September 17th, 1925. Mexico City, Mexico.

To find our first event this week, we’ll skip to about eight and a half minutes into the 2002 movie called Frida.

The streets are crowded with people, but the movie is focusing on a young man and woman in the crowd. She gets sidetracked by one of the vendors on the street. He calls to her, “Frida, come on!” Putting his arm around her, the two continue making their way through the crowd on the street. They’re both dressed nicely in what appears to be some sort of a school uniform.

In the next shot, young Frida is running along the sidewalk. “It’s the bus!” She yells as she runs. We can see a bus—but in the 1920s, this bus looks more like a modified truck with room for people to sit in the back—driving along the road. The boy, Alejandro, assures her they’ll catch the next one.

She keeps running, “No, no!” He runs after her as the two run through the street, almost getting hit by a car, running down the bus. A moment later, and it works. They catch up to the bus and climb aboard.

Once on the bus, the two continue the conversation they were having. Frida sits down on a bench. Then, a lady with a baby is there and Frida gives up her seat for them. Alejandro and Frida continue their conversation, talking about something political or apolitical—Alejandro talks about Marx and Hegel, so maybe they’re referring to Karl Marx and Georg Hegel. They both are standing along with others on the bus, holding onto a bar for stability like you’d expect on a bus even today.

Frida doesn’t seem interested in the conversation about Marx and Hegel and gets sidetracked by someone else on the bus and the theater props they’re carrying.

Just then, the bus driver tries to swerve. Through the window of the bus, we can see what looks like a trolley ramming into the side of the bus. The trolley seems to continue pushing the bus until it hits a wall, throwing glass and everyone inside the bus all over the place. The camera fades to black before coming back to show Frida lying there, bloody and obviously badly hurt from the accident.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Frida

What we’re seeing in the movie happened 99 years ago this Tuesday, on September 17^th, 1925. That’s when Frida Kahlo’s life was forever changed in a bus accident that left her severely injured.

Of course, today, we know of Frida as an artist. At the time of the accident, Frida was only 18 years old and art wasn’t what she was wanting to do with her life.

One of the reasons we see the Frida and Alejandro wearing what looks like a school uniform is because the real reason the two schoolmates and friends were in Mexico City that day was because that’s where they went to school. But they lived about an hour away in Coyoacan, so that’s why they were taking the bus each way.

That day seemed like nothing out of the ordinary for the two.

And the movie was also correct to show the crash being the result of a trolley car. It was traveling full speed when the bus turned around the corner and there wasn’t enough time to get out of the way. The trolley slammed into the bus, crushing it and anyone inside against the street corner.

While we don’t really see this happening in the movie, there was a metal rod that ripped through Frida during the crash. Afterward, a nearby pedestrian trying to help people in the crash saw the rod sticking out of Frida and tried to remove it only to cries so loud that Alejandro would later recall no one could hear the ambulance siren because of Frida’s cries.

For months, Frida Kahlo was confined to bed while her body healed. During that timeframe, she turned to art. Her parents put a mirror on her bed so she could paint herself. She started painting more and more, something that helped her cope with the loneliness of being, well, alone in a bed for months on end.

By the time she was able to leave the bed, her life had changed. She was on the path to become an artist known for putting her own personal trauma and pain into her art. That openness was one of the key characteristics of Frida’s artwork, something that was unique at the time as most women artists in the early 20^th century didn’t put their own hardships into their art. Frida’s artwork was the opposite of that. She didn’t hide what was difficult or painful as many women were forced to do. Instead, she put herself on display through her paintings in a very real way, in a way that was groundbreaking at the time and something we remember her for today.

September 19th, 1952. Washington, D.C.

For our next event this week, we’ll jump to about two hours into the 1992 biopic starring Robert Downey, Jr. simply called Chaplin.

We’re in an office with elegant wood furnishings. A United States flag stands in the corner. Behind the desk in the middle of the room is a black, leather chair. It’s empty. There’s a man in a suit carrying a manilla folder who has just entered the office. He notices the chair is empty, so he turns his head to look off camera.

He carefully sets the folder down on the desk before sneaking over to the other side of the office. As he does, we can see the U.S. Capitol building through the windows.

The camera pans over as the man quietly makes his way to the fireplace. Now we can tell why he was sneaking. He’s trying not to wake the man sleeping in his chair by the fireplace. He touches the sleeping man’s hand trying to wake him.

“Sir”, he whispers quietly.

It didn’t work.

The camera cuts to the man’s face now and we can see this is Kevin Dunn’s character, J. Edgar Hoover. The man shakes Hoover’s shoulder now in a slightly more firm attempt to wake him.

“Sir,” he says a little louder than the whisper before.

Hoover’s eyes open slightly.

“Sir,” the man continues, “we just got word. Chaplin’s off to London on vacation.”

Hoover doesn’t move as he ponders this for a moment. Then, slowly, his mouth curls into a smile.

The next scene in the movie is the one that happens this week in history as we can see text on the screen saying it’s New York Harbor, September 1952.

A massive ocean liner is in the harbor. If you imagine what the Titanic looked like with its iconic four funnels, or smokestacks, well this ship looks a lot like that but with three. So, a similar style ocean liner, albeit not as large as Titanic—but still a good-sized ship. Imagine that in front of the New York skyline in 1952, and that’s what this scene looks like.

After a moment, the movie cuts to aboard the ship, though, as Moira Kelly’s version of Oona O’Neill Chaplin rushes down the stairs to find her husband, Charlie Chaplin. She finds him as he’s at the stern of the ship, overlooking the New York skyline, the Statue of Liberty. On the ship a blue flag with the British Union Jack in the corner is flying.

Oona rushes to Charlie. When she gets there, she has a concerned look on her face. He recognizes this immediately and asks what’s wrong. Then, she tells him the news: They’ve thrown you out.

Charlie is confused at first, as she hands him a piece of paper with the news. She explains it to him: They’ve thrown you out of the United States.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Chaplin

Transitioning to our fact-checking segment, and right away I’ll admit the first part that happened in Washington D.C. probably didn’t happen this week in history. But it’s an important part to set up what did happen this week in history when Charlie Chaplin was refused his entry into the United States.

Granted, the way it happened in the movie was dramatized, but the gist is there.

In the movie, the agent telling Hoover that Chaplin has gone to London mentions it as being a vacation. In the true story, Charlie Chaplin went to London to hold the world premiere of his latest movie called Limelight, which was an autobiographical movie in which the character in the movie is an ex-star dealing with the loss of his popularity. Since Charlie was originally from London, that’s where the story in Limelight was set, so that’s where he decided to hold the world premiere for the film.

And, I guess, it is true that Chaplin took his family to London with him so I could definitely see how it could’ve been considered a vacation, so maybe we can give the movie a break on that.

He boarded the RMS Queen Elizabeth on September 18^th, 1952. On September 19^th, the U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Charlie’s permit for re-entry into the U.S.

This is my own speculation, but the speed which that happened the day after tells me there were people in the government just waiting for him to leave so they could revoke the permit.

In the years since, it’s been suggested the U.S. government didn’t have much of a case against Chaplin and he probably could’ve been allowed back into the U.S. had he applied. But, when Charlie Chaplin got the news, he decided not to return to the U.S. He himself wrote about the event in his autobiography, and while I can’t offer a direct quote here, you can read exactly what he said on page 455 of his autobiography if you’d like. To paraphrase, basically, Chaplin was fed up with the insults and hatred he’d received in America.

The catch was that most of Charlie’s wealth—his film studio, his home, etc. was in the United States. So, it was Oona who returned to the U.S. to settle his affairs. They moved to Switzerland and she renounced her own U.S. citizenship in 1953.

As you can imagine, there’s a lot more to this story…which is why I had a chat with Pulitzer Prize finalist author Scott Eyeman, who has written a number of excellent biographies on film history—including his book called Charlie Chaplin Vs America that digs into the true story of Charlie Chaplin—and of course you’ll find a link to it in the show notes.

September 21st, 1937. England.

Our third event from this week in history can be found in the 2019 biopic called Tolkien, and we’re starting about an hour and 43 minutes into the movie, we’re outside with trees in the background and dead leaves covering the ground. A man and woman are walking together with some kids. The man asks the kids if they’ll do something for him. He asks them to listen to a story.

“Is it a good story?” One of the kids asks in a blunt way that kids do so well.

“I hope so,” he says.

“Is it long?”

“Extremely long.”

They go on to ask more questions about his story. Has it been started? What’s it about?

He says it’s been started in his mind. It’s about journeys, adventures, magic, treasure, and love. All things, really. All the kids are looking at him now.

He says the story is about the journeys we take to prove ourselves. It’s about fellowship. He points to one of the little boys and says it’s about little people just like you. The child retorts that he’s not little, and the man quickly corrects himself. No. Little in stature, not little in spirit.

The movie cuts away from the outdoors and we’re not in the woods anymore. We’re inside in a room. The same man from before is sitting, reading some papers. He’s deep in thought.

Then, he turns the paper to a fresh page. Pen in hand, he pauses to think for one more moment before he starts to write. The camera angle doesn’t let us see what he’s writing at first, but after a few seconds, it cuts to a more overhead view of the page. Now, we can see the words he’s written to start the story: “In a hole in the ground, there lived” … he stops writing for a bit and the camera cuts away from the paper to the man’s face. He speaks the word: “Hobbit.”

The true story behind that scene in the movie Tolkien

Okay, so right away I’ll admit that this is another scene that didn’t really happen this week in history. But that’s because the movie doesn’t show the real event that did happen this week, and that scene in the movie is talking about the start of something that ended this week in history…the movie just doesn’t show the ending.

I’m sure you already know by now the man with the story is J.R.R. Tolkien and the story itself is The Hobbit. That scene comes from the 2019 biopic that is simply called Tolkien.

And it shows Tolkien starting to write The Hobbit. What happened this week in history was that The Hobbit was published.

What we don’t see in that sequence in the movie is that J.R.R. Tolkien had been writing stories about the world he created—Middle Earth—for many years at this point, but The Hobbit was his first published work.

There was a BBC documentary in 1968 where Tolkien himself described writing that opening line. I’ll include a link to it in the show notes for this episode if you want to watch it, but basically Tolkien recounts that he was grading his student’s papers in his house at 20 Northmoor Road. He had a pile of exam papers to go through, something he admitted was a boring task.

He picked up one of the papers to review and the student had left one page blank. So, he just grabbed the blank page and wrote down: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That was then published this week in history on September 21^st, 1937, as The Hobbit. Of course, he’d go on to write The Lord of the Rings and other books, making Tolkien one of the most popular authors of all time. And covering the Tolkien movie as one of the first interviews for Based on a True Story is no mistake, because I’m such a fan of Tolkien’s work…it was one of my great honors to chat with legendary Tolkien scholar John Garth about the Tolkien movie.

Hop in the show notes to find a link for that episode now!

Historical birthdays from the movies

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 18^th, 1905, Greta Gustafsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She’s better known by her stage name, Greta Garbo, and is regarded by many as one of the greatest screen actresses of all time. Her story was portrayed in the 1980 movie called The Silent Lovers where she’s played by Kristina Wayborn.

Oh, and as another bonus, Greta Garbo was the actress who played Mata Hari in the classic 1931 film of the same name that we covered on episode #74 of Based on a True Story—so I’ll link that in the show notes.

On September 20^th, 1884, Maxwell Perkins was born in New York City. He was an editor and publisher at Scribner where he oversaw works by esteemed authors like Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, to name a few. His story is told in the 2016 movie called Genius where Max is played by Colin Firth. We covered that movie in more depth back on episode #65 of Based on a True Story.

Also on September 20^th, but in 1917, Arnold Jacob Auerbach was born in Brooklyn, New York. He’s best known by his nickname, “Red,” and as the head coach of the Washington Capitols, Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and Boston Celtics, where he set NBA records was one of the most successful coaches in the history of professional sports. He was played by Michael Chiklis in the 2022 TV series from Max called Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.

‘Based on a True Story’ movie that released this week

Time now for our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies released this week in history, and this week’s movie has the BOATS text less than a minute into the movie. The very first thing after the opening credits in the movie Goodfellas is text that says, “This film is based on a true story.”

This Wednesday marks the 34^th anniversary of Goodfellas, which hit theaters in the U.S. on September 18^th, 1990.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas is adapted from a book by Nicholas Pileggi called Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. The IMDb description for Goodfellas says it is, “The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mafia, covering his relationship with his wife Karen and his mob partners Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito.”

Henry Hill is played by Ray Liotta, while his wife Karen is played by Lorraine Bracco. Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito are played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, respectively.

It starts in the 1950s, as a young child, Henry’s mother happened to grow up in the same Italian city as Paulie Cicero, so now that Paulie is a big wig in the Mafia, that’s how Henry grew up around “the life,” as they call it in the movie. So, it’s not a big surprise that Henry starts working for Paulie Cicero when he’s old enough. Paulie is played by Paul Sorvino in the movie.

Also growing up with Henry is Tommy Devito, who is played by Joe Pesci. When Henry and Tommy start helping the Mafia with jobs—they can’t be more than teenagers at the time—the two boys are mentored by Robert De Niro’s character, Jimmy Conway.

As they continue to rise in the Mafia’s ranks, so, too, does their violence. Tommy, in particular, has a short fuse leading to a lot of rage. That rage is on full display in the 1970s when a guy named Billy Batts enters their nightclub. Billy Batts is played by Frank Vincent in the movie.

And according to the movie, Billy Batts is not just any guy, but he’s a made man in the Gambino crime family. He says the wrong thing to Tommy, who starts stabbing Billy Batts.

Killing a made guy without approval from the Mafia’s leadership then, basically, you’re the next to get whacked. To try and avoid that fate, the three associates try to cover up their crime by burying Billy’s body in upstate New York…and then re-bury the body a few months later when they find out the place they buried it was going to have something built on it.

A tip to the FBI ends up sending Henry to prison for about four years, so we see some of his prison time in the movie as well. While he’s in there, he has Karen sneak drugs into the prison so Henry can sell them to another inmate.

When he gets out, Henry joins Tommy for a heist that Jimmy is planning. The target is the Lufthansa vault at JFK International Airport in New York City. And, according to the movie, it’s successful! Ray Liotta’s version of Henry Hill says they got away with $6 million in cash.

But…some of the robbers get a little too excited about their new money and they ignore Jimmy’s order not to make any large purchases. So, after that leads police to find the getaway car they used, Jimmy has everyone killed, except Tommy and Henry.

Violence finally comes to the trio a few years later when Tommy is tricked into thinking he’s going to a ceremony for his becoming a made man. Instead, he’s murdered for his part in killing Billy Batts. That’s in 1979, and no doubt it doesn’t help Henry’s cocaine habit that just continues to get worse—leading to his arrest in 1980 when he tried to buy some drugs from undercover agents.

He gets bailed out by Karen, but the drugs go against Paulie’s orders—he had told Henry not to get into the drug world. So, after he’s bailed out, Paulie gives Henry some cash and then officially cuts ties with Henry.

Henry turns to Jimmy for help, but Jimmy is still in the Mafia and we start to get the sense from the movie that Jimmy is probably going to take out Henry. So, Henry decides to become an informant for the feds. He gives them enough information to take down Jimmy and Paulie, and in exchange the feds put Henry and his family into the Witness Protection Program.

And, according to the text at the end of the movie, that’s where Henry Hill is still at—in the Witness Protection Program, after his arrest in 1987. Paulie died in Fort Worth Federal Prison of a respiratory illness in 1988 at the age of 73. Henry and Karen separated in 1989.

And Jimmy Conway, Robert De Niro’s character, is currently serving a 20-years-to-life sentence for murder and won’t be eligible for parole until 2004.

The true story behind Goodfellas

Well, obviously, it’s after 2004, and now in 2024, those three men are all dead now. But, remember, the movie came out in 1990, and back then two of the three were still alive.

So, that gives us the perfect place to start our fact-checking: The people.

Henry Hill was based on a real person; we’ll learn more about him in a moment. The real Henry Hill died on June 12^th, 2012.

And Lorraine Bracco’s character, Karen, really was Henry Hill’s wife. Karen Hill née Friedman is still alive as of this recording—she’s 76, and the movie is correct that she and Henry divorced in 1989, although it was legally finalized in 2002.

For the other mobsters, the names changed some.

Robert De Niro’s character of Jimmy Conway is based on a real gangster named Jimmy Burke. The real Jimmy Burke died on April 13^th, 1996—so, after the movie was released.

Joe Pesci’s character, Tommy DeVito, is based on another real gangster named Tommy DeSimone. And in the movie, we see Tommy’s death. We don’t really know what happened to the real Tommy DeSimone. He just simply disappeared on January 14^th, 1979.

And Paul Sorvino’s character, Paulie Cicero, is based on Paul Vario, who really was a powerful caporegime in the Lucchese crime family. The movie was correct to say he died in a Fort Worth prison of a respiratory failure as a result of lung cancer on May 3^rd, 1988.

The movie does a pretty good job of capturing how the real Henry Hill got into the Mafia. His dad was an Irish-American, and his mother was of Sicilian descent. The family moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn when Henry was just seven years old, and coincidentally Paul Vario had a son about the same age. So, they played together often, and Henry started idolizing the mobsters he saw.

Just like we see in the movie, Henry started working for the mobsters as a teenager. One of them was Jimmy Burke, the guy that Robert De Niro’s character is based on.

So, that’s how Jimmy started to take Henry under his wing, very much like we see in the movie. As for the real Tommy DeSimone, that’s the guy Joe Pesci’s character is based on, he grew up in the same neighborhood as Henry so they became close friends as they rose in the Mafia’s ranks.

That brings us to the event in the movie that changes it all: The murder of Billy Batts. Billy was a real gangster, who really went by the nickname Billy Batts. His real name was William Bentvena.

The movie doesn’t show anything about Billy Batts being in prison, it just shows him getting out and implies he was in there for a while. And in the true story, William Bentvena was in prison for narcotics trafficking—he was caught by undercover police in a drug deal on Valentine’s Day in 1959. Then, three years later, he was convicted and received a sentence of 15 years. He was released in 1970, though, which is why we’re seeing him for the first time in the movie.

And while the way Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito acted out the scene of killing Billy Batts is sped up a little bit, the basic gist gets across with the movie’s version.

This all comes from the book the movie is based on, and according to that book, Henry Hill’s version of the events are just like what we see in the movie. The whole reason for them being at the nightclub owned by Jimmy that night was because of a welcome home party of sorts for Billy. That’s why we see the balloons and streamers decorating the bar in the movie, and I think someone even comes up to Billy to say “Welcome home, Billy,” in the movie too.

At one point in the night, Billy joked to Tommy something about asking if he still shined shoes. Tommy took it as an insult and threatened to kill Billy. Here’s where the movie changed it, though, because in the movie’s version it seems to be later that night when Tommy attacks Billy from behind, before Jimmy joins in.

The true story behind that event might’ve started with an insult about shining shoes that led to Tommy’s threats against Billy Batts, but it was actually two weeks later when Tommy snuck up behind Billy and pistol-whipped him, yelling, “Shine these fucking shoes!”

And the movie shows Jimmy start kicking Billy pretty fast, too, but I couldn’t find anything about it happening that fast in the true story. Henry Hill’s version of the event did see Tommy beat Billy to the point of him being dead…at least, they thought he was. Just like we see in the movie, Billy wasn’t really dead. They started hearing noises from the trunk of the car.

And he was in the trunk of the car because Jimmy Burke was driving his body up to a friend’s dog kennel in upstate New York where he knew he could hide the body. Because the movie is also correct to show that the real Billy Batts was a made man in the Gambino crime family.

Oh, and the movie is also correct to show them having to move the body later. Jimmy’s friend who owned the dog kennel sold it about three months later. So, Jimmy ordered Tommy and Henry to go move the body. We don’t see this happening in the movie, but in the book Henry says they took the body to be crushed in a compactor at a New Jersey junkyard owned by a mob associate.

The real Henry Hill also gave commentary for the movie, which I’d recommend watching, and for that he contradicted his previous statement, though, and said Billy was buried in Jimmy’s nightclub, a place called Robert’s Lounge, until it could be put in the compactor later.

Regardless of which version is true, that was the beginning of the end for the real Tommy DeSimone who was killed in retaliation just like we see in the movie. Although the movie mentions it was only partially for the murder of Billy Batts—and that’s true, because he also killed someone else the movie doesn’t even show.

That’s a guy named Ronald Jerothe. Tommy dated Ronald’s sister and beat her up, which made Ronald understandably angry and he said he was going to kill Tommy. But, Tommy overheard this, and killed Ronald first.

Here’s the connection: Both Billy Batts and Ronald Jerothe reported to the same guy in the Gambino crime family: A man named John Gotti, maybe you’ve heard of him. He turned out to be quite infamous as well.

So, Tommy committed the murder of Ronald Jerothe, and on top of that it came out that Tommy had committed another unsanctioned murder of Billy Batts?

You see where this is headed. Thomas DeSimone was reported missing on January 14^th, 1979, by his wife, Angela. So, if you see that as the date of Tommy’s death, that’s why…but we don’t really know if he died that day because when Angela reported him missing, she said she last saw him a couple weeks earlier.

At least, that’s how the story goes…but the true story? Well, as you can imagine, when we’re talking about the world of organized crime, we just don’t know a lot of things.

So, for a lot of these events —for a lot of things, that’s all we have to rely on: The word of someone who was there.

Even the things I’ve talked about today, we know most of that thanks to the book the movie is based on as well as a book Henry Hill wrote himself later called Gangsters and Goodfellas.

Actually…do you want to hear more Mafia stories from someone who was there?

On episode #286, I had a chat with Scott Hoffman, whose dad was a part of the Chicago Outfit and actually worked for the real Henry Hill as a kid himself! We talked about how the Mafia is portrayed in movies like Goodfellas, and other gangster movies like Casino, Donnie Brasco, and The Sopranos!

June 17th, 1928. Newfoundland.

The scene in our first movie starts with quite a beautiful view of nature. We’re looking down a river, the water is very calm and still. On the left side of the frame, trees line the bank of the river. On the right side, a big red building sits, partially hanging over the river. Even though you can’t feel temperature through a movie, the heavy fog sitting over the entire scene makes me think it’s probably a chilly morning.

In the next shot we can see two men and one woman standing on the bank of the river next to a dock leading out to a big, red airplane that’s sitting on the water. The word “Friendship” is written on the side of the plane.

One of the men walks down the dock and gets into the plane. The woman follows behind, then she turns around and calls to the man still on the bank of the river. She tells him to read tomorrow’s paper because we’ll both be in them!

Then, Hillary Swank’s version of Amelia Earhart gets in the plane. The engines on the plane roar to life as the last man runs down the dock and hops in the plane. The camera switches to inside the plane and we can see the two men in the cockpit with Earhart in the back. One of the men calls back to her to start the clock, which she does, just as they push the throttle forward and the plane takes off.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Amelia

That is just the beginning of the sequence, but it’s showing how the 2009 movie Amelia shows an event that took place this week in history when Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. They took off from Trepassy Harbour, Newfoundland, on June 17^th, 1928, and then 20 hours and 40 minutes later they landed in Burry Port, South Wales.

To add a little more historical context, though, the event I just described wasn’t the first time Earhart pushed the limits of flying. For example, in 1922 she set an unofficial altitude record for female pilots at 14,000 feet. That’s about 4,267 meters. She also became only the 16^th woman to get an international pilot’s license in 1923.

Then, after a few years off from flying because of her parent’s divorce, Amelia Earhart was really launched into the public consciousness with the flight this week in history, the one we saw happen in the movie.

And just like we see in the movie, the airplane she made this flight with was a seaplane named “Friendship.”

Wilmer Stultz was the pilot, the co-pilot was Louis Gordon and Amelia Earhart was a passenger. Although that brief little line in the movie where we hear Hillary Swank’s version of Amelia saying to keep an eye out for tomorrow’s newspaper because they’ll be famous…while it is true this flight practically made her an aviation star overnight, I saw something in my research where she was quoted afterward as downplaying the event.

After all, she was a passenger.

“Stultz did all the flying—had to,” Amelia Earhart was quoted as saying, “I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. Maybe someday I’ll try it alone.”

And that she did.

A little less than four years later, in May of 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. We covered that event back when it happened in the month of May on BOATS This Week, episode number #248.

But if you want to watch the event that happened this week, the text on the screen saying it’s June 17^th, 1928 starts at about 15 minutes and 10 seconds into the movie.

June 17th, 1972. Washington, D.C.

Except for the opening credits of the movie, the screen is pitch black. We can’t see anything, but if we listen closely…there’s a noise. It’s not a loud noise, but it sounds like someone is maybe fiddling with a door handle.

There’s still nothing on the screen, but the noise continues for a few more seconds. Maybe they’re having a hard time opening the door?

Finally, we can see something on the screen. Sure enough, it was a door that’s now being opened and letting some light in. Now we can see the camera is at the end of a hallway. The door that was just opened is on the other end of the hallway, and it looks like there are at least five men on the other side of the door.

All the lights are off, but one of the men is carrying a flashlight. I guess they’re not going to even try turning on the lights. After a moment, the camera cuts to an exterior view of the building we’re in. It’s nighttime out, and although we can see five or six floors of the building, it doesn’t look like any of the rooms in the building have their lights on. It’s pitch black inside, except for the one flashlight that we saw a moment ago. Now, from outside the building, we can see the flashlight through one of the building’s windows as it’s moving around.

Actually, wait, I think there’s more than one flashlight.

It’s hard to tell from the movie, but I counted five guys on the other side of the door when it opened so it’d make sense if there was more than one flashlight. The camera is still outside looking into a few floors of the building cloaked in the darkness of the night when we see a couple of the flashlights separating. Some of the guys must be moving off to another room while some are staying behind.

When the camera cuts, it takes us to a parking garage. It’s still nighttime, and the parking garage is completely empty. On the left side of the screen, there’s a ramp painted with double yellow lines that leads up to the darkness of the night. On the right side of the frame, it looks like there’s a cement pathway large enough for a car to go down and maybe around the corner. We can’t really see beyond that, but it does look like there are some big garage rollup doors along the wall on the right side as well. Overhead, a couple rows of fluorescent lights cast some dim light into the otherwise dark garage.

If I had to guess, I’d say this is the basement parking of the building where the men are.

Then we see movement on the left side of the camera frame as a lone person appears at the top of the ramp and walks down it. The sound of footsteps echo through the empty garage. When he reaches the bottom of the ramp, we can see a couple things thanks to those fluorescent lights.

First, we can see it’s a man. We can also see he’s wearing what looks like a uniform. Probably a security guard. He walks over to the wall on the right side at the far end of the screen to where a regular door is.

The camera cuts to a closeup of the doorknob and we can see there’s tape on the door’s latchbolt bore. It looks like someone taped the door to keep it from latching shut. The security guard puts his hand on the doorknob and pushes the door open. He doesn’t even have to turn the knob. He peels off the tape, and the latch pops out to its normal position.

Now the scene cuts to a car driving down the dark road.

We can hear a call go out over the radio, saying there’s a possible burglary at the Watergate building. Inside the car, the man in the passenger seat picks up the radio to reply. He asks if they should respond. They’re not wearing uniforms.

And sure enough, we can tell they’re not wearing uniforms. The driver looks like he has a maroon shirt with a denim jacket and the passenger with the radio is wearing a striped button down under a dark jacket. They’re both wearing different style bowling hats. In the back seat we can see another man, but it’s too blurry and out of focus to tell what he’s wearing. The point, though, is that they’re not wearing police uniforms. But these must be policemen. Maybe undercover?

Over the radio, the dispatcher tells them to take the call because the other cops nearby are getting gas.

Now the camera cuts back to the men with the flashlight inside the building. We can hear the same noise we heard to start our segment. Except this time we can see what they’re doing: They’re trying to jimmy open the doors. No wonder why it took a little bit of that noise for them to open the door before.

They’re breaking in!

Finally, the guy jimmying the lock gets it open. Inside the room we can see a couple black and white photographs above a black couch. One photograph looks to be President Harry Truman shaking someone’s hand, and next to it is a portrait of President John F. Kennedy.

There are four men who enter the room. They’re all wearing gloves as they go about whatever it is they’re doing there. One of the men pulls out a hand radio and calls, “Unit 1 to Unit 2. We’re home.”

Maybe the other guys we saw are one of the other units? There are multiple units breaking in?

On the street below, the unmarked car with the plainclothes cops inside stops out front of the building and the three men get out. A man watching from the building across the street speaks into the radio, “Base 1 to Unit 1. We have some activity here.”

We can see the four men in the room with the Presidents’ photos on the wall receiving the warning from the radio. The man with the radio shuts off the radio so it doesn’t make anymore noise. But the guy who identified himself as Base 1 keeps calling to Unit 1, saying there are lights on the 8th floor now. And now we can see the same shot of the building’s exterior that we saw before. Except this time, it’s obvious the lights are on in one of the floors of the building. We can see the shadows of the three cops as they’re looking around.

The Base 1 guy keeps calling over the radio, saying we might have some problems.

In the Presidential photograph room with the four men, they’re staying perfectly still to not make a noise. Another man quietly slips into the room and says “Somebody’s here!” as he rushes past the other four. Without saying a word, all the men pack up their belongings and start to rush off the camera’s frame.

The camera cuts to the plainclothes cops who are going room by room, turning on the lights. They have their pistols drawn. Just then, a couple of the cops enter the Presidential photo room. They see movement behind one of the interior windows and train their guns.

“Hold it right there! Police!” one of them yells.

The five men trying to hide in the darkness stand up as ordered by the policeman. They’ve been caught.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie All the President’s Men

That comes from the 1976 film called All the President’s Men, and the event it’s depicting is the Watergate break-in, which happened this week in history. Well, at least, that’s the break-in we’re seeing in the movie.

The reason I’m phrasing it like that is because this is one of those stories that we know more about now—and now we know they broke in multiple times. But, the time we’re seeing in the movie is when they were caught.

That happened at about 2:30 AM on June 17^th, 1972, which is why the movie shows it happening during the cover of night.

The movie is also correct to show how they were discovered.

Basically, a security guard noticed tape over some of the door locks—we only see him discovering one in the movie, but that’s enough to get the point across. In the true story, the security guard noticed the tape and removed it. But he didn’t call the police at first. It wasn’t until he returned to the door and noticed someone had retaped it that he called the police. The cops who showed up were under cover just like we see in the movie, too.

Sgt. Paul Leeper along with officers John Barrett and Carl Shoffler were driving around looking for drug deals on the street. Since a police car would scare away any deal before they ever got close, that’s why they were driving a light-blue Ford dressed as hippies.

When they took the call, they showed up to the Watergate complex and found five men.

Another detail the movie got right was showing a man across the street in contact with the men breaking in. That was a guy named Alfred Baldwin, who had a room was supposed to be on the lookout. I say “supposed to be” because Baldwin got distracted with the sci-fi classic Attack of the Puppet People on TV and didn’t notice the police car with three undercover cops in it until it was too late.

The police found the men carrying things like lock-picks, door jimmies, cash, cameras, film, etc.—so they knew they were doing something they shouldn’t.

You know how I mentioned they actually broke in multiple times? Well, in the true story there were four attempts to break into the Watergate. After they were caught, the subsequent investigation by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post uncovered the scandal that led to the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president left office when President Nixon resigned.

But if you want to watch the event that kicked it all off as it’s shown on screen, hop in the show notes to find where to watch All the President’s Men. We started our segment today at just a couple minutes into the movie.

And if you want to learn more about what happened after the events from this week in history, we covered that entire movie back on episode #122 of Based on a True Story.

June 20th, 1893. Massachusetts.

A lone man stands on top of a roof while some birds fly overhead. It’s a peaceful scene. He seems to be wearing a uniform of some kind as he watches the birds flying. The camera then cuts to inside and we can assume this is inside the building the man was on. It’s a dark room, lit only by a candle. A woman is inside, sitting in silence.

The noise of metal doors banging can be heard in the background. This seems to be a prison or jail of some sort.

We’re only with her for a moment before going back outside, though, as the camera cuts to a beautiful blue sky with big white, puffy clouds. The sun is shining through the clouds.

This scene only lasts for a few seconds, too, as now we can see the same woman who was in the dark cell is outside now. Her eyes are closed as she seems to be soaking up the sun on her face.

Then, the movie cuts to black.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Lizzie

That is how the 2018 movie called Lizzie comes to an end, and although the movie doesn’t give us any indication of timeline, we can assume that those two scenes are on either end of this week in history because it was on June 20^th, 1893, that Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts.

And since we see Lizzie in her cell, and then free, that’s why I’m assuming we’re seeing the moments just around the trial itself.

Lizzie’s trial actually happened almost a year earlier, so not this week in history, to understand the trial we have to understand the events that happened that day.

To be honest, we probably will never know the full story.

But what we do know is that Lizzie Borden’s father, Andrew, was 69 years old and her stepmother, Abby, was 64. Lizzie herself was 32. The Bordens were a well-off family who, despite having money, lived a rather frugal lifestyle.

On the morning of August 4^th, 1892, Andrew was napping on the couch. Upstairs in the house, Abby was cleaning. Bridget, the family’s maid, wasn’t feeling well so she was in her room. Lizzie said she was in the barn looking for irons, or those lead sinkers you put on a fishing line, because they were planning to go fishing. After looking for those, she came inside to find her father lying dead on the couch.

At 11:30 AM, Bridget said she heard Lizzie’s screams after discovering the body. Andrew’s face was unrecognizable as he had been hit 11 times with a hatchet. A little while later, they found Abby’s body upstairs. She had been hit 18 or 19 times with the hatchet.

When investigators showed up soon after, Andrew’s body was still warm while Abby’s was already cold, they determined the two murders happened at least an hour and a half apart. Initially, the police thought a male “foreigner” committed the crime. They found a hatchet at a nearby farm with blood on it. But it turns out that hatchet was used to kill chickens, so that’s what that blood was. Another man was seen nearby, but he had a good alibi for the time of the murders.

Lizzie had said she was in the barn eating pears in the loft.

Wait. I thought her reason for being in the barn was to look for irons. Her story changed. That’s odd. But, she didn’t have any blood on her and killing someone with a hatchet would be covered in blood. Looking into it more, perhaps she burned a dress in a stove. Maybe that had the blood? Lizzie claimed she burned it because it was stained with paint. And the day before she had tried to buy a poison? She wasn’t actually able to purchase it, but that seemed suspicious.

The questions started to add up, and about a week later, Lizzie was arrested. She made a “Not Guilty” plea and for almost a year, Lizzie was in jail as the case as well as a jury was put together. That’s the part of the movie we heard depicted at the start of this segment.

So, that was in August of 1892.

Lizzie’s trial started on June 5^th, 1893. Her defense team, which included a former governor of Massachusetts, started poking holes in the prosecution’s case. Lizzie was well-liked. She was a churchgoer. She had fainted in the courtroom right before the jury’s eyes when they brought her parent’s skulls into the courtroom as evidence.

On June 20^th, it was time for the jury to consider what they’d heard over the past few weeks. Women weren’t allowed to be on juries at that time, so the jury in this case consisted of 12 men. They adjourned and an hour later came back with the verdict that Lizzie Borden was acquitted.

The final sequence leading up to seeing Lizzie Borden being freed that we described for this week in history started at about an hour and 38 minutes into the 2018 movie Lizzie.

June 22nd, 1342. Middle-earth.

There are mountains in the background against blue skies with trees and rocks scattered among the green grass in the foreground.

The camera cuts to another beautiful landscape, this time most of the grass is yellow but there are still scattered trees and bushes here and there among the rolling hills. The focus of this landscape are the pretty purple flowers, some most obvious in the foreground of the camera. The only movement we can see are two horses in the middle of the frame. Or maybe it’s a horse and a pony, as the shot continues we can see one is larger than the other.

In the next shot, the same two riders are in a new landscape now. No more purple flowers, but an almost neon green grass covers the terrain. The big boulders stand out in even more contrast against the green. A peaceful stream is in the foreground, along with what looks to be some cows grazing nearby.

There’s another cut and now we’re in some woods. Tall trees with thick trunks. The two riders aren’t on their horses anymore as they walk toward the camera, laughing as they do. The taller one, wearing a grey cloak and hat, tells the shorter one that this is the border of the Shire—and here is where they’ll split up.

After saying a few words of farewell, Martin Freeman’s version of Bilbo Baggins tells Ian McKellen’s version of Gandalf that he doesn’t have to worry about the ring because he lost it.

Then, in the next shot, we see Bilbo walking along the road carrying his things. Among the rolling green hills, round doors can be found. Some others pass him carrying a heavy box. Bilbo takes a second glance—wait a minute, that’s my mother’s glory box.

Still more of Bilbo’s things are being carried away from his home. It seems he’s arrived home just in time as they’re selling off his things!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Hobbit

As you’ve probably figured out by now, this comes from the 2014 movie The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and it’s depicting something that happened this week when Bilbo Baggins returned to his home at Bag End on June 22^nd, 1342.

Well, at least, it would’ve happened this week in history if The Hobbit were based on a true story. Haha! But, I couldn’t resist to include this because the date of June 22^nd, 1342, by the Shire Reckoning calendar, was mentioned quite clearly in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

According to Tolkien’s writing, the movie was correct to show that when Bilbo returned home he found his neighboring hobbits to be auctioning off all of Bilbo’s things. His home, called Bag End, was something his own relatives wanted for their own, so when he didn’t return for so long they assumed he was dead.

His return home on June 22^nd stopped all this, and he was able to prove who he was by showing them the contract he signed with the dwarves for the adventure.

And while the story may be fictional, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some real history in there. For example, the name of Bilbo’s home of Bag End came from Tolkien’s aunt who lived in a farmhouse they called Bag End. He also described the home as being on a dead-end street. Or, in other words, a cul-de-sac. Or, in other words, the bottom of the bag. Or, in other words, Bag End.

Oh, and even though he says he lost the ring, we of course know he didn’t lose the ring. His finding the ring in The Hobbit set up the next trilogy—The Lord of the Rings.

But if you want to watch Bilbo’s return home you can find the journey home starting at about 2 hours, 24 minutes in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition. While we don’t see it as much, we get the hint of his return home with the ring at the start of the next trilogy at about 7 minutes and 33 seconds into The Fellowship of the Ring.

And even though they’re not ‘based on a true story’, The Lord of the Rings are my favorite books so we for three years in a row we covered the entire trilogy by comparing the movies to the books on April Fool’s Day. You can find that series over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/thelordoftherings

Oh! And if you want to dig into some real history…I had a chat with Tolkien scholar John Garth who wrote the definitive book on J.R.R. Tolkien during World War I called Tolkien and the Great War. We talked about the 2019 biopic simply called Tolkien. So, if you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings like I am, you’ll love hearing the real history behind the experiences that influenced the fictional stories! You can find that back on episode #141 of Based on a True Story.

September 18, 1975. San Francisco, California.

The camera pans up from the sidewalk to reveal a stereotypical San Francisco house. There are houses on both sides of it, and there are red brick stairs leading up to the front door. After showing us the house exterior, we hear a voice and the movie cuts to the occupants inside.

The two women inside sit down at the table, each with their own cup of coffee. They’re talking about some of their friends, who they apparently haven’t heard from in a while. But that’s not their fault. Nothing in life is simple. The women continue to talk until—all of a sudden, the door bursts in.

“Freeze! FBI, don’t move!”

Both women do move, though, and the movie focuses on the woman rushing out of the room and down the stairs. She opens the door only to see a gun pointed at her. “Freeze it!” There’s an agent on the other side of the door.

Another agent rushes down the stairs, a gun pointed at her the whole time. “Are you Patty Hearst?” he asks. The movie cuts to black and some sparks. Then back to the scene with Patty, hands behind her back and guns trained on her.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Patty Hearst

That sequence comes from the 1988 movie called Patty Hearst and it’s showing something that happened this week in history when Patty Hearst was arrested by the FBI on September 18^th, 1975.

And right away, it’s important to remember this is one of those events that we have to take the word of the people who were there. After all, this not the kind of thing that gets a lot of different perspectives officially documenting it. The movie is based on Patty Hearst’s personal account that she told in her book called Every Secret Thing, so it’s probably pretty close to what happened according to her.

With that said, to set up some historical context to this event, we’d have to go back over a year earlier to February 4^th, 1974. That’s when Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, or the SLA.

If Patty’s last name sounds familiar it’s because she’s the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. He’s the guy who the movie Citizen Kane was based on…quick side note, we dug into how historically accurate Citizen Kane was to William Randolph Hearst’s life back on episode #51 of Based on a True Story.

For today’s story, though, the SLA kidnapped Patty because she was an heiress to part of the Hearst family fortune, who they called a “superfascist ruling class family.”

Things took a turn when, on April 3^rd, a taped announcement arrived from Patty. Everyone expected her to be released—in fact, the SLA had sent their own communication the day before saying she would be released soon.

But, when people saw the announcement from Patty it wasn’t what they expected. She said she decided not to leave. She’s joining the SLA’s fight of her own free will. Oh, and also, she’s changing her name to Tania in honor of Che Guevara’s lover.

Much later, in her 1981 autobiography that the movie is based on, she said she was given two options: Join the SLA or be executed.

Of course, no one knew this in 1974. So, as you can probably guess, that Patty would go from being kidnapped to joining her kidnapper’s cause was quite a shock to everyone and only served to make the story all the more intriguing for the media and public.

Things got even more bizarre a couple weeks later when, on April 15^th, 1974, the SLA robbed a bank in San Francisco. The Hibernia Bank was held up at gunpoint and who was on the security footage? Patty Hearst. They escaped with about $10,000. That’s about the same as $61,000 today.

Initially, law enforcement thought what a lot of people did at the time, that perhaps Patty had been forced to participate in the bank robbery. Not everyone thought that, though, and one of the key people who didn’t think the evidence showed her to be under duress was a man named William Saxbe. He was the U.S. Attorney General, so his opinion mattered a lot.

That led to the event we heard described a moment ago when, on September 18^th, 1975, Patty Hearst was arrested at 625 Morse Street in San Francisco, California. According to the police officer’s report, it may not have been as dramatic as we saw in the movie. Tim Casey was the arresting officer, and he told the papers later that when they found her they said “Don’t move,” to which she said, “All right.” Casey asked if she was glad it was over and she didn’t say anything. So, maybe the movie was a little wrong to show her moving as soon as they found her. Or, maybe that’s just what happens when you’re basing something off people’s recollections of what happened.

Patty Hearst would go on to be sentenced to seven years in prison before President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence on February 1^st, 1979, and on January 20^th, 2001, President Bill Clinton gave Patty Hearst a pardon.

If you want to see the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1988 movie simply called Patty Hearst. The arrest takes place at about an hour and 19 minutes into the movie.

September 19, 1952. Washington, D.C.

We’re in an office with elegant wood furnishings. A United States flag stands in the corner. Behind the desk in the middle of the room is a black, leather chair. It’s empty. There’s a man in a suit carrying a manilla folder who has just entered the office. He notices the chair is empty, so he turns his head to look off camera.

He carefully sets the folder down on the desk before sneaking over to the other side of the office. As he does, we can see the U.S. Capitol building through the windows.

The camera pans over as the man quietly makes his way to the fireplace. Now we can tell why he was sneaking. He’s trying not to wake the man sleeping in his chair by the fireplace. He touches the sleeping man’s hand trying to wake him.

“Sir”, he whispers quietly.

It didn’t work.

The camera cuts to the man’s face now and we can see this is Kevin Dunn’s character, J. Edgar Hoover. The man shakes Hoover’s shoulder now in a slightly more firm attempt to wake him.

“Sir,” he says a little louder than the whisper before.

Hoover’s eyes open slightly.

“Sir,” the man continues, “we just got word. Chaplin’s off to London on vacation.”

Hoover doesn’t move as he ponders this for a moment. Then, slowly, his mouth curls into a smile.

The next scene in the movie is the one that happens this week in history as we can see text on the screen saying it’s New York Harbor, September 1952.

A massive ocean liner is in the harbor. If you imagine what the Titanic looked like with its iconic four funnels, or smokestacks, well this ship looks a lot like that but with three. So, a similar style ocean liner, albeit not as large as Titanic—but still a good-sized ship. Imagine that in front of the New York skyline in 1952, and that’s what this scene looks like.

After a moment, the movie cuts to aboard the ship, though, as Moira Kelly’s version of Oona O’Neill Chaplin rushes down the stairs to find her husband, Charlie Chaplin. She finds him as he’s at the stern of the ship, overlooking the New York skyline, the Statue of Liberty. On the ship a blue flag with the British Union Jack in the corner is flying.

Oona rushes to Charlie. When she gets there, she has a concerned look on her face. He recognizes this immediately and asks what’s wrong. Then, she tells him the news: They’ve thrown you out.

Charlie is confused at first, as she hands him a piece of paper with the news. She explains it to him: They’ve thrown you out of the United States.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Chaplin

That sequence comes from the 1992 movie Chaplin and as you can probably guess, the first part that happened in Washington D.C. probably didn’t happen this week in history. But it’s an important part to set up what did happen this week in history when Charlie Chaplin was refused his entry into the United States.

Granted, the way it happened in the movie was dramatized, but the gist is there.

In the movie, the agent telling Hoover that Chaplin has gone to London mentions it as being a vacation. In the true story, Charlie Chaplin went to London to hold the world premiere of his latest movie called Limelight, which was an autobiographical movie in which the character in the movie is an ex-star dealing with the loss of his popularity. Since Charlie was originally from London, that’s where the story in Limelight was set, so that’s where he decided to hold the world premiere for the film.

And, I guess, it is true that Chaplin took his family to London with him so I could definitely see how it could’ve been considered a vacation, so maybe we can give the movie a break on that.

He boarded the RMS Queen Elizabeth on September 18^th, 1952. On September 19^th, the U.S. Attorney General James P. McGranery revoked Charlie’s permit for re-entry into the U.S.

This is my own speculation, but the speed which that happened the day after tells me there were people in the government just waiting for him to leave so they could revoke the permit.

In the years since, it’s been suggested the U.S. government didn’t have much of a case against Chaplin and he probably could’ve been allowed back into the U.S. had he applied. But, when Charlie Chaplin got the news, he decided not to return to the U.S. He himself wrote about the event in his autobiography, and while I can’t offer a direct quote here, you can read exactly what he said on page 455 of his autobiography if you’d like. To paraphrase, basically, Chaplin was fed up with the insults and hatred he’d received in America.

The catch was that most of Charlie’s wealth—his film studio, his home, etc. was in the United States. So, it was Oona who returned to the U.S. to settle his affairs. They moved to Switzerland and she renounced her own U.S. citizenship in 1953.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1992 film called Chaplin and the scenes we talked about today start about two hours into the movie.

And while we haven’t covered that movie on the podcast yet—I say “yet” because we’ll be doing a deep dive into that movie in about a month from now. We’ll be chatting with Pulitzer Prize finalist author Scott Eyeman, who has written a number of excellent biographies on film history. He’s got a new book about Chaplin coming out at the end of October, so we’ll be talking to him about the life of Charlie Chaplin soon!

Follow Based on a True Story now to get notifications when that comes out, or hop into the show notes for this episode to pre-order your copy of Scott’s book!

September 21, 1937.

We’re outside for our next movie, with trees in the background and dead leaves covering the ground. A man and woman are walking together with some kids. The man asks the kids if they’ll do something for him. He asks them to listen to a story.

“Is it a good story?” One of the kids asks in a blunt way that kids do so well.

“I hope so,” he says.

“Is it long?”

“Extremely long.”

They go on to ask more questions about his story. Has it been started? What’s it about?

He says it’s been started in his mind. It’s about journeys, adventures, magic, treasure, and love. All things, really. All the kids are looking at him now.

He says the story is about the journeys we take to prove ourselves. It’s about fellowship. He points to one of the little boys and says it’s about little people just like you. The child retorts that he’s not little, and the man quickly corrects himself. No. Little in stature, not little in spirit.

The movie cuts away from the outdoors and we’re not in the woods anymore. We’re inside in a room. The same man from before is sitting, reading some papers. He’s deep in thought.

Then, he turns the paper to a fresh page. Pen in hand, he pauses to think for one more moment before he starts to write. The camera angle doesn’t let us see what he’s writing at first, but after a few seconds, it cuts to a more overhead view of the page. Now, we can see the words he’s written to start the story: “In a hole in the ground, there lived” … he stops writing for a bit and the camera cuts away from the paper to the man’s face. He speaks the word: “Hobbit.”

The true story behind that scene in the movie Tolkien

Okay, so right away I’ll admit that the scene I just described did not really happen this week in history. The movie doesn’t show the real event that did happen this week, but that scene is talking about the start of it—and the movie just doesn’t show the end that happened this week in history.

I’m sure you already know by now the man with the story is J.R.R. Tolkien and the story itself is The Hobbit. That scene comes from the 2019 biopic that is simply called Tolkien.

And it shows Tolkien starting to write The Hobbit. What happened this week in history was that The Hobbit was published.

What we don’t see in that sequence in the movie is that J.R.R. Tolkien had been writing stories about the world he created—Middle Earth—for many years at this point, but The Hobbit was his first published work.

There was a BBC documentary in 1968 where Tolkien himself described writing that opening line. I’ll include a link to it in the show notes for this episode if you want to watch it, but basically Tolkien recounts that he was grading his student’s papers in his house at 20 Northmoor Road. He had a pile of exam papers to go through, something he admitted was a boring task.

He picked up one of the papers to review and the student had left one page blank. So, he just grabbed the blank page and wrote down: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

That was then published this week in history on September 21^st, 1937, as The Hobbit. Of course, he’d go on to write The Lord of the Rings and other books, making Tolkien one of the most popular authors of all time.

If you want to watch an on-screen depiction of Tolkien writing that opening line of his first published book, that happens at about an hour and 43 minutes into the 2019 biopic about his life simply called Tolkien.

And if you want to learn more about the real J.R.R. Tolkien, we did a deep dive into that movie with Tolkien scholar John Garth back on episode #141 of Based on a True Story.

And we’ve already done our three stories for this week, but it was a busy week in history so let’s do one more!

September 23, 1780. Haverstraw, New York.

It’s dark, but the room we’re in is lit by a few candles scattered around. There’s also a fireplace where most of the light is coming from. By the fireplace we can see a man standing there. He’s in a uniform of some sort, standing with his hands behind his back.

The camera cuts to the door of the building, and although it’s dark the little bit of light available from the candles, fireplace, and a lantern near the door lets us see another man entering through the door. Underneath his cloak is a uniform. Except his uniform is different than the man by the fireplace.

The door closes. The two men don’t say anything for a moment. They just look at each other; something that’s a little easier to do now that the man who entered through the door is by the fireplace next to the other man now.

The light from the fire brightens both their faces so we can see the man who was standing by the fireplace when we started our segment is Owain Yeoman’s version of Benedict Arnold. The man who entered through the door and is now standing next to Arnold in the room is JJ Field’s version of John André.

André hands Arnold a ring. After examining it, Arnold holds up his hand to show a ring on one of his fingers, too.

Now Arnold knows this is John André, too, and addresses him as such. Major André, actually, as John André is a Major in the British Army.

André speaks for the first time, telling Arnold that General Clinton is honored that he’s decided to aid the cause of peace, and the two men shake hands.

The true story behind that scene in the TV series Turn: Washington’s Spies

That segment comes from the AMC series called Turn: Washington’s Spies, and it’s depicting something that happened this week in history when British Major John André met with American Benedict Arnold to discuss Arnold’s turning over the fortress under his command at West Point, New York to the British.

Arnold had grown tired of the Continental Army and what he considered to be an unjust smear campaign against him, so he offered up the West Point fortress for 10,000 pounds and a commission in the British military. Of course, that’s a summary of it all.

In the true story, the meeting on September 23^rd, 1780 was the result of over a year of communication back and forth via secret messages. Arnold reached out to the British commander in chief in America, Sir Henry Clinton, in May of 1779, and over time Clinton and his head of intelligence operations, Major John André, began to believe this could be a real thing.

Arnold had told André that he was going to be placed in command at West Point and offered to surrender it to the British. He also had been trusted by General George Washington with his travel plans in mid-September, and Arnold had planned to tell the British how they could capture Washington without his army around him. But, that message from Arnold didn’t reach Clinton in time for action to be taken.

Arnold also required a face-to-face meeting with André to hand over the details on surrendering West Point. So, Clinton allowed André to meet with Arnold under the condition he didn’t go behind American lines, he didn’t disguise himself and his British uniform, and he shouldn’t carry any papers that would compromise him as a spy.

Well, if you saw the AMC series then you’ll see André entering the meeting with a cloak over his uniform. He really did that, disguising his military uniform. He also met with Arnold well behind American lines. And he also carried a fake ID that Arnold had given him as an American citizen named John Anderson.

The next day, André was on his way back to the closest British outpost when he was jumped on the road by three men. He thought they were British Loyalists, so he announced he was a member of the British military and showed his papers—the papers that showed him to be an American citizen.

In fact, these three men were not British Loyalists. One of them just happened to be wearing a uniform he’d stolen from a Hessian, or the German soldiers who served with the British Army during the Revolution; that’s why André thought they were loyalists.

Instead, these three guys were just trying to rob him and once they heard André was a British military soldier who was carrying an American identification they figured they could turn him in for a reward.

After a trial, John André was hanged as a spy on October 2^nd, 1780 at the age of 29. Benedict Arnold did join the British Army, but after what he did many in the British military didn’t trust him, either. His name was forever smeared and has become synonymous with betrayal and being a traitor.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out AMC’s TV series called Turn: Washington’s Spies. The meeting between André and Arnold happens at about 17 and a half minutes into season three, episode nine.

And if you want to learn more about the true story, we covered that TV series back on episode #139 of Based on a True Story.

June 20, 1893. Massachusetts.

A lone man stands on top of a roof while some birds fly overhead. It’s a peaceful scene. He seems to be wearing a uniform of some kind as he watches the birds flying. The camera then cuts to inside and we can assume this is inside the building the man was on. It’s a dark room, lit only by a candle. A woman is inside, sitting in silence.

The noise of metal doors banging can be heard in the background. This seems to be a prison or jail of some sort.

We’re only with her for a moment before going back outside, though, as the camera cuts to a beautiful blue sky with big white, puffy clouds. The sun is shining through the clouds.

This scene only lasts for a few seconds, too, as now we can see the same woman who was in the dark cell is outside now. Her eyes are closed as she seems to be soaking up the sun on her face.

Then, the movie cuts to black. 

That is how the 2018 movie called Lizzie comes to an end, and although the movie doesn’t give us any indication of timeline, we can assume that those two scenes are on either end of this week in history because it was on June 20^th, 1893, that Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts.

And since we see Lizzie in her cell, and then free, that’s why I’m assuming we’re seeing the moments just around the trial itself.

Lizzie’s trial was for the murders of her father and stepmother. And while that happened almost a year earlier, so not this week in history, to understand the trial we have to understand the events that happened that day.

To be honest, we probably will never know the full story.

But what we do know is that Lizzie Borden’s father, Andrew, was 69 years old and her stepmother, Abby, was 64. Lizzie herself was 32. The Bordens were a well-off family who, despite having money, lived a rather frugal lifestyle.

On the morning of August 4^th, 1892, Andrew was napping on the couch. Upstairs in the house, Abby was cleaning. Bridget, the family’s maid, wasn’t feeling well so she was in her room. Lizzie said she was in the barn looking for irons, or those lead sinkers you put on a fishing line, because they were planning to go fishing. After looking for those, she came inside to find her father lying dead on the couch.

At 11:30 AM, Bridget said she heard Lizzie’s screams after discovering the body. Andrew’s face was unrecognizable as he had been hit 11 times with a hatchet. A little while later, they found Abby’s body upstairs. She had been hit 18 or 19 times with the hatchet.

When investigators showed up soon after, Andrew’s body was still warm while Abby’s was already cold, they determined the two murders happened at least an hour and a half apart. Initially, the police thought a male “foreigner” committed the crime. They found a hatchet at a nearby farm with blood on it. But it turns out that hatchet was used to kill chickens, so that’s what that blood was. Another man was seen nearby, but he had a good alibi for the time of the murders.

Lizzie had said she was in the barn eating pears in the loft.

Wait. I thought her reason for being in the barn was to look for irons. Her story changed. That’s odd. But, she didn’t have any blood on her and killing someone with a hatchet would be covered in blood. Looking into it more, perhaps she burned a dress in a stove. Maybe that had the blood? Lizzie claimed she burned it because it was stained with paint. And the day before she had tried to buy a poison? She wasn’t actually able to purchase it, but that seemed suspicious.

The questions started to add up, and about a week later, Lizzie was arrested. She made a “Not Guilty” plea and for almost a year, Lizzie was in jail as the case as well as a jury was put together. That’s the part of the movie we heard depicted at the start of this segment.

So, that was in August of 1892.

Lizzie’s trial started on June 5^th, 1893. Her defense team, which included a former governor of Massachusetts, started poking holes in the prosecution’s case. Lizzie was well-liked. She was a churchgoer. She had fainted in the courtroom right before the jury’s eyes when they brought her parent’s skulls into the courtroom as evidence.

On June 20^th, it was time for the jury to consider what they’d heard over the past few weeks. Women weren’t allowed to be on juries at that time, so the jury in this case consisted of 12 men. They adjourned and an hour later came back with the verdict that Lizzie Borden was acquitted.

The final sequence leading up to seeing Lizzie Borden being freed that we described for this week in history started at about an hour and 38 minutes into the 2018 movie Lizzie.

June 22, 1342. Middle-earth.

There are mountains in the background against blue skies with trees and rocks scattered among the green grass in the foreground.

The camera cuts to another beautiful landscape, this time most of the grass is yellow but there are still scattered trees and bushes here and there among the rolling hills. The focus of this landscape are the pretty purple flowers, some most obvious in the foreground of the camera. The only movement we can see are two horses in the middle of the frame. Or maybe it’s a horse and a pony, as the shot continues we can see one is larger than the other.

In the next shot, the same two riders are in a new landscape now. No more purple flowers, but an almost neon green grass covers the terrain. The big boulders stand out in even more contrast against the green. A peaceful stream is in the foreground, along with what looks to be some cows grazing nearby.

There’s another cut and now we’re in some woods. Tall trees with thick trunks. The two riders aren’t on their horses anymore as they walk toward the camera, laughing as they do. The taller one, wearing a grey cloak and hat, tells the shorter one that this is the border of the Shire—and here is where they’ll split up.

After saying a few words of farewell, Martin Freeman’s version of Bilbo Baggins tells Ian McKellen’s version of Gandalf that he doesn’t have to worry about the ring because he lost it.

Then, in the next shot, we see Bilbo walking along the road carrying his things. Among the rolling green hills, round doors can be found. Some others pass him carrying a heavy box. Bilbo takes a second glance—wait a minute, that’s my mother’s glory box.

Still more of Bilbo’s things are being carried away from his home. It seems he’s arrived home just in time as they’re selling off his things!

As you’ve probably figured out by now, this comes from the 2014 movie The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and it’s depicting something that happened this week when Bilbo Baggins returned to his home at Bag End on June 22^nd, 1342.

Well, at least, it would’ve happened this week in history if The Lord of the Rings were based on a true story. Haha! But, I couldn’t resist to include this because the date of June 22^nd, 1342, by the Shire Reckoning calendar, was mentioned quite clearly in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

According to Tolkien’s writing, the movie was correct to show that when Bilbo returned home he found his neighboring hobbits to be auctioning off all of Bilbo’s things. His home, called Bag End, was something his own relatives wanted for their own, so when he didn’t return for so long they assumed he was dead.

His return home on June 22^nd stopped all this, and he was able to prove who he was by showing them the contract he signed with the dwarves for the adventure.

And while the story may be fictional, that doesn’t mean there isn’t some real history in there. For example, the name of Bilbo’s home of Bag End came from Tolkien’s aunt who lived in a farmhouse they called Bag End. He also described the home as being on a dead-end street. Or, in other words, a cul-de-sac. Or, in other words, the bottom of the bag. Or, in other words, Bag End.

Oh, and even though he says he lost the ring, we of course know he didn’t lose the ring. His finding the ring in The Hobbit set up the next trilogy—The Lord of the Rings.

But if you want to watch Bilbo’s return home you can find the journey home starting at about 2 hours, 24 minutes in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition. While we don’t see it as much, we get the hint of his return home with the ring at the start of the next trilogy at about 7 minutes and 33 seconds into The Fellowship of the Ring.

And even though they’re not ‘based on a true story’, The Lord of the Rings are my favorite books so we for three years in a row we covered the entire trilogy by comparing the movies to the books on April Fool’s Day. You can find that series over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/thelordoftherings

Oh! And if you want to dig into some real history…I had a chat with Tolkien scholar John Garth who wrote the definitive book on J.R.R. Tolkien during World War I called Tolkien and the Great War. We talked about the 2019 biopic simply called Tolkien. So, if you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings like I am, you’ll love hearing the real history behind the experiences that influenced the fictional stories! You can find that back on episode #141 of Based on a True Story.

June 25, 1876. Montana Territory.

It’s dark out. Not just because this movie is in black and white, but because it’s nighttime. A campfire can be seen as a man in a military uniform walks to one of two wagons in the shot. He unties the back and a man comes falling out onto the ground.

The man who fell out seems to be tied up with his hands behind his back.

He glares at the man, saying, “You’ll pay for this, Custer!”

Then he demands to be cut loose. Although he probably didn’t expect his captor to do that, Errol Flynn’s version of George Armstrong Custer does exactly that as he bends down to cut the man loose. That man is Arthur Kennedy’s character, Ned Sharp.

Getting up, Custer tells Sharp that he’s free to go. But Sharp says he doesn’t know where he is or what day it is. Custer replies it’s just about dawn on the 25^th of June and you’re on the Rosebud Ridge above the Little Big Horn River.

In the next shot, it’s daytime now as Custer leads rows of cavalry along an open terrain. All of a sudden, one of the men points up and along the ridge we can see lines of horses appearing. With a closer camera shot we can see armed Native American on the horses charging toward the cavalry under Custer’s command.

This comes from the 1941 film They Died with Their Boots On shows the start of an event that happened this week in history: The Battle of Little Bighorn. Or, as it’s sometimes referred to as, Custer’s Last Stand.

Although that movie plays loose with historical facts—that stuff with Ned Sharp never really happened because, well, Ned Sharp was not a real person—it is true that the battle took place on June 25^th and June 26^th, 1876.

The battle’s name comes as most battles do, from the location, as it took place near the Little Bighorn River in what was then Montana Territory. Montana was admitted into the United States in 1889.

On one side of the battle was the U.S. Army’s 7^th Cavalry, led by Lt. Colonel George Custer. On the other side were warriors primarily from the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes.

Since the movie’s version of the story is quite skewed, in a nutshell, what really happened was the United States was forcing Native Americans to leave their lands and move to reservations. A treaty had been signed in 1868 between the United States and the Lakota and Cheyenne. That’ll come back into play in a moment.

Custer was there to map the area, but when geologists found some gold that brought in lots of people trying to strike it rich. That violated the 1868 treaty and angered many who didn’t agree with the treaty to begin with. Among those were two Lakota leaders, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

In 1876, the United States gave an ultimatum for Lakota who refused to go to the reservation. When the deadline passed without any change, the U.S. Army was tasked with enforcing it. As you can probably expect, the way the military enforces things is not a peaceful solution.

There was a Lakota and Cheyenne village near the Little Bighorn River and Custer’s superior officer, General Terry, decided to send Custer’s 7^th Cavalry to flank them from the east and south while he himself would lead other soldiers from the north.

For a bit of context, Custer had about 600 men under his command and while we don’t know exactly how many Native American warriors were in the battle, many sources I found give a range between 1,500 and 3,000. We also don’t know the full story of what happened in the battle, but when General Terry’s men arrived in the valley, they found Custer and all his men were killed.

If you want to see the events unfold on screen, you can see the day of June 25^th, 1876 start at about two hours and seven minutes into the 1941 film They Died with Their Boots On. And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that movie back on episode #198 of Based on a True Story.

Dan LeFebvre  01:29

Alright, let’s kick this off by addressing the elephant in the room, or in this case, the vampires in the movie. As a historian, what was your initial reaction to a movie about Lincoln and vampires?

Dr. Brian Dirck  01:42

Yeah, well, you know, when the movie came out in 2012, I’ve got students who were like, I’m so cool. They’re gonna make me a vampire. And I’m like, oh, okay, you know, I Yeah, look, I gotta admit, I was just like, Okay, what the heck, you know? And I had never heard that the novels or anything like that. So yeah, I mean, my original reaction is, yeah, we’re reaching for story ideas here, aren’t we? And I, and, honestly, I had no idea what exactly you were doing. I actually thought he was originally going to be some kind of black comedy or something. Like that sounded like that kind of thing. You know?

Dan LeFebvre  02:24

Yeah. Yeah. Real dark comedy. Well, obviously, there’s the vampire aspect to it. But if you were to give this movie kind of a letter grade for historical accuracy, how would it do? I feel like if it were like this, we have to just be like, Okay, there’s vampires, but the rest of it?

Dr. Brian Dirck  02:47

Yeah. Well, the funny thing is, I actually, like Googled, just to see what would happen when I typed in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. And there are serious website to say, question was Lincoln Vampire Hunter? No, he was I was like, Really, guys, we have to actually take this that seriously, you know, so you know what I’m whoever. Now, as I understand that the author of the novel was also the producer of the show. So he oversaw the script. I gotta give this guy credit. He did his homework. I mean, he’s just, there’s very little in here, other than the vampires that he’s making up out of whole cloth. I mean, the Pete, most of the people are real people. Most of the events are real events. As a Lincoln scholar, it’s kind of fun to watch it because you kind of go Oh, wow, to go with to do with speed. I mean, that’s kind of creepy, creepy, or whatever, you know. So you know, at the end of the day, I was actually a little impressed with the whole work he had done in actually looking up stuff that actually did exist.

Dan LeFebvre  03:48

I feel like you have to have, okay, there’s vampires, but then the rest of it has to have some believability to it. It sounds like they they did a pretty good job considering

Dr. Brian Dirck  03:58

not bad, not bad. I mean, they even pulled in some relatively unknown people like Wayne Johnson, the primary black character, was a real person. He actually was Lincoln’s a valid man that he seems to admit in Springfield, and brought with him to Washington, DC, and he’s a real guy. And of course, so was Joshua speed. I mean, yeah, I mean, these were real people, for the most part.

Dan LeFebvre  04:23

Well, if we dig into some of the details of the movie, it starts by kind of setting some context for what we’re going to see the date that we see on the movie is April 14 1865. We hear Lincoln’s voiceover in the letter and I actually jotted this down I want to quote this from the movie because it’s, it was interesting to me just the way it’s phrased. It says, quote, history prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History, remembers the battle and forgets the blood, whatever History remembers of me. If it remembers anything at all. It shall be only a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am. I’m a husband. Lawyer, a president, I shall always think of myself as a man who struggled against darkness. I leave in your chest at hands, my dear friend, Henry, this record that begins when I was just a boy. That’s the end quote. And then it goes to pigeon Creek, Indiana and 1818. So we’ll chat about kind of what happens there in a moment. But from a historical perspective, does this sound like a letter that Lincoln could have written? And with all the things that he did accomplish? Did he always see himself as somebody who was struggling against darkness?

Dr. Brian Dirck  05:28

You know, it’s plausible. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, there were a lot of people that knew Lincoln, who commented on his melancholy on there, there were some who believed he tended to be a bit obsessive about dark things. His his taste in poetry was quite dark. His taste in Shakespeare plays, he tended towards the kind of the, the bloody dark ones, you know, um, I mean, that’s not implausible that he, especially after, say, around the mid 1850s, when as if you’ve studied speeches at the time, he sees the slave power conspiracy, that seems to be overwhelming American democracy as a very dark thing. So yeah, I, I can get on board with that. And in fact, when I was watching the film, I was listening to that, that that monologue is, you know, it opens up with him writing that and actually really beautifully filmed scene of him writing it in DC. I was like, you know, he didn’t write that, but I could see it

Dan LeFebvre  06:33

in that monologue, where they refer to you know, struggling against darkness, which of course, the movie is referring to a very different type of darkness. But the way that it’s it’s written, that’s why I wanted to ask about it, because there was a lot of dark things that were going on during that time. I mean, Civil War

Dr. Brian Dirck  06:49

died done. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, and, you know, you know, Lincoln’s own struggles with the deaths of many of his loved ones. The the level of dying during the Civil War made that whole period horribly dark. I mean, and, you know, I mean, when when Lincoln was worried about the darkness in the evil that was slavery, and Lincoln never, ever said one kind thing about slavery, that was a darkness as well. And if you look at where the country was at in 1860, there was a genuine possibility that as we can put it, slavery could become national and freedom local. So you have absolutely there’s a lot of darkness. Absolutely. You mentioned

Dan LeFebvre  07:33

his name. And at the beginning of the movie, we see a young Abraham Lincoln trying to protect his friend will Johnson. He’s being beaten, willed as being beaten and taken away by a slave trader, and Abraham intervenes, but then his father, Thomas Lincoln gets involved and punches the guy who’s whipping will and Abraham, and then outcomes. Mr. Bart’s who apparently we learned from the movie, Thomas Lincoln is working for to pay off some sort of a debt. And because Thomas Lincoln can’t pay what he owes, immediately, Mr. Bark says, oh, there’s other ways to collect the debt. And then later that we find out that, of course, Mr. barks is a vampire comes to Lincoln’s home and bites aids mother, and she gets sick and dies soon thereafter. And then the movie very briefly, and very quickly just mentions that Thomas Lincoln dies nine years later. And that’s how the movie sets up that Abraham Lincoln doesn’t have any parents and he has this desire to become well vampire hunter to seek vengeance. Is there any truth to those plot points that we see around Lincoln’s parents and how they died?

Dr. Brian Dirck  08:31

Yeah, first of all, I just like I stopped laughing whenever you say vampires is the third time you know, no, you know, but again, this is one of those examples of obviously, the screenwriters slash author looked into the into the genuine circumstances of Lincoln’s early life. His mother did in fact die when he was quite young, of a poisoning accidental poisoning from something called the milk sickness, where she drank a poisoned milk. There’s a plant that a cow might eat, that had poison called traumatol in it, and she accidentally drank it along with about a dozen other people in the neighborhood. And she spent a week dying. To tell you the truth. The way she died is a lot worse than what was in the movie. You know, I mean, really bad. Yeah. As far as his father is concerned, Thomas, I mean, yeah, he had debt and he had financial problems. And, you know, he was Thomas wasn’t a bad man. He’s just kind of hapless, you know, and he ended up stumbling into bad financial setups. But yeah, I mean, yeah, he did died nine years later, although it was just a peaceful death. He just he died of disease in Illinois. So there’s that. And they were taking some liberties with William Johnson. Yes, he did exist, but we don’t think Lincoln knew him that far back. We think Lincoln met him Springfield, we don’t know how, you know, but there’s that as well. But so

Dan LeFebvre  10:07

far it sounds like the the way that they die or at least the way that according to the the movie portraying almost, you know, Mrs. Lincoln dying as much more of a shock and more of a, you know, unexpected death as opposed to they don’t even show how Thomas Lincoln dies. They just oh, he dies nine years later. So it’s, but it sounds like in that way at least they’re sort of going down the same the right path.

Dr. Brian Dirck  10:30

Yeah, they are. I mean, they really are. And, and, you know, setting aside the elephant in the room, you move the vampires out of the way. Um, yeah, I mean, that was a very traumatic experience, probably for Lincoln, although we don’t have a lot of records that really tell us how he reacted. But he lost his mother when he was very young. And that had to be, I thought, the film did a nice job of portraying just the shock and the nastiness of death on the frontier in that time period.

Dan LeFebvre  11:01

Earlier I mentioned the name Henry, it’s in the opening monologue, and that’s who he was writing the letter to, and the full name being Henry Sturges. According to the movie, Henry is both a vampire seeking his own revenge against other vampires. But he’s also a very good friend of Abraham Lincoln. did Lincoln actually have any friends named Henry Sturges?

Dr. Brian Dirck  11:22

You know, I know. I’m Bobby. I actually look, I couldn’t think of anyone of that name. So I actually went digging around and some things might my guess, and I’d have to see what the what the author was thinking. But I my guess is he’s kind of a composite of several friends possibly of Lincoln’s at that time. I kind of thought of Ward Hill Lamin actually he was a fellow lawyer, who, by the way, was the subject of his own movie about Lincoln, about him acting as his body. There’s all these memories about Lincoln. But my guess my guess is, this is a modification of Lamin who was a lifelong friend of Lincoln’s if I had to guess.

Dan LeFebvre  12:05

Yeah, because in the movie, Henry is kind of Abe’s mentor. So would he have been Lincoln’s mentor in real life? layman?

Dr. Brian Dirck  12:13

Well, no, not really young. Yeah, I think the movie kind of had to make that relationship look the way it did for the vampire plot. Like in the head, men, you could call mentors. There were a couple of older men living in the village he lived in growing up that kind of gave him books and loaned him things and taught him things. And then there were a couple of older lawyers on the circuit who had to just mentors. So again, my guess is that this Henry is kind of a composite of all that, you know, you know, men who were showing this guy the way that’s my guess

Dan LeFebvre  12:54

that makes sense. Makes sense. Out in the movie once Henry starts training, able to kill vampires he he picks up his weapon of choice he says he was never good with as movie that says, you know, quote, shooting irons, but he wasn’t real splitter so he picks up an axe. Is there any historical reason why Lincoln would pick up an axe as a weapon of choice? Well, actually,

Dr. Brian Dirck  13:15

the cut is when he was a small boy. Um, Lincoln was they were living in like a kind of a really, really primitive cabin in Indiana while they were establishing more permanent quarters, and his dad and his cousin named John Hanks were working Dr. DeSanctis was that was out route hunting. And there’s a big wild turkey that flew by the cabin is just him his mother, and I think he’s really young means like, I forget the exact age like seven or eight. And his mom thinks oh man, there’s dinner. Okay, so she hands a gun to Lincoln. He gets up in draws a beat and kills that kills the turkey and hits it. And Lincoln actually later expressed something to the effect of I accidentally hit the darn thing and killed it. And then he any literally brags in one of his autobiographies. I’ve never pulled the trigger again on any search game. So that’s apparently the last time he actually shot at something live you know, he, so yeah, there’s something to that. I mean, he doesn’t seem to have owned any guns that I know of. Or, nor was he into that kind of shooting thing. I found it rather plausible and he seems not to have liked hunting at all. And the one time he almost got himself into a duel is with swords, not guns, so I can kind of see it.

Dan LeFebvre  14:38

i This is not shown in the movie at all. But how do you get into a duel with swords? I don’t remember that’s

Dr. Brian Dirck  14:46

one of the best we can and we think this was actually Mary Lincoln, who wrote these really nasty political letters to a local Springfield newspaper about a guy named James speedy or not Thanks, Pete. I’m sorry, Jim shields, and James Shields got really mad and threatened the editor about finding out about it. And we think that Lincoln stepped up to protect Mary. And they got into a back and forth to the point where, you know, the the duel, I mean, they were they were they were, they were at that that point. And they Lincoln was in a position where he got to choose the weapons he chose broadswords if, if you can imagine Abraham Lincoln that has like, Eric, or I go ask somebody, you know, but they were gonna do it, they were actually going to do it. In Lincoln was practicing and all that and then kind of cooler heads prevailed, it never actually happened. And Lincoln found the whole thing really embarrassing. And when a Union officer brought it up during the wars that he Mr. Pres, everything was gotten to a duel. Lincoln’s is somebody that fucked up. Yeah. And shut up. Are you where you are? We’re gonna have a real problem here. It really bothered.

Dan LeFebvre  15:54

You mentioned that he was training for the duel. And that kind of leads right into my next question, because we see the sequence of Lincoln training with the axe. Did he do fighting training like that?

Dr. Brian Dirck  16:06

Very sweet to say I was like, Oh, wow, that’s you know, in real life. Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler. A very good one. And most of the eyewitness accounts that saw him most of this. He’s very athletic.

Dan LeFebvre  16:23

But if we go back to the movie, we mentioned him before Lincoln gets ruined with a man named speed in Springfield, I in exchange for Lincoln helping around speeds store and that’s where according to the movie, Lincoln meets Mary Todd for the first time, is that really how Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln really met?

Dr. Brian Dirck  16:42

We honestly don’t know exactly how they met. It’s certainly plausible. Um, there are stories. My favorite story, and we’re not sure if this is true or not, is that they met at a dance in Springfield, where Lincoln standing in the corner looking all nervous. And Mary walks over and says, Who are you and what do you want? And he says, I want to dance with you in the worst way. And they go with dance, they get down and Mary says to me, You know what, we did dance in the worst way, but don’t fulfill them. You know, I My students love that little anecdote, you know. But honestly, it’s plausible. You know, this is a good example of a fiction writer, finding one of those empty spaces in the record where you could fill in something that certainly could have happened, possibly because Mary was living in Springfield.

Dan LeFebvre  17:25

What about speed? Was that how Lincoln met speed since you mentioned he was a real person?

Dr. Brian Dirck  17:31

Yeah, that was actually one of the more accurate scenes in real life. Lincoln had relocated from New Salem to Springfield. He had just gotten his law license. But he he’s getting a new sale in this village that was already dying because of various problems. He goes to Springfield, to get very little money. He just wanders into speed store said pretty much pretty much what what the movie said. And sweet offers him a room and he moves so yeah, that was pretty much like,

Dan LeFebvre  18:03

wow, okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s fascinating. There is a scene in the movie where he tells Mary that every night he hunts vampires, and then she just laughs it off. Of course, you know, it makes a joke that maybe he isn’t so honest, after all. As I was watching that, it actually made me think of a different movie completely. It’s something where Alfred says to Bruce Wayne and Batman Begins, Alfred tells Bruce that he’s going to have to come up with some sort of a public excuse for why he’s getting all these cuts and bruises. So no one suspects that he’s Batman. Now, if we were to go along with the concept in the movie that Abraham Lincoln was moonlighting as a vampire hunter. Do we know if the real Abraham Lincoln ever had any sort of unexplained cuts, bruises or anything else that he tried to keep out of the public eye?

Dr. Brian Dirck  18:52

Boy? That’s a great question. I’ve never heard of anything like that myself. Now. I do know that when he was young, he was kicked in the head by a horse. And he later said, I was killed for a time apparently knocked him out cold. And if you look closely at I’ve got in my office, a life mask that was actually made in Lincoln. You can kind of see where that little did is that where this horse whacked him real good, you know, but you know, otherwise, you know, he was thought of as a remarkably athletic president. I mean, you first of all, it wasn’t that old. I mean, he was 56. I’m, I’m 56. It didn’t strike me as I was all you know, but he was. He was actually when he when he was laying in his deathbed basically, after you’d been shot, and they undressed him to deliver more wounds and stuff. Several people remarked on how athletic he looked, and he basically told you to ribbed his body was

Dan LeFebvre  19:51

I guess, I’ve seen those pictures of you know, when he became president, and then after, I guess, he just, I mean, he seemed to age a lot because they I mean, he went through a lot I mean, there’s a lot of stress

Dr. Brian Dirck  20:01

goggles, or you know, who would ever want to be present? The chalk kills people if you look at them for real, you know? So yeah, yeah, I mean, it looks much older. But yeah, they said that he was very physically fit although they died.

Dan LeFebvre  20:16

There’s another scene in the movie I want to ask you about with Mary Todd, and she takes off Abe’s top hat at one point it stands on it so that she’s tall enough to kiss him. What about their height difference? Did she ever? I mean, at first that top had had to have been pretty supportive to be able to support somebody. But we didn’t have that height difference.

Dr. Brian Dirck  20:34

God Yes. Lincoln is what six foot three. And I think I mean, my memories, fuzzy, I think she was like, five to maybe five years ago. And as a matter of fact, when they were doing the train, the train was traveling from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington DC to, for him to become president. He would bring Mary out onto the back of the train and he would tell the crowd now you get to see belong in the short of it. You know? Okay, yeah, whatever, you know, so Yeah, apparently there. People remarked on they just they were just an odd couple that way.

Dan LeFebvre  21:11

And even Lisa had a good sense of humor, but

Dr. Brian Dirck  21:15

yeah, I don’t marry crack a joke about that. So who knows?

Dan LeFebvre  21:23

According to the movie one night after finding out that Henry Sturgis is a vampire. He heads back to the shop where he works to find Mary. They’re looking for him. And he proposes to her right there in the shop. Is that really how Abraham Lincoln proposed to Mary Todd?

Dr. Brian Dirck  21:41

Though there’s a story, okay. No, no, not at all. Basically, you’ve been keeping company with her. And back in those days. This is gonna scare the heck out of every male listener to your podcast. If you spent more three or four days out with a woman, you’ve been short print the invitations, okay, because you’ve made a commitment. And somebody pointed that out to a visit, okay, when you guys get married, and then Lincoln’s like, marry your mind. So he he goes over to where she lived with her sister. And he goes over to your house. And we don’t know what they said. But it was something to the effect that very anything can happen. And Mary being Mary, she didn’t take that well. Okay. And apparently, he ran out of the house have what amounted to an emotional collapse for the next few days. Speed later claimed, quote, we had to take sharp things out of the room to fear that he hurt himself, that kind of stuff. And then after a few days, speed says, he goes to a band aid kind of size and says, Well, speed. I guess I’m just gonna have to marry that girl. There’s a lot of matrimonial enthusiasm there. Let me tell you, and then he goes back to the house. And from we don’t know the details, but from what we understand, Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, who Lincoln also knew kind of affected a reconciliation kind of brought them together and say, Come on, guys. Let’s listen to deal with this. So he must have proposed or somewhere in there, but it wasn’t anything like what the movie was pointing out.

Dan LeFebvre  23:08

Wow. Yeah. Really? Sound it sounds really enthusiastic about it.

Dr. Brian Dirck  23:12

Well, one story has it that this may or may not be true, but what story has it that he was on his way to his wedding? They got married, Elizabeth it was house and he’s all dressed up and you hardly dressed up and one of his friends he’s older 70 goes to weekend so she’s a dress where you going? According to this guy, you said to hell, I suppose. Not be true, but that’s I love that story. So

Dan LeFebvre  23:36

Wow. Wow, the movie suggests that one of the reasons why a gets into politics to take on slavery is not necessarily for how evil slavery is, but because it’s what the vampires are using to feed their hordes and slowly take over the country. And then he decides to put down the axe not fight with the axe but fight with words and ideals. What were the reasons that Lincoln actually wanted to get into politics if not vampires?

Dr. Brian Dirck  24:09

Good got more than we really have an hour here what Wow, um, you know what? It’s like I always tell my students there’s never any one reason for anything in history, you know, I’m part of it is just personally ambition. You know, you know, his law partner, Billy Herndon, later said Lincoln’s quote, ambition was an engine that you know, rest. I mean, he’s much more ambitious than maybe we have this all shucks rail splitter into the guy, but he’s actually a shrewd lawyer, who wants a political career now didn’t go all that well, comparatively speaking to became president, but part of the ambition. Part of it is moral conviction. He later himself he got out of politics for a while. He had not done well, when he went to the one term in Congress comes home and says to heck with this becomes those folks All family focuses on his law practice. And he later said this himself. He said I was done. I was retired until I heard the news that they were planning on reintroducing slavery into the western territories. And I was so shocked. I had to get involved. So there’s there’s moral conviction to get back involved in slavery. So I’d say those two things kind of go hand in hand, he genuinely feared that slavery, which he was convinced was on its way to extinction had been given new life by people like Stephen Douglas, and he was really mad about it.

Dan LeFebvre  25:28

Okay, so slavery did play a big part into his his other than just, you know, his own ambitions.

Dr. Brian Dirck  25:35

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan LeFebvre  25:37

Okay. Okay, that we talked about Abe’s mother and how she died. And there’s a scene in the movie where one of the Vampires gets into the Lincoln household during the White House. So he’s president then and the vampire bites Willie. And then he gets sick and the doctors are befuddled, he died. I don’t know what’s ailing him. But as he looks, and he immediately recognizes the wound on the arm, it’s the same thing that happened to his mother. How did the movie do showing the way that William Lincoln died?

Dr. Brian Dirck  26:04

Well, I mean, yeah, obviously, he wasn’t a vampire. But again, it’s like the entire movie. They just sort of pick and choose kernels of truth and build their narrative around it. And and in fact, Abraham Lincoln was one of only two presidents to lose a child in the White House. The other if you’re wondering was JFK. Jackie had a miscarriage during when they were living there. So there’s that so yeah, Willie did did genuinely die in the White House in 1862. Were in this matter of fact, we’re not entirely sure how he died. The best theory is typhoid that he had he drank some some tainted water. And, by the way, his little brother Tad, who doesn’t even show up in the movie, and yet two young boys living in the White House he just had tag got sick, too. He almost died. But Willie did die. And I thought thought it did a passable job with the grief. Mary was shattered, much more so than she was in the movie, the movie shows her feel quite upset. In real life, Mary teetered on the edge of insanity. She was so upset. As a matter of fact, Lincoln had to threaten to put her in the Washington DC lunatic asylum if she didn’t call downs that bad. In the people that knew Lincoln knew that he was he was shaky as well, so they can do a bad job with that actually.

Dan LeFebvre  27:34

Other than the vampires Yeah. Well, it sounds like there’s the movie kind of has a correlation between the way that William died and the way that AIDS mother died. And it sounds like they really like it was mother really died by tainted milk. And then tainted water. It sounds like there was some sort of a correlation almost

Dr. Brian Dirck  27:51

already. Yes, sexy action would be going from tainted milk and tainted water though, right?

Dan LeFebvre  27:58

Well, in the movie after William dies, a refuses to let Henry turn William into a vampire to save him, even though Mary wants him to. And then she apparently read a secret journal. So she knows what’s really going on. And according to the movie, then she blames aid for William’s death. Did she really blame her husband for William’s death?

Dr. Brian Dirck  28:20

Yeah, boy, you know, right off hand, and I’ve written a whole book on Lincoln and dying. And I’ve seen most of the most of the reliable sources on this. I’ve never seen anything like that. Um, I never marry blame yourself. Actually, um, she seems to have felt that because Willie, Willie lingered for a long time before he died, he was sick, and you get better than you get worse, you get better than you get worse. And the Lincoln’s didn’t know what to do. Sometimes they canceled appointments. Sometimes they didn’t, because after all, he is president and they gotta do what they got to do. But after he died, Mary writes in a letter, she’s like, I think we were too ambitious. And I should have stayed closer to him. Oh, my God, what was I thinking? And she actually gave sort of a religious, you know, God is punishing us for our pride. But it wasn’t particularly you pointing the finger at her husband. It was more like a general. Hey, you know what, we should have seen that he was much worse off than he actually was. And she beat herself up over that.

Dan LeFebvre  29:26

I could see that with any sort of a loss. If you those scenes just start to replay in your head and it sounds like she Yeah.

Dr. Brian Dirck  29:34

You know, personally, I’m more sympathetic to Mary than many people. And I gotta tell you, I my favorite part of this movie was Mary, you know of the whole thing. I thought he did a nice, I mean, within the context of the whole vampire story. I liked what they did with her. She was she wasn’t she wasn’t, I mean, other movies ever, like teetering on the balance of insanity the entire thing. I do think she did. descended some major mental instability eventually, but I liked what they did with her.

Dan LeFebvre  30:05

Well, near the end of the movie, the entire war tilts on the balance of Gettysburg and after disastrous first day where the vampires enter the war on the side of the Confederacy, they just, you know, roll over everybody. I then a send a train full, of course, they’re vampires. So silver plated weapons, unfortunately, speed gave up the location of the train. So so a fight ensues. And then our heroic vampire hunter Abraham Lincoln fights off the vampire. So the train makes it to the destination saves today and the nation. Was there ever a moment like this where the entire war hung into balance and Abraham Lincoln himself save the day?

Dr. Brian Dirck  30:41

No, no, I know. I’m sorry. But while you’re at it with that, that, that that battle seems the battle scenes from Gettysburg were pretty cool. I think he did a really nice job in that one opening scene of Gettysburg actually can be and you know what I can I can create this and use this in my class and they morph into vampires. I go on my mind, you know, but yeah. As as, as a as an historian, who studies this stuff. Like most historians, I don’t, I don’t see like one pivotal moment, even again, these predictions are important, okay. But the history doesn’t work that way. They did this. This is a process. You know, frankly, what I think they did not read the novel. Again, I don’t know what they did in the novel. But a movie tells a story in a very short period of time. If you’re going to have if you’re going to have a climactic moment that makes sense. I can’t think of any other climactic moment you would do. So I see it from a storytelling point of view, but in reality is much messier than that.

Dan LeFebvre  31:40

That makes sense. Any guy in the movie we don’t really show a lot of the actual battles of in the war. It’s just snippets. Yeah, just little snippets. Gettysburg is the one that we see the most of it sounds like other than vampires. That’s always gonna be the the catch.

Dr. Brian Dirck  31:56

Well, I actually liked those scenes. I was like, man, they put some work into this, you know, I mean, I actually thought they do a decent job of that.

Dan LeFebvre  32:07

The way the movie wraps up the the train that Amazon has is a decoy. And there’s a brief scene earlier in the movie after fighting off a ballroom filled of vampires to rescue his friend will even speed make their way back north thanks to Harriet Tubman. Then we see Mary Lincoln meet with Harriet Tubman again, as she’s trying to get out of Washington at the very end of the movie, we find out as well puts it’s the train isn’t the only railroad. And so as movie goers we can put two and two together that’s Lincoln used Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad to deliver the silver to turn around the Battle of Gettysburg. And of course, by extension, the war did the Lincoln’s ever meets Harriet Tubman or use the underground railroad to deliver weapons?

Dr. Brian Dirck  32:51

No to both Okay, um, actually, Lincoln did meet several prominent leaders in the abolitionist movement. Most famously, he met Yeah, Frederick Douglass, three separate occasions. He met Sojourner Truth who was another African American woman abolitionist. But we Harriet Tubman, she never met him. As a matter of fact, Harriet Tubman was not a Lincoln fan. She thought that Lincoln waited too long before you should the Emancipation Proclamation. And she was highly suspect of his motives. She thought that he was doing it mostly to get, you know, black men to go serve as cannon fodder. So she didn’t have a positive view of Lincoln at all. As far as the Underground Railroad is concerned, you know, the Underground Railroad was very important and very interesting can can be exaggerated. And plus, it’s really, really tough to track down sources, because after all, helping a fugitive slave up until 1853 was a federal felony. So you don’t go riding down records you know about this. I you know, what I’ve never seen now, maybe there’s something out there somewhere. But I’ve never seen a reliable source, in which Lincoln even really acknowledges the existence of the Underground Railroad. Now, as a lawyer, he did defend several people who were accused of breaking the law by helping slaves to their to their freedom. So he did get involved that way. But other than that, not really now,

Dan LeFebvre  34:19

but that would have been as a lawyer before he got into politics, right. Waiting

Dr. Brian Dirck  34:23

for the war. Yeah. During during the war. Again, I mean, I’m just using my my adult 56 year old memory here. Maybe there’s a reference someplace in the records where you mentioned the underground river, but there is I don’t know, I don’t remember right offhand.

Dan LeFebvre  34:38

I want to ask you about one of the kinds of concepts that the movie has, of course, again, the movies using vampires supporting the Confederate but as I was watching that I couldn’t help but think of, there’s new modern day conspiracy theories about how there are secret groups controlling political Millett, military agendas and so the movie using vampires to do this, but of course, they’re just kidding. Were there any sort of conspiracies or anything of any sort of controlling group behind the Confederacy that was using this political and military as a for their own purposes?

Dr. Brian Dirck  35:10

I you know, yeah, I mean, I’ll tell you what go find crazy uncle his YouTube channel, I’m sure he’s got you know, I mean, we I was all those guys you know that kind of thing? Yeah, I mean the Confederacy was a sort of a messy coalition of you know diehard slaveholders others who were slaveholders, but they really wanted independence more. And there’s much more opposition to the Confederacy then we are led to believe if you go look at the actual records of the four years during the war, there’s tons of Southerners think this is a terrible idea, especially poor southerners who had to bear the brunt of the fighting. In fact, you can make a pretty good case that can fit or nationalism wasn’t even viable during the war in I mean, you can get into a real argument about this, but there’s a there’s an argument to be made, that Confederate nationalism was so weak that that contributed to their collapse, people just weren’t committed to the cause. So not only was there not some kind of conspiracy, even up front and fenders didn’t know what exactly they were trying to do sometimes. Absolutely.

Dan LeFebvre  36:15

Well, so that that leads to a question then and I have about the goal in the movie, you get the vampires but they want to take over the entire country. It sounds like did the Confederacy want to take over the entire country or they just essentially want to keep the territories that they had and what they had status quo, essentially.

Dr. Brian Dirck  36:35

You know, I gotta be I was watching this movie I was thinking the Batman got it sucks being a Confederate these days, doesn’t it? They pull down your statues they accuse you doing all kinds of bad crap, you know, it’s just it’s not fun being Confederate in 2022. But yeah, I’m not really know. The can the Confederacy now I’m talking confederacy now pre war sound. That’s a different story. You could you could find people who were making arguments for making slavery a national institution, but they weren’t very large a number. And even most mainstream southerners thought That’s nuts. Okay. The Confederacy itself. I mean, Jefferson Davis’s from the very beginning of the war. He says, we just want to be left alone. In his first inaugural address, he says, Look, we can be friends here. Why don’t we start setting up trade relations, like we’re two sovereign countries, which we are. As a matter of fact, it is highly controversial, that Robert E. Lee invaded the North twice, you know, for the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, you’re trying to get to Pennsylvania, and then you get to Gettysburg because a lot of people are saying, Look, we’re not into trying to invade the North, okay. We’re just trying to be left alone. So no, there was there was never a serious consideration that hey, man, we want to go take over this whole bloody thing. You know, if anything, a lot of Confederates really wanted to go the other direction, establishing their nation, and they go conquer Cuba and go conquer the Bahamas and go conquer parts of Central America and turn that into a vast slave ship or they want to go that way. Not that way. You’re down, not up.

Dan LeFebvre  38:01

So in that, in that sequence, that at the end, Abraham Lincoln had a silver tipped axe that doubled as a shotgun in the handle. Was that sort of technology even possible in that time period?

Dr. Brian Dirck  38:13

I’ve never heard of that. I thought that’s a cool idea. That slugger you know, I mean,

Dan LeFebvre  38:19

it seemed like something from like a Spy Museum.

Dr. Brian Dirck  38:22

Yeah, you see weird weapons from the Civil War. Like I saw a picture one time of a Confederate soldier holding a single shot Derringer with a bayonet attached to the bottom of the barrel like, Dude, what are you gonna do with that? You know, I mean, you’re gonna stab somebody with a pistol. You know, me.

Dan LeFebvre  38:38

I was gonna say damages a pistol, right? Unless they

Dr. Brian Dirck  38:41

was a pistol with a what do you think you’re gonna do with that? You know, so no, I, but you know, you never know. I mean, they had just kind of weird ideas back then about, hey, we could win the war for you. I don’t know, attach a shotgun to an axe and oh, boy, you know, that kind of thing. So you, you might be surprised there might have been somebody out there that came up with some crazy idea. I mean, look, I mean, the Confederacy built a submarine for him and sick and the sucker actually worked well, sorta until killed everybody. And if it still, you know, at the end of the day, though, they, especially the Confederacy got desperate, you know, and we’re starting to come up with all kinds of crazy ideas.

Dan LeFebvre  39:21

This isn’t shown in in the movie at all. But at the very end of the book, I read the book, you know, a while ago, and we find out that at the end, Henry actually turned Lincoln into a vampire so that they can continue to fight evil together. And so the end of the book is kind of like modern day and they’re both there. Were there any theories that Lincoln didn’t actually die after being shot by booth like the movie kind of the movie that kind of suggested to?

Dr. Brian Dirck  39:49

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, the whole bar scene and I can I read the novel, but I did read that they had him listen to the I Have a Dream speech as a vampire 1963 or whatever. Um, I don’t know of any rumors that Lincoln survived most of the you know, cray cray rumors about Lincoln centered around booth and there were all these rumors going well into the 20th century that he actually wasn’t shot in that barn in you know later which you know he was shot by a guy named Boston Corbett am surrounded all that you can find those today man there’s there’s a there’s these rumors that he actually died on a barroom floor in Texas in 1902, or stuff. Most serious stories dismissed that stuff out of hand. And of course there are all these assassination theories back then. My personal favorite is that the Pope off to Lincoln because he’s mad about something I kind of like that one myself, you know, But yo, yeah, I go look it up there all kinds of funky conspiracy theories about the Lincoln assassination. But as far as I never saw anybody claiming that he actually live I don’t I think to me eyewitnesses. I’ll tell you what, if you wanted to go dig Lincoln up and turn him into a vampire, and good luck with that, because somebody tried to steal his body out of the crypt in Springfield, after the war was over. And Robert Lincoln was so upset. He had Lincoln’s body in turn stuck in a coffin that was wrapped in rebar, it stuffed about 20 feet of ground and concrete floor, right? You will never get to the corpse of Abraham Lincoln the way that turned

Dan LeFebvre  41:16

out what were they trying to steal it with some sort of a political thing?

Dr. Brian Dirck  41:21

This is the best or these drunk Irish counterfeiters in Chicago wanted to get their engraver out of jail. So I guess after the down some major Guinness decided, You know what, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go down to Springfield. We’re gonna steal Lincoln’s body, hide it in the Indiana Dunes and then ransom our bud getting out of jail. Oh, by the way, can we get some money wall rat, and they actually tried it, they went into the there was no guard around the sarcophagus, which is in the middle of Buceo cemetery. They go in, they start pulling the coffin out, but they didn’t realize that it was a coffin inside another coffin with all this chocolate away, like for two pills. And things are really heavy. And then the detectives went in to bust them for it. And there’s Lincoln hanging and half in half out sarcophagus. And Robert Lincoln just went DEF CON one basically, how you ever gonna keep this from happening again to make him happy? They they buried him so far. Daler will never get out. So yeah.

Dan LeFebvre  42:20

Wow, I’ve never heard that. That’s

Dr. Brian Dirck  42:23

what they would do is ever make a movie about that. I will totally come back on this again. Okay, he’s that that’s actually a thing. It actually is. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I tell my students that are like open mouth and like, Oh, my God, y’all, I’m not making this up. I swear that,

Dan LeFebvre  42:39

wow. I have grave robbers and things, you know, they’re stealing. They’re stealing valuable, you know, especially, you know, Ancient Egypt and stuff, the gold.

Dr. Brian Dirck  42:49

Thing is those guys didn’t spend that much time in jail. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that can be prosecuted under was a law keeping people from stealing cadavers and selling them to hospitals and stuff for medical research. I mean, that’s the only law they had back then. So I think these guys spent like a little bit of time in jail and a lefty when they got out again. So it really wasn’t that big a deal to the Robert Lincoln went nuts. You know,

Dan LeFebvre  43:13

I have a feeling there were some new laws that got added after that. Oh, yeah,

Dr. Brian Dirck  43:17

well, and then they were so worried that somebody would come try it again. They didn’t want to put his body back in the sarcophagus, they forgot what to do. So they took the coffin back out, moved Lincoln’s body to the basement of the sarcophagus and piled a bunch of lumber over the top of and hit it down there. So the next quite some time tour groups would come in and the tour guide would point to the sarcophagus and say they’re the body of Abraham Lincoln when he was actually buried under a bunch of lumber like like two stories down.

Dan LeFebvre  43:44

Wow, we’ve talked about a lot obviously the vampire the elephant in the room there. But is there anything in the movie that you felt you watching? That was spot on like this? This is incredibly accurate.

Dr. Brian Dirck  43:57

bits and pieces, you know, um, you know, the production values were really good, you know, I mean, I was I was impressed the scene where the you CGI fairly well, I thought, where they panned in on his first inaugural address in there is the the Capitol dome, which is half built, which is the truth they had put the dome. You don’t want finished when they when he gave the thing. I mean, they had an eye for detail for that. That scene is awesome. It’s just like, wow, that’s really cool. And then Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was spot on. It’s probably about what the whole thing looked like. I mean, so it’s like bits and pieces. You kind of go Huh, not not bad over you. I wouldn’t would have expected worse than this, you know, but that’s the whole thing about the movie though. I mean, I was expecting I can’t be comedy at first, okay, I was like, it’s gonna be like the Batman series and TV in the 1960s. We’re gonna crack jokes about Adam West. And then this is like this deadly serious movie about all this stuff I got. What the heck was that? You know, like, what to do with this It’s not funny, it’s not There’s nothing. There’s not a single funny thing in this movie. On the other hand, the visuals are really nice in the acting is actually quite good. And all the production values are great in the service. The story just is this weird, you know? So it is, it’s different. You know what? I actually read some of the reviews, you only have like a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes, and we’ll look at the reviews, they all kind of do the same thing. They’re like, why was this even wait, you know, why? What? What am I supposed to walk out of the theater thinking here? Okay.

Dan LeFebvre  45:36

Yeah, the author that wrote that I know, he also wrote like another one called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. So it’s kind of his thing. It seems like,

Dr. Brian Dirck  45:43

hey, you know what, if you’re a writer and find your niche, man, you go for it. Okay.

Dan LeFebvre  45:49

Well, thank you so much for coming on a chat about Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. And for someone listening to this, who wants to learn more about your work? Can you share a bit about your books and working again,

Dr. Brian Dirck  45:58

I’ve written several books, many of them Lincoln, the one I’m most well known for, I suppose, as far as I know, at all his lawyer, Lincoln, the lawyer, which is a state law practice, I’ve done works on various aspects of his life, the most recent one, which is how I relate to what we were talking about a little bit. It’s called the Black heavens, Abraham Lincoln and death. And I kind of look at how Lincoln processed death throughout his life from the death of his mother like we talked about all the way through how he dealt with you know, all these all the death of surrounding him during the war. Funny thing when I wrote the book, I didn’t it didn’t occur to me to include you know, silver tip taxes and people bite him in the neck. But you know, what, if there’s ever a second edition, man, I’m gonna go do that vampire thing is this gets this is also

Dan LeFebvre  46:40

what you’re saying Lincoln didn’t actually process that by just turning people into vampires or that wasn’t his thing.

Dr. Brian Dirck  46:46

Retrospective would have been a strategy you know, it would have

Dan LeFebvre  46:52

they live forever so I thank you again, so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Brian Dirck  46:59

No problem.