that it is hard to understand what people used to see in him.

Yet he burned with a bright light once. Many men believed in him passionately, and not all of them were innocents who gave their faith to men without stature. (There was Kit Carson, for instance.) If he did not precisely open the West, he made Americans aware of it, he put a gloss and a shine on it, he helped stamp the consciousness of a continental destiny on the American mind. A little later his name became part of a drum-beat rhythm . . . Free soil, Free men, Frémont! . . . and if, in the end, he was not the man the time of drums called for he at least had been a rallying point for men greatly in earnest.

Somebody once called Ulysses S. Grant “the unpronounceable man,” and the phrase will do until a better one comes along. This little chap was a man you couldn’t quite figure, somehow—seemingly uninspired, ordinary as an old shoe, a straightaway plodder who undeniably liked to drink more than was good for him . . . and yet, at the same time, a fascinating and complex person with flashes of genuine brilliance, who belongs finally, faults and all, in the gallery of great Americans.

Earl Schenck Miers examines six months of Grant’s career in an uncommonly rewarding book, The Web of Victory , which is a detailed study of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign.