Category: History

The Scene in “The Right Stuff” That Makes You Love John Glenn

John Glenn phone

John Glenn passed away today on December 8, 2016 at the age of 95.  The former NASA astronaut and Senator is one of the few people who could accurately be described as an American hero.

An American Hero

Glenn served his country well in a number of ways.  He left college to join the service after Pearl Harbor, eventually serving in the Navy and then the Marines. He served in the Korean War and later as a test pilot and as an astronaut.

As a Marine Corps pilot, he broke the transcontinental flight speed record.  In 1962, he became the first American to orbit the Earth.  In 1998, at age 77, he became the oldest man in space as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery.

In politics, Glenn represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate for 25 years.  During that period, he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination and was often considered for a place on the ticket as vice president.

The Right Stuff

But of all his accomplishments, one scene about his life stands out for me.  In the movie The Right Stuff (1983) about the original Mercury 7 astronauts, Ed Harris plays Glenn as a somewhat moralizing goody two shoes, who still comes across as admirable.

One scene in the film centers on events from January 27, 1962 after Glenn’s flight is postponed due to weather conditions.  Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and the press are outside Glenn’s house wanting to talk to Glenn’s wife, Annie.  Annie, upset and not wanting to meet with the press or the vice president, talks to Glenn on the phone.

In the scene, Glenn is aware of the political and media pressure on the space program.  And he is pressured to tell his wife to talk to the vice president.  But instead, he backs his wife “100%.”  The other astronauts also come off well in the scene, putting aside any differences to back up Glenn.

The incident and Glenn’s response is a true story, even if a bit stylized with a humorous take on LBJ for the big screen. Johnson and the media were pressuring Annie, and Glenn backed up his wife all the way.

Glenn later explained, “She said she was tired, she had a headache, and she just wasn’t going to allow all those people in her house … I told her whatever she wanted to do, I would back her up 100 percent.”

There would be a few more delays due to a fuel leak and weather problems.  But of course, Glenn did get off the ground on February 20, 1962 in Friendship 7, becoming the first American to orbit the earth. But he was already a hero to those who knew him.

Godspeed John Glenn.

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    The Hanging of Tom Horn

    Tom Horn Prison

    On October 22, 1903, Tom Horn was hanged in Wyoming, one day short of his forty-third birthday. Historians generally do not dispute that Horn had killed a number of men.  But most believe Horn was innocent of the killing for which he was hanged. Many are familiar with Horn’s later life through one of Steve McQueen’s final films.

    Tom Horn’s Life

    Horn was born on November 21, 1860 at a family farm in Scotland County, Missouri. Young Tom had a troubled early life, growing up in a large family with an abusive father. In one of his early fights, he was beat up by two boys who then killed his dog.

    At the age of sixteen, Horn moved West.  There, he worked a number of different jobs, including acting as a scout for the Army. Horn acted as an interpreter when Geronimo surrendered to the Army. After the Apache Wars, Horn bought his own ranch.  But cattle thieves overran his ranch, again causing him to wander.

    Horn found other work, such as as a prospector, a ranch hand, a deputy sheriff in Arizona, and an agent for the Pinkerton Detective agency. But it was his work for cattle companies that eventually led to his demise.

    During the Johnson County War in Wyoming, Horn worked for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Reportedly, Horn killed a number of men in this role. He then worked in Colorado for the Swan Land and Cattle Company, where he again killed more men who were suspected of rustling.

    Horn then served in the Army in Cuba during the Spanish American War. Eventually, though, he ended up back West working for cattle owners, this time working for cattle baron John C. Coble in Wyoming.

    The Murder and Trial

    On July 18, 1901, the body of a 14-year-old son of sheep ranchers was found murdered. Authorities began investigating the killing of the young Willie Nickell, soon focusing on Tom Horn.

    The government put Horn on trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The trial featured as a key piece of evidence a statement Horn made.  He had claimed, apparently while still drunk, that if he did the killing, it was the “best shot that I ever made and the dirtiest trick that I ever done.”

    On October 24, 1902, the jury found Horn guilty of the murder. A few days later, the court sentenced him to death by hanging.

    During the appeal, Horn wrote his autobiography while in jail, focusing on his early life: Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter. Eventually, the Wyoming Supreme Court turned down the appeal.

    The governor refused to stop the hanging. And Horn was hanged in Cheyenne by means of a “Julian Gallows” that used water as a means of releasing the trap door.

    Many historians believe Horn was innocent of the killing of Willie Nickell, while noting that he did do a number of other killings. Still, his case is a reminder of how innocent people may be convicted of capital crimes. Still today, we discover innocent people on death rows across America.

    Tom Horn on TV and Film

    Tom Horn’s story has resonated in popular culture. The 1954 television series Stories of the Century, took an unflattering look at Tom Horn and his crimes.

    The episode portrays Horn as someone who worked for the law but “then for some reason turned criminal.” In the episode, actor Louis Jean Heydt portays Horn.

    Steve McQueen provided the most famous portrayal of Horn in the 1980 movie Tom Horn. The film was based on Horn’s writings, and McQueen gives a largely sympathetic portrayal of Horn, while not shying away from his violence.

    Steve McQueen McQueen was notorious for clashing with his directors, and Tom Horn went through several directors before TV director William Wiard came on board to finish the film. McQueen also requested several rewrites of the script, which included work by the great Western writer Thomas McGuane.

    Tom Horn     — which was released on March 28, 1980 — was the next-to-last film released that starred McQueen. During the filming of the movie, McQueen had trouble breathing, and he was later diagnosed with a form of lung cancer, malignant mesothelioma. On August 1 of that year, his final film, The Hunter, was released. McQueen died on November 1, 1980 at the age of 50.

    The movie Tom Horn received mixed reviews and did a disappointing $12 million at the box office. At the time, Variety claimed that McQueen appeared to be walking through the lead role. But actor James Coburn claimed Tom Horn was McQueen’s best film. Currently, it has a 68% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

    The movie seems to have aged well over time, as has Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which was released the same year.  Empire calls Tom Horn an “underrated, gloomy Western.”

    In subsequent years, viewers were more tolerant of Westerns that focused on something besides action.  In 2014, True West explained that the movie and McQueen’s acting in the film were ahead of their time: “Audiences were used to action-packed Westerns with gunfights and brawls. McQueen offered them something different—a meditation of the West and a character study of one of America’s best-known figures of the era.”

    Below is the trailer for Tom Horn. Check it out.

    Photo via public domain. What did you think of the movie “Tom Horn”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    It All Started With the Border

    Drive-By Truckers NRA American Band, the new album by Drive-By Truckers, immediately signals the songs are about to tackle issues in contemporary America with the first words of the first song.  In the opening track, “Ramon Casiano,” the first lines proclaim, “It all started with the border,/ And that’s still where it is today.”

    The Killing of Ramón Casiano

    Casiano was a 15-year-old Mexican teen killed in 1931 in Laredo, Texas.  The killing occurred after the 17-year-old Harlon Carter returned home from school and his mother told him about three Latinos hanging around the family’s property.

    Carter took his shotgun and found Casiano and two friends at a nearby swimming hole.  Carter insisted the three go with him to his home to answer questions, but Casiano refused and pulled out a knife.  Reportedly, after Casiano laughed off Carter’s attempts to take the young men, Carter shot Casiano in the chest and killed him.

    Harlon Carter’s Career

    The incident would have long been forgotten except for Carter’s career after his trial and appeal.  Initially, a court convicted Carter of the homicide and sentenced to three years in prison.  But later, an appeals court reversed the conviction because of an incorrect jury instruction on self defense.

    After the prosecution was eventually dropped, Carter went to work for the U.S. Border Patrol starting in 1936.  Eventually, he rose to leadership positions within the National Rifle Association.

    In 1977, Carter led a revolt within the NRA that led to his election as NRA Executive Vice President.  Under his leadership, the NRA moved from its focus on issues like hunting to take a more hard-line stance against any laws limiting ownership of guns.

    Carter’s killing of Ramón Casiano, however, laid buried in his past for a long time.  After denying his involvement in the killing for some time, Carter finally admitted it in 1981.

    The Song

    The killing of Casiano echoes in our time, with links to the killing of Trayvon Martin, who is more explicitly referenced in another song on the album, “What It Means.”   “Ramon Casiano” also connects to the current presidential election’s focus on immigration.

    Songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley of Drive-By Truckers tackle a number of issues making the album relevant today while also making great music. In “Ramon Casiano,” which was written by Cooley, the chorus indicts Casiano’s killer and several of today’s leaders.

    He had the makings of a leader,
    Of a certain kind of men,
    Who need to feel the world’s against him,
    Out to get ’em if it can.

    Men whose trigger pull their fingers;
    Of men who’d rather fight than win,
    United in a revolution,
    Like in mind and like in skin.

    “Ramon Casiano” is biting commentary, all the more relevant because it comes from a southern band.  The Houston Press asserts that the band’s new album American Band “reclaim[s] Southern rock for the good guys.”  Meanwhile, Slate affirms that on the album, “[w]ith songs about racism, police shootings, and immigration, the Southern group is making rock great again.”  NPR concludes, “American Band lives up to its name in how it digests, understands and challenges the notions of what it means to be American.”

    The praise being heaped on American Band is a heavy weight for it to carry.  One album cannot atone for the sins of a country or lift up everyone.  The new songs did not have to reside on YouTube long before angry comments appeared.

    But even if one song cannot change things, it can reach some people and educate a little bit.  If nothing else, the song makes one wonder what kind of man Ramon Casiano might have grown into had he been given a chance, even if we already know how things turned out for his killer.  “It all started with the border,/ And that’s still where it is today.”

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    They’re Selling Postcards of the Hanging: The Real Lynching in Dylan’s “Desolation Row”

    Lynching Photo

    On June 15, 1920, residents of Duluth, Minnesota lynched three African-American circus workers: Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton and Elmer Jackson. An 8-year-old child named Abraham Zimmerman lived in Duluth at the time.  And he grew up to have a son named Robert, who would later become famous with the name Bob Dylan. So, the lynching that Zimmerman witnessed eventually played a role in what American Songwriter has called Dylan’s sixth greatest song of all time.

    Abe Zimmerman reportedly taught his son about the lynching.  The lesson was similar to the way Woody Guthrie’s father told him about a lynching he had witnessed (that similarly inspired Guthrie to write an excellent song). Zimmerman’s story of the lynching in Minnesota and its aftermath eventually provided the imagery for the opening of Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”

    The Crime and Arrests

    In 1920, McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson worked with the John Robinson Circus as cooks or laborers. On the morning of June 15, James Sullivan called the police.  He told them that one night earlier his eighteen-year-old son and his son’s nineteen-year-old companion Irene Tusken had been held at gunpoint. Sullivan reported that his son told him that Tusken had been raped.

    Reportedly, there was no physical evidence of the rape.  But the Duluth police rounded up around 150 circus workers.  Then, the police asked the teens to identify the attackers among the circus workers.

    Six African-American men were arrested — including McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson.  Then, tensions rose in the community. Newspapers reported on the arrests and rumors spread around town.

    The Lynchings

    Eventually, a mob of 6,000-10,000 stormed into the jail.  They met little or no resistance from the police. They broke into the cells where they could, and they took McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson.

    First, the mob beat and hanged Isaac McGhie from a lamp post, despite the objections of a priest. Then, they similarly beat and hanged Elmer Jackson and Elias Clayton.

    The Minnesota National Guard arrived the next day to protect the three remaining prisoners.  But they were too late to help McGhie, Clayton, and Jackson.

    Three men in the mob were convicted of rioting.  Each served less than 15 months in prison. Nobody was convicted of murder.

    Seven of the remaining circus laborers were indicted for rape, and one man was convicted. Further, eventually it came out that Sullivan’s teen-aged son had made up the story of the rape that had set everything in motion.

    Dylan Desolation Row As was the case with many lynchings of African-Americans during the early twentieth century, photos of the lynching were taken and sent as postcards. The photo features Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, both shirtless, hanging from the street light with Elias Clayton’s body on the sidewalk,.  Members of the mob lean in to be part of the photo. Part of the photo is at the top of this post, but you may see the entire photo postcard here (warning: graphic image).

    Desolation Row

    Bob Dylan was born only 21 years after the lynching, and so he may have seen the photo postcards that circulated in the area. Thus, he begins his epic song “Desolation Row” with a reference to these photographs.

    They’re selling postcards of the hanging;
    They’re painting the passports brown;
    The beauty parlor is filled with sailors;
    The circus is in town.

    The song continues, perhaps with “the blind commissioner” being a reference to the failures of the police to protect the three men. Of course, it is generally impossible to interpret every line of a Dylan song.

    Yet, it is clear that the lynching is the jumping off point as Dylan delves into a number of themes.  “Desolation Row” continues with references to the circus imagery that provided the setting for the Duluth lynching.

    Here comes the blind commissioner,
    They’ve got him in a trance;
    One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker,
    The other is in his pants;
    And the riot squad they’re restless,
    They need somewhere to go;
    As Lady and I look out tonight
    From Desolation Row.

    Recordings of “Desolation Row”

    “Desolation Row” originally appeared on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited in 1965. More recently, alternate versions from the original recording sessions were released on The Best Of The Cutting Edge 1965 – 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12.

    Additionally, there are various live versions of the song, many where Dylan changes up the lyrics. One great live version appears on The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall Concert.” Below is an early live version from 1965.

    “Desolation Row” features some of Dylan’s greatest images, including the opening about the postcards of the hanging. In the book Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager describes the song as “science fiction noir where mythology and history’s heroes and heels lurk in the shadows of every alleyway.” He concludes that the song “is perhaps the the most nightmarish vision in Dylan’s canon.”

    Legacy

    It remains a mystery whether the three lynched men had committed any crime or whether the story was completely fabricated by the teen-aged boy. Race played a significant role in the lynching, and even today in typical criminal cases we know that eyewitness testimony is generally unreliable.

    The 1920 lynching, either way, was certainly a tragedy.  Mob mentality and racial animosity took the lives of the three men.

    Historically, lynchings occurred most often in the South against African-American men.  But it was not unusual for lynchings to take place in the North. There were at least 219 people lynched in northern states from 1889 to 1918. Although times have changed, we still see echoes of these acts of racial violence in the news today.

    The Duluth lynching, in particular, has haunted those connected to it in various ways. The great-grandson of one of the Duluth lynchers wrote a book several years ago called The Lyncher In Me.

    And Dylan’s “Desolation Row” is another kind of postcard of the hanging.  In the song, the lynching image mingles with other pictures that continue to haunt old and new listeners.

    Partial photo of lynching via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Warren G. Harding: Worst President, Reassessed Politician, and Sexy Man

    Harding Love Letters On June 12, 1920, Republicans at their National Convention in Chicago nominated Warren Gamaliel Harding for president. Harding’s career continues to divide commentators, with much of the debate on whether he was a horrible president or a president who did some okay things. In addition to those debates about Harding’s career, recent stories about Harding have focused on scandals from his personal life.

    A Compromise Candidate at the Convention

    Before the convention in 1920, Ohio Senator Harding earlier had been a favorite for the nomination. But by the time the convention started, there were a number of other strong candidates.

    Through eight ballots, other candidates received more votes than Harding. Finally, Harding took the lead in the ninth ballot as a compromise between divided voters.  Then, the man who was born in Blooming Grove, Ohio on November 2, 1865 won the nomination on the tenth ballot.

    A Landside Win

    In the fall, Harding and his vice-president candidate Calvin Coolidge won in a landslide, stressing a campaign promise of a return to normalcy. Harding defeated the Democrat ticket of James M. Cox, who like Harding was from Ohio.

    Cox was the only person of the 1920 major presidential and vice-presidential candidates who would never sit in the White House. Cox’s vice-presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be diagnosed with polio less than a year after the election, became president for more than a decade starting in 1933.

    Harding’s tenure in the White House was much shorter than Roosevelt’s. In a little more than two years after Harding took office on March 4, 1921, he became ill. And he died from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 2, 1923. Coolidge then became president.

    One of the Worst Presidents of All Time?

    Despite his short term in office, Harding is largely regarded as one of the worst presidents of all time. For example, U.S. News & World Report has him as the second-worst president of all time.

    A wide spectrum of experts and writers are critical of Harding, who was born on November 2, 1865. A recent poll of scholars ranked the twenty-ninth president among the worst presidents.

    I remember one of my favorite miniseries from the 1970s, Centennial, about the settling of Colorado, invoked Harding’s name in a non-flattering way.  In the final episode, Paul Garrett (David Janssen) referred to Warren G. Harding as one of the “most useful Americans who ever lived.” Garrett explains that Harding created a benchmark for how bad politicians could be. Thus, whenever a politician takes office, they should think of Harding and say, “I will never allow myself to be that bad.”

    Harding’s bad reputation largely centers on his lack of leadership while appointing friends who used their offices for financial gain. The most famous example is the Teapot Dome scandal that occurred under his presidency.

    Reassessing Harding’s Presidency

    Not everybody hates Harding, though. The Warren Harding Home and Museum in Marion, Ohio shows visitors a video that focuses more on the positive aspects of Harding’s life and career.

    Similarly, some recently have argued that we should reassess Warren G. Harding’s presidency as pretty good. They claim he stabilized the country, and they argue that his legacy should not be destroyed by scandals where he had no direct involvement. Yet, most still assert that Harding was under-qualified and his actions and in-actions created problems and allowed for the corruption.

    Personal Scandals

    Beyond the political scandals, there is another side of Harding involving personal scandals. It is these scandals that have garnered Harding more attention in recent years.

    Historians have long known Harding was a womanizer, but in 2014 the Library of Congress unsealed some of Harding’s letters that showed a little more of Harding’s personality. The letters, written before and during his tenure as a U.S. senator, were to his lover Carrie Fulton Phillips, who was the wife of a Marion, Ohio, store owner.

    In the following segment, John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, gives a brief recap of some of the juicy parts, including Harding’s preference for referring to a certain part of his anatomy as “Jerry.”

    Harding was married for 33 years until his death in 1923, but Phillips was not Harding’s only other lover. In 2015, DNA testing confirmed that Harding had fathered a child with Nan Britton during the same period in which he was writing the love letters to Phillips.

    Why do we care about Harding’s love life? One may make the case that we should not dig around the private lives of politicians. But when it comes to history, perhaps understanding a little more about Harding may help us understand him as a flawed human being instead of just a ranking on worst presidents lists.

    Photo via Library of Congress. Who do you think was the worst president of all time? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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