Brian Mackey: Wishing for Washington on the big screen
Think of George Washington. What comes to mind?
The staid face on the dollar bill? Wooden teeth? Chopping down a cherry tree and coming clean about it?
Ron Chernow’s new biography explodes these banalities. “Washington: A Life” makes the father of our democracy into a flesh-and-blood human being.
This Washington has faults and virtues and remarkable reserves of self-discipline.
He was also a bad mother.
It’s high time he got his due in the way our culture does best — it’s time for a George Washington biopic.
Obsessive readers of this column (Hi, Mom) will recall that every year before the Fourth of July, I get an urge to read a book on U.S. history: “Founding Brothers,” “1776,” that sort of thing.
I’m not saying I always get through these books before the Fourth — or ever, as they range in size from hearty doorstops to wheel chocks suitable for securing a 747.
But “Washington” has been relentlessly compelling, with vivid scenes showing a man of action belied by the stoic, placid face we know from portraits.
In an early battle of the French and Indian War, our hero was one of the few surviving officers in a unit of 1,000 men that suffered hundreds and hundreds of casualties.
“With exceptional pluck and cool-headedness, young George Washington was soon riding all over the battlefield. Though he must have been exhausted, he kept going from sheer willpower and performed magnificently amid the horror,” Chernow writes.
During the battle, four
bullets ripped his clothes and hat.
“Because of his height, he presented a gigantic target on horseback, but again he displayed unblinking courage and a miraculous immunity in battle,” Chernow writes. “When two horses were shot from under him, he dusted himself off and mounted the horses of dead riders.”
On top of all this, Washington was recovering from a nasty case of dysentery — symptoms include “violent diarrhea.”
“He was still so weak that when he mounted his horse the next morning, he had to strap on cushions to ease his painful hemorrhoids,” Chernow writes.
Perhaps that last detail could be glossed over on the big screen, but the rest of it would make for thrilling cinema.
There were reports three years ago that Nicholas Meyer was writing a screenplay based on Washington’s life. (His past credits include “The Human Stain,” “The Prince of Egypt” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”) But there has been little word since then.
George Washington Presidency - News
AP Military Life for George Washington began in 1753 when he was commissioned in Virginia Militia, fought in Indian wars. By Anonymous Think of George Washington. What comes to mind? The staid face on the dollar bill? Wooden teeth?
“This particular configuration is unusual,” said Michael Moore, a professor at George Washington University in Washington and an economist in the administration of President George W. Bush. “Certainly in the last 30 or 40 years, I can't think of an
Just last year, promising Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi threw his life to the steep drop and tempest Hudson River beneath the George Washington Bridge because of a prank gone wrong. Unlike the normal, college-filled raw
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George Washington: The Reluctant President | History & Archaeology ...
Editor’s note: Even as the Constitution was being ratified, Americans looked toward a figure of singular probity to fill the new office of the presidency. On February 4, 1789, the 69 members of the Electoral College made George Washington the only chief executive to be unanimously elected. Congress was supposed to make the choice official that March but could not muster a quorum until April. The reason—bad roads—suggests the condition of the country Washington would lead. In a new biography,
The Congressional delay in certifying George Washington’s election as president only allowed more time for doubts to fester as he considered the herculean task ahead. He savored his wait as a welcome “reprieve,” he told his former comrade in arms and future Secretary of War Henry Knox, adding that his “movements to the chair of government will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” His “peaceful abode” at Mount Vernon, his fears that he lacked the requisite skills for the presidency, the “ocean of difficulties” facing the country—all gave him pause on the eve of his momentous trip to New York. In a letter to his friend Edward Rutledge, he made it seem as if the presidency was little short of a death sentence and that, in accepting it, he had given up “all expectations of private happiness in this world.”
The day after Congress counted the electoral votes, declaring Washington the first president, it dispatched Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, to bear the official announcement to Mount Vernon. The legislators had chosen a fine emissary. A well-rounded man, known for his work in astronomy and mathematics, the Irish-born Thomson was a tall, austere figure with a narrow face and keenly penetrating eyes. He couldn’t have relished the trying journey to Virginia, which was “much impeded by tempestuous weather, bad roads, and the many large rivers I had to cross.” Yet he rejoiced that the new president would be Washington, whom he venerated as someone singled out by Providence to be “the savior and father” of the country. Having known Thomson since the Continental Congress, Washington esteemed him as a faithful public servant and exemplary patriot.
Around noon on April 14, 1789, Washington flung open the door at Mount Vernon and greeted his visitor with a cordial embrace. Once in the privacy of the mansion, he and Thomson conducted a stiff verbal minuet, each man reading from a prepared statement. Thomson began by declaring, “I am honored with the commands of the Senate to wait upon your Excellency with the information of your being elected to the office of President of the United States of America” by a unanimous vote. He read aloud a letter from Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, the president pro tempore. “Suffer me, sir, to indulge the hope that so auspicious a mark of public confidence will meet your approbation and be considered as a sure pledge of the affection and support you are to expect from a free and enlightened people.” There was something deferential, even slightly servile, in Langdon’s tone, as if he feared that Washington might renege on his promise and refuse to take the job. Thus was greatness once again thrust upon George Washington.
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