In any case, the various dispositions of the armies and river fleets aren't nearly so interesting as another apparent example of the author's laziness.
This chapter has a brief section relating to the film The Horse Soldiers, which in our history was produced in 1959, but in this story is produced in 1939, but more on that in a moment. The section takes place by opening with a reference to IMDB (yes, the Internet Movie Database, founded in 1990, clearly a difference of 129 years leads to this) talking about the film. The movie is referring to a story 'loosely' based on General Bufords's "Tennessee Raid" in the summer of 1863. Historian Bridget Catton relates:
"[Buford] drove through western and central Tennessee, tearing up railroads and upsetting [rebel General] Van Dorn's troop deployments before reaching US-held Nashville. The climactic battle scene at the “Palmyra Meeting House,” where the Buford character, General James “Jim” Butler (whose Tennessean antecedents are heavily played up) faces his brother John, a rebel cavalry officer, is based on the fighting at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, between Buford’s division and that of the rebel general Nathan Bedford-Forrest.While all well and good for an alternate history section, the authors sheer laziness in writing this section boggles the mind.
For instance, the film is made of a cast starring:
Cast:Historical figures, birth dates and nationalities in italics and parenthesis, my own insertions. That he hasn't even bothered to hide some of their identities behind historic pseudonyms is a little strange, given the lengths he has gone to in order to not use real authors from OTL.
General James “Jim” Butler, USA - William C. Gable (Clark Gable b. 1901)
Col. Karl Richter, USCT - Howard Stainer (Leslie Howard Steiner b. 1893, British)
Captain Stephen Brice, USCT – George Keefer (George Keefer Reeves, b. 1914)
Sgt. Sam Brown, USCT – Sam McDaniel (Sam McDaniel b.1886)
General Nathan Forester, CSA - Victor Jory (Victor Jory b. 1902, Canadian)
Col. John “Johnny” Butler, CSA - - Frederick Crane
Col. Addington Wilkes, British Army - Thomas J. Mitchell (Thomas John Mitchell b. 1892)
Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, reporter of the Chicago Sun - Howard C. Hickman (Howard Hickman b. 1880)
Miss Virginia Carvel, mistress of “Hibernia Plantation” - Vivian Hartley (Vivian Mary Hartley b. 1913)
Oddly, John Wayne - I mean Marion Robert Morrison - gets the short shift here, as he is originally the star of the film. Instead we get many actors who originally starred in Gone With the Wind packed in. While I'm personally a fan of Clark Gable, I'd expect Wayne to be leading the charge as it were in this piece. Western's were his forte after all.
Incredibly, the whole movie is based on a book called The Crisis by American writer (and naval officer) Winston Churchill. Yes, that Churchill. Now, this might be forgivable as something of an oversight or perhaps use of a very harsh butterfly net had it not been for the author in the marginalia of the story point out, rather explicitly, that Winston Churchill was very unlikely to be born. That he abandons this premise (and goes on to write no less than nine so far accounted for individuals who are born well past the POD) seems more than a little odd, especially given his penchant for killing historical characters exactly when they died historically, more or less.
That though, is not the biggest absurdity raised in this section. The ending goes something like this:
The film was released just weeks before the European war broke out, and was heavily criticized by isolationists as “typical anti-British propaganda.” Famously, the then-Lord Forrest threatened a lawsuit, but it was never filed before his death in 1940. For obvious reasons, the film was never released in Imperial territory.Though we know how this story is supposed to end, this raises a variety of questions. Why is (presumably) Nathan Bedford Forrest III a Lord? Why is war breaking out in 1939? Furthermore, why are the same people being born and also taking up acting? Why is a movie originally filmed in the late 50s being filmed in the late 30s? Why does the author simply insert some historical figures exactly the same while tweaking the genders of others?
The answer seems to be simple laziness. Nothing more, nothing less, as the author instead turns this from a fairly odd alternate history to a gleeful Anglophobic screed.
'the whole movie is based on a book called The Crisis by American writer (and naval officer) Winston Churchill. Yes, that Churchill.'
ReplyDeleteThere's a comment elsewhere in the TL that says the following:
'There were (at least) two, the American born in Missouri in 1871 and the Briton born in 1874 in England. Which one (if either) the one mentioned in this little excerpt from the IMDB actually is, of course, remains to be seen... The Crisis actually is one of Winston's novels, and is set largely in Civil War-era Missouri; in BROS, presume it goes farther afield, and becomes something of a loyalist equivalent to the novel Gone with the Wind, and thus is adapted for a "big" technicolor blockbuster in 1939, to the point above.'
Of course, if you say on 5 October 2015 that 'Odds are against him [Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill] ever being born, to be blunt', you can't retain the mystique of saying it 'remains to be seen' on 14 April 2016.
Bah, so much contradictory stuff in the story and the TL itself makes it hard to sort out. However, maybe I should edit it to talk about the other Churchill, but when he muddies the waters so consistently, I feel somewhat safe leaving it in.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have known that myself, if it hadn't been that last year I was going to write up a complaint about how petty it was to make the greatest Englishman into an American!
DeleteJohn Wayne's grandfather fought with the 83rd Illinois historically, but given how quickly the BROS civil war was over I'd be very surprised if he'd died. The rest of the cast list clearly required some serious butterfly slaughtering, though. And as for the idea that Southern gentry will come over and stroll right into the English nobility...