Dan LeFebvre
00:01
Hello, and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. Today, we’ll be learning about 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance. And as we always do, just in case it’s been a while since you’ve seen the movie, let’s get a refresher by kicking this off with a quick synopsis. The Legend of Bagger Vance is directed by Robert Redford, and it unfolds in Depression-era Savannah, Georgia. Matt Damon’s character, Ranulf Juna, is a talented golfer and a warrior traumatized by World War I. He returns home, a broken man, haunted by comrades, and his golfing career is all but gone. His former love, Charlize Theron’s version of Adele Invergordon, inherits her family’s failing golf resort, and in an attempt to save it, she organizes a high-stakes exhibition match between golfing legends Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen. And then to help gain hometown support, she insists on including Juna as a third player. Reluctantly agreeing, Juna practices alone at night until a mysterious caddy named Bagger Vance appears, offering enigmatic wisdom drawn from ancient truths. Bagger Vance is played by Will Smith in the movie. With young admirer Hardy Greaves assisting, Bagger coaches Juna to rediscover his swing amid flashbacks and personal demons. As the match unfolds over two days, Juna surges from last place and has a rekindled romance with Adele. There’s a critical error that triggers war horrors for Juna, but Bagger’s guidance prevails. And then Bagger vanishes mysteriously as Juna finds redemption. And at the end of the movie, the kid who was helping out, Hardy Greaves, is now an elderly man who suffers a heart attack on the course when an ageless Bagger beckons him onward. Helping us unravel the true story behind the movie, I’m super excited to be joined by none other than Steven Pressfield himself. Back in 1995, Steven Pressfield published the historical novel called The Legend of Bagger Vance, and that was adapted into the 2000 movie we’re talking about today. So we’ll get to go behind the scenes, not only on the historical accuracy of the movie, but also his thought process on writing historical novels and how authors can use history to help tell stories. Speaking of historical novels, Stephen’s latest book is called The Arcadian. It was just published a couple days ago. I got to read an advanced copy, and while I’m sure many of you listening right now are already familiar with Stephen’s work, For anyone who hasn’t read Stephen’s historical novels, you’re missing out. He is a legend when it comes to historical novels, and The Arcadian is just as good as you would expect it to be. I’ve got a link to that in the show notes for you to pick up your own copy right now. Okay, let’s set up our game for today. Now, if you’re new to the show, since Based on a True Story is all about separating fact from fiction in the movies, you’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction in this podcast episode with a game of two truths and a lie. So I’m about to give you three little facts that we’ll talk about in this episode. Two of those are true, and one of them is just an all-out lie. Are you ready? Okay, here they are. Number one, Stephen also served as the historical consultant throughout the film’s production. Number two, the storyline is based on the Bhagavad Gita. Number three, Morgan Freeman was an early casting idea for Bagger Vance. Got him? Okay, now as you’re listening to our story today, see if you can figure out which one of those is a lie. And if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see I’m holding up an envelope. This has the answer inside, so we’ll open that up at the end of the episode to see if you got it right. And now, it’s time to connect with Steven Pressfield about the 2000 movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance. As longtime fans of Based on a True Story know, I normally like to kick off each episode with a historical letter grade to get a sense for how well a movie adheres to history. But I’d like to change the letter grade a little bit today because today we’re talking about 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance. That movie was based on your historical novel of the same name from 1995. And I think we’ve all read a book and then we watched the movie adaptation and maybe that one location look different than you imagined, or maybe that character’s personality isn’t quite like you thought it would be when you read the book. And I’m sure you also had a picture in your mind while you were researching and writing the book years before it was ever turned into a movie. So if you were to give the movie a letter grade for how well it captured what you had in your mind

Steven Pressfield
04:30
while you were writing The Legend of Bagger Vance, what would it get? C plus. C plus. Yeah. Okay. That being said, Dan, let me say one thing. If you’re a writer and you write a book and it gets made into a book and you catch the check, you have no basis for complaint. We’re all very lucky to get anything made as a movie. So I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to answer your question as suitably as I can.

Dan LeFebvre
04:59
Well, let’s start digging into some of the different elements of the movie. First up, we have the characters. Will Smith plays the character, the title, Bagger Vance. And according to the movie, Vance seems to just appear one night. He caddies for Captain Ronalph Juna, who we will talk about in a moment. And then at the end of the movie, Vance disappears just as mysteriously as he appeared. Was the character of Bagger Vance based on anyone from history?

Steven Pressfield
05:28
The whole story, The Legend of Bagger Vance, is based on the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, which tells the story of the troubled warrior Arjuna, who received spiritual instruction from his charioteer, who is Krishna, i.e. God in human form. So I just kind of lifted that structure and made it instead of a troubled warrior, a troubled golf champion, And instead of his charioteer, it’s his caddy. So that’s the sort of historical background of that. So the actual Bagger Vance character in the movie was quite different from a Will Smith character. I mean, the Bagger Vance character in the book was quite different from Will Smith. That became sort of a casting decision. Like the original thought was someone like Morgan Freeman that was an older, wiser, you know, he’s played God in a couple of other books. But the way it turned out apparently was Morgan Freeman didn’t have enough box office horsepower according to the, you know, whatever that score they give you. And at that time, Will Smith was the number one box office star in the world, coming off of Bad Boys and a few other things. And I think Men in Black had come down. I’m not sure. Maybe not. In any event, it was a casting decision based on box office predictions. And it really was, in my view, fatal to the movie with this really wrong casting. and but in any event that’s that’s how that’s that’s that’s part of the store yeah no that’s

Dan LeFebvre
07:20
that’s fascinating and it tells that’s that’s a one reason why i ask about the kind of the ballpark to begin with because there’s decisions like that in the movie that you’re not going to have in the book and so there’s these differences and how much it can change the outcome of a movie just

Steven Pressfield
07:35
yeah through who plays the characters yeah based on things like budget and casting changes everything

Dan LeFebvre
07:40
Yeah. Well, speaking of Juna, that’s Matt Damon’s character in the movie. And in contrast to Bagger Vance, the movie shows a little bit more backstory for him. He’s a golfer turned World War I vet from Savannah, who then is tapped to play in this huge exhibition game as kind of the hometown hero by the Savannah residents. Was Juna based on any real World War I vets from Savannah? No, no. I mean,

Steven Pressfield
08:05
he was based on the great warrior Arjuna in the Bhagavad Bia. And the movie was quite faithful to the book in that opening setup. You know, that, yeah. I’m probably going to jump ahead. But speaking of based on a true story, there was two other contesters in the golf match or the movie were Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, who are true historical characters. Bobby Jones being one of the greatest, both of them being two of the greatest golfers ever. True to that era, that was their era. And they actually did play, the two of them, not Uta Juna. They played an exhibition match in that same period of time. Actually, a 72-hole match of two different places in Florida. And it was a big event at the time. And so I borrowed that from True Life. and it inserted the third character from Savannah. And that was how that whole concept of that match turned up.

Dan LeFebvre
09:13
Okay. Okay, so when you’re trying to integrate Juna from the Bhagavad Gita into this actual part of history, where did being a World War I vet and that element of that come into it? Was that something that was just because of the timeline?

Steven Pressfield
09:31
No, that’s a great question. And here’s the story. In the Bhagavad Gita, in the scripture, it takes place at an ancient battlefield. And the two armies are lined up across from each other, chariots and all that sort of thing. And the great warrior Arjunic was here in his chariot, witness charioteer Krishna. And he looks across to the other side of the battlefield, and he sees men that he knows, other warriors that he knows and that he respects. And he says to his charioteer, I don’t want to fight this battle. In fact, he says, drive my chariot out between the two armies and stop. And at that point, he lays down his wetness and he says, I’m not going to take part in this bat. So he’s kind of a warrior that’s sort of seeing too much of killing Vessere. So in the book, I’m going to be sure if this was in the movie, in the book, the day of the golf match, Juna, the Matt Damon character, says, drive my car out in between the two where the battle to, and he takes his golf clubs and he throws them down and he says, I’m not going to play in this match. this magical bogus you know exhibition it’s not true to spirit i’m not going to play it anymore and uh so that’s so i just basically lifted that from a bhagavad-vidha translated into that in the gita our krishna i.e god in human form starts to lecture arjuna the warrior and he says pick up your sword, pick up your bow, you’re going to get out there and fight. And he tells him this is his role as a warrior. And then from there, he gets into deeper spiritual concepts like karma, previous lives, past lives, duality, non-duality, yoga, all kinds of stuff. So I was hoping, that was my hope in the book that the caddy bagger vance would kind of give the troubled warrior uh a lesson in spirituality so that was what the uh one of my complaints for the bookie i know i’m not like i said not allowed to complain was the book really got into some uh spiritual concepts that the movie had to clap and i think they made they made a decision that it was i don’t know too wrong or maybe they thought that the audience wouldn’t follow them into those areas but i thought when i saw the movie oh boy they really missed you know a big element of the store so anyway i hope did they i know there’s a lot of times you know there’s historical consultants and they’ll

Dan LeFebvre
12:29
reach out to the author was that something that you tried to get across to them that was it sounds like an extremely pivotal part of the story for them to leave out i tried but it but it

Steven Pressfield
12:41
I mean, the way, as you know how the moody business works, once a director comes on board, in this case, by the redshirt, it becomes his movie. And he, like the first thing that happened was they fired me as any kind of a writer or screenwriter. And Redford brought a Jeremy Levin as a screenwriter, who was a really good writer, wrote Don Juan DeMarco movie with Johnny Depp and a lot of others. And he wrote the script really too, because it’s now Redford’s movie. So he’s going to decide what he’s going to cut and et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, so that became, you know, for reasons of the director’s choosing, which is his story, he’s been ashamed of it the way he wants it. And, you know, if you’re the original writer, you just have to accept that that’s the reality of the business. If I go tell you that very well, we’re talking about it. The producer of the movie was Jake Evers, who also produced The Mission, Driving Miss Daisy, Gandhi. I think he won at least three Best Picture Ostrichs before Beggarman. So really a wonderful guy. And before the movie started, he called me up and told me that I was being fired. Then Redford wanted to bring out an end. And I started laughing because I said, I said, Jake, this is the first time I’d ever get fired where anybody had the decency to actually tell me. Which usually, you get fired, and then you read about it in the trays. You know, we replaced, in fact, one time I got fired, and I bought a movie that was my original concept. I was in place by another writer who had the same agent. We had the same agent, and my agent didn’t tell me. I had to read about it in the trades. So I was very grateful to Jake as a great gentleman that he actually called me up and told me I was fired.

Dan LeFebvre
14:50
Wow. Yeah, I mean, you’re going to find out eventually. Might as well. Wow. And your own agent.

Steven Pressfield
14:55
Yeah, he was such a sweet guy. He felt so bad. Oh, I’m so sorry to tell you. I said, oh, don’t worry about it, Jake. I’m so grateful that you actually are telling me.

Dan LeFebvre
15:05
Well, speaking of World War I, I’m curious with the way the movie portrays this. It opens with June and World War I, and then it jumps to about a decade later, 1928. And we know from history, of course, World War I ended in 1918. And that kind of leaves this gap that they just don’t really explain much of in the movie. And I think this brings up a great point about audience expectations for particularly historical stories in movies compared to entirely fictional ones because when you have this kind of a gap, I think audiences will think, oh, this is just even more inaccurate as far as it’s portraying history because there’s this big gap between the earlier event and then this, and they start to fill in those details and usually with fictional things. How did you navigate this decision or was this a decision you made or was this strictly in the movie to skip this decade between Juna and

Steven Pressfield
16:00
World War I and then this big golf match? It’s another great question, Darren. In the book, we do talk, I do talk about that period. I describe that Julian went through many, had a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized, had alcohol problems, all the things like PTSD that veterans deal with along the way. And that during this period in the book, Dagger Rance appeared in his life and became a kind of a companion to it and was with him and got him kind of back into golf a little bit. And so that that period kind of was described in the book. But the filmmakers, I guess, for whatever reason, maybe for time, they was decided, you know, to eliminate that. It’s a great question because you do miss that period and you wonder what happened to the guy. So he was really like a modern-day vet that’s been struggling with drug diffuse or homelessness or anything like that. And then hopefully the golf match was what pulled him out of there, right? That long day of what he learned from Muscat.

Dan LeFebvre
17:14
Well, that will answer my next question then because the way that the movie portrays Bagger Vance showing up, Juna is already practicing, so he’s already kind of getting back into golf. He’s agreed to do this match, and he’s practicing at night. And Will Smith’s version of Bagger Vance just walks up and they start kind of working together. But it sounds like that might have been more of a movie decision of having him just kind of show up here where he’s already, or Juna is already interested in golf rather than in the book.

Steven Pressfield
17:41
Yeah, definitely movie decision. Yeah, not that way in the book.

Dan LeFebvre
17:46
Well, a central theme to the story in the movie is this concept of seeing the field with Bagger helping Juna break through his mental blocks to find what’s called his authentic swing. And there’s this powerful scene in the woods where the sounds of war come flooding back to Juna, and we see how deeply his trauma runs and how the game is kind of a form of therapy for him. During your research, did you come across any real stories of World War I vets using sports or physical activities to work through what we now call PTSD?

Steven Pressfield
18:21
I did not. I didn’t even try, really, because it seemed sort of a common experience, you know, that they would, you know, you find a way out of that nightmare through one medium or not sports or maybe art, something of that nature. No, that was total fiction.

Dan LeFebvre
18:43
Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And it is something that we see a lot of people turning to in the real world. So it’s entirely believable. Yeah.

Steven Pressfield
18:51
In the Bhagavad Gita, there’s a scene where the troubled warrior Arjuna asks his charioteer, who’s God, to show me who you really are. Show me yourself in all your dimensions. And Krishna does that. And he warns them, you know, he says, I’m going to give you to protect your vision and your hope. It’s going to blow your mind what I’m about to show you. So I’m going to protect them. And then there’s a scene where he kind of shows this kind of cosmic destroyer of worlds, destroyer and recreator of universes. You know, just and that obviously they put in the boot. But sort of that was one of the scenes in the Vita that really brings Arjuna back to reverence and to devotion and to respect for the greater forces in them. So they couldn’t really do that in the movie. So that World War I scene was sort of a substitute for you. I thought it worked pretty good, actually. But like you say, because it didn’t have that 10-year period in there, it kind of came a little bit out of Noah.

Dan LeFebvre
20:09
Yeah, yeah. And again, I think it might go back to that 10-year period. But in the movie’s version of events, we see Bagger Vance teaching Juna about finding his authentic swing. And then there are times in the movie where Will Smith’s version of Bagger Vance doesn’t really seem to know which golf club to use and but he’s supposed to be this caddy helping him and was he it just made me wonder like was he supposed to be this genuine golf expert meant to be more of a spiritual guide but it sounds like a lot of that would be answered if they had that

Steven Pressfield
20:40
10-year period yeah yeah i mean i hope the the concept where he and both would be an abut i think was that he was an all-knowing you know uh personage whatever avatar who knew golf like he baseball or anything else. I don’t know if it came off exactly that way. I mean, what they tried to do, which I thought was really nice in Moody at the end, was after Jack Lemmon, as the older Hardy Greaves, the older boy, has a fifth heart attack or something at Pebble Beach or wherever it was supposed to be, then Bagger Vance, Will Smith, and he reappears as this sort of mysterious, So he now becomes an angel or something of that nature. He certainly becomes a divine personage of some time to kind of welcome the Jack Lemmon fan for the young more to heaven, which I felt was actually a very nice way of doing.

Dan LeFebvre
21:41
Yeah, yeah, I liked that. And it was interesting too because speaking of time, he hasn’t aged at the end. Yeah. version he has an age which adds another element of there’s something supernatural here yeah yeah well you talked about it a little bit earlier but as the match gets underway in the film we see these massive diverse crowds gathering to watch this game based on the research that you did for the book i’m guessing you had a picture of what this real event between bobby jones and walter Hagen hat or would have looked like. Do you think the movie did a good job capturing the image that you had in your head when you were writing the book?

Steven Pressfield
22:21
I do. I think they really did well enough. You know, it’s there’s never really been a great golf movie other than Caddyshack, which was like I played it for a farce. But it’s because there really are no actors that could really swing a golf club in a believable way. You know, if you watch Rory McIlroy playing in the Masters or any, or Tiger Woods or anybody like that, you immediately get that they’re fantastic athletes. And, you know, this swing is a work of art and everything. But how many actors, Matt Damon had never even played Bob when he was cast. And so that, so it’s very hard in movies to recreate golf. I mean, I think movies do a great job recreating boxing. And we think about Rocky or Raging Bull or any of those great boxing movies. You believe it when you see them fighting, you know, in the ring. And they do a great job with horse racing. Think about Secretariat or other things like that. Or baseball. If you think about the natural or so on, great baseball movies where actors are quite believable. You know, hitting home runs and stuff. I mean, he was super believable about that. But golf, you know, they’re never, it’s like as soon as the actor picks up a club, if you’re a real golfer, you look at that and you go, oh, you know, this is pretty bullies, you know, which is a shame. But that’s sort of the nature of the reality that there aren’t any people that can swing and make it look believable at that level.

Dan LeFebvre
24:02
Well, that makes me wonder, you know, when you obviously decided to turn it, you know, have it be golf instead of one of these other sports. So when they just started to talk to you about turning it into a movie and you’re thinking, were you thinking there’s really no good golf movies? How is this going to turn into a good movie?

Steven Pressfield
24:21
Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t really, when I was writing the book, I wasn’t thinking about movies at all. You know, it’s been a happy surprise that it came about. I’m thinking also, I’m thinking about the movie Slap Shop that was about Pofke. That was another that really made it believable, at least to me. I go, wow, these are just like real occupiers. Even seeing Paul Newman skating back and forth, I think, wow, that guy’s really good. Or Downhill Racer, think about Redford again and his steering. That was very big.

Dan LeFebvre
24:52
Well, one of the most memorable choices in the film for me is how Beggar Vance just disappears as mysteriously as he arrives. He doesn’t even wait for the final hole in the big match. What was the thought process behind having him leave before the match concludes? Or I guess, as I should probably add to every question, was that strictly for the movie?

Steven Pressfield
25:17
No, that was in the book. And the whole point of it was, and I forgot how the boobie treated this, actually, to tell you the truth. But in the book, the little boy, he’s telling a story, Artie, is rucking along with Bagger Vance and Juna. And what happens, I think they did this, and I’m sure they did this in the booty, was Bagger Vance turns over the bag to the little boy. He says, you take the man in in the last couple of holes. You be, you know, be, you be a scat. And that, I’m not sure why I did that, but it may be a total sense that it was really now up to the character of Juna to enact on his own what Bagger Vance had been trying to teach him. So, so Bagger Vance were sort of saying, okay, you’re, you know, get on the horse here and ride it in. And also, I think it was a gift to the young board, at least in the board. It changed his life, too, that he acted as a bandit. That actually came from real life. There was the famous—it actually did a movie about this, the Francis Wienert story. Are you familiar with this at all? Anyway, this was like the 1908 U.S. Open. I think that was the year. Maybe it was 1980. and it was the first time an American golfer actually won the U.S. Open. It was a guy, a young caddy named Francis Wienet as a golfer. And he and his caddy was a 10-year-old boy named Eddie Lowry who caddy-fled the whole way. And so I thought, I’m going to steal that too. And so that was how the little boy came.

Dan LeFebvre
27:08
Well, speaking of the real golfers that we talked about with Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, I’m curious, what made you decide to go with that exhibition match between Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, and Savannah in that era? What was your thought process for that decision?

Steven Pressfield
27:24
Oh, that’s another really good question. As I was thinking about when, just what near set this story, and I sort of was flashing back and I thought, should we go back to like Jack Nicklaus, Autumn Palmer era? And I thought, because supernatural things were going to happen in the short, we were going to have to believe, you know, holes in one and blah, blah, and all kinds of things like that. I thought time period has to be distant enough from the present and kind of romantic enough that we can believe that, you know, superhuman things could happen, but not so far in the past that it’s completely unrecognized. So I thought, should we go back to the Ben Hogan, Sam Snead era? No, that’s still too post-present. But I thought 1920s, the era of the jazz age, of Scott Fitzgerald, of Jack Dempsey, and Charles Lindbergh flying the Atlantic, you know, when there were many heroic things happening. And, of course, Bobby Jones and Maupo Aiden were towering figures who transcended their sport, even in that era. You know, when Bobby Jones won a couple of days at a ticker-tickery down Godway in New York for a long time. So I thought, that’s far enough into the past that we can believe that crazy things could happen. But yet it’s still recognizable as golf. It’s still dramatic. And also I love the clothes that they had, those plus fours, the knickers, you know, and the great shoes they had. And they’ve all been played wearing neckties. I thought, oh, this is going to be, you know, it’ll really look great, you know. So that was why I deliberately chose that here.

Dan LeFebvre
29:09
So it sounds like you chose that it was going to be centered around golf and then sent the era around that instead of the other way around. Because in my mind, I would have thought it would have been, oh, I’m going to pick this era and then, okay, what was happening in this era? But I guess I tend to think of things from a historical perspective first. Why I’m not a storyteller.

Steven Pressfield
29:27
No, that’s exactly, but that’s exactly right. It was golf first meant to be right.

Dan LeFebvre
29:32
Was there a particular reason why you chose golf instead of one of those other sports?

Steven Pressfield
29:36
Yeah, because I was stealing from the Bhagavad Gita, and the gist of the story was a troubled champion getting instruction from his servant, From his charioteer, right? Which I think is like, and Jesus came to earth. He came as a man of sorrows, you know? And so I thought that Caddy is a perfect person. That is a servant, but is really God, is really bringing great vision to the champion that he serves. So that was why I was back.

Dan LeFebvre
30:13
Well, I’m curious, for those of us who watch the movie, we’re going to watch it with different eyes than you will, of course. So when you first watched that movie, was there anything that you thought that might surprise someone like me who just watches it but doesn’t have the background that you do writing the book?

Steven Pressfield
30:35
I do think they captured the era pretty well, you know, as good as I could poker. Like the era of Savannah, that it was in depression, that people were, you know, up against it, and his father lost his job, et cetera, et cetera. And then at the same time, the sort of glamour of the super rich who were untouched by the Depression, how they were still, you know, doing their thing, the big dance that they had with Charlize Theron and stuff like that. So I think they did a really good job with that. Yeah. One thing that was interpreted just as a sidebar was it was shot at Tiawa Island, South Carolina, which is a real place, a real fancy resort, seaside, exactly like, you know, the story. But it was shot in the winter. And so when, but it was winter or summer. And so as they would, like when they had spectators gathered around at Greed between the shops, they were all huddled up in lunar coats. And then when the canvas started to roll, it was like, okay, we’ll take off your coats, you know. And then they pretended that it was hot and, you know, a summertime event. So that was kind of interesting.

Dan LeFebvre
31:52
Well, it sounds like when you were on set, do you have a favorite story from being on set with the characters?

Steven Pressfield
32:01
But after, like I say, I was fired for day one, and nobody would ask my opinion. But they did give me like one day that I could visit the location, you know. And it was like, well, here’s a cup of coffee. There’s the band taking you back to the airport. But so, you know, it was just kind of a fly in, fly out type of thing of courtesy to the original writer, which I appreciate.

Dan LeFebvre
32:28
Well, we have talked a lot about your first historical novel with The Legend of Bagger Vance back in 1995. And you have The Arcadian, brand new book. This is a 30-year journey in historical fiction. I know a lot of my audience are actually historical fiction authors. So before I let you go, can you share one or two tips for how authors can better use history in their novels?

Steven Pressfield
32:54
Ah, I mean, to me, okay, I’ll tell you a minute. One thing I did want to say just before that offending was that meeting the characters, the actors in Dagger Vance, Matt Damon was a terrific guy. Well, not stuck on himself. Wonderful. Friendly. Great. See ya. I have a friend, Brandy Wallace, who wrote Braveheart. So that was a very much a historical piece, right? where he had to really do research and find out exactly what Scotland was like and what he and Wallace says. And I asked him one time, I said, you know, really, how do you do your research? And he said, I do it last. He said, the most important thing, he says, is the story. He says, get the story. Obviously, you have to know a little bit about the story. But he says, get the story right that you want to tell. What’s the climax? You know, what’s middle of act two? What’s the setup? And then go back and make sure that the research judges that as much as you can. But he was definitely a believer, and I agree that we’re not trying to tell the true historical story. We’re trying to tell, like, if you and I are going to write a story about the Knights of the Rante, we would sit down and we’d ask ourselves, what is this about? Is it a love story with Guinevere and Lancelot? And is it a story of two brothers, let’s say King Arthur and Lancelot, who clash over there? Or is it a story about the concept of the round table of warriors that expand up for the vulnerable and the oppressed? Is that what, first you figure out what story we want to touch. And then when we know that, then, okay, let’s go back and read all of the material. Of course, we’ll be reading it all along with Ehiar. And then see how can we make it work with this story. But I’m certainly a believer like that. I think that we can, was it the, a man shot Liberty Valance where there was a lot.

Dan LeFebvre
35:00
Oh yeah, classic John Wayne. Yeah.

Steven Pressfield
35:02
Oh yeah. The choice between the fact and the legend, print the legend, right? Yeah. I’m a believer in that. But it’s a choice between true historical reality and the story you want to tell. Your job is to tell a story. Because other people may write about the same historical event. And if you know the 50 books, let them do their version of it. Like, you do the one that’s coming from your heart, what you want to do. But one thing I will say about research, we’re talking to writers here, is to me the real point of research is to sell the story to the reader by putting enough true details in it that the reader says, oh, wow, this is really, this is the real deal, right? If we go back, we’re doing something about Knights of the Round Table, and the reality is that the stirrup had only been invented a few decades ago, so for the first time, a man in heavy armor could ride on the back of a horse. We’ve got to put that in there somewhere, you know? And when the reader or the moviegoer sees that, they go, oh, wow, that’s really believable, you know? So then when we have a dragon or something appear, hopefully which obviously is not true hopefully the reader will buy into it no so research to me was a way of of we’re going to ask the audience or the reader to believe something crazy right any any story is like that right we’re always going after the week’s summer that there is such a thing as previous lives or there’s such a thing as dragons or whatever so the research to is is is a way of layering detail on detail on detail that are true. So the audience or believer goes, oh, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it. And then when we have a dragon, they go, oh, I believe that too because everything else was true. So that’s the way I looked at music.

Dan LeFebvre
37:08
I love that. And it makes a lot of sense picking golf first and then picking the historical time period. But I’m curious, have you ever come across a time where you’re doing the research and you find something out that kind of, if you put it in there, it’s going to maybe ruin the story or force you to go back and change a bunch of the story based on what you did in the research?

Steven Pressfield
37:32
Yes. And then until you’re so full, I ignore that.

Dan LeFebvre
37:37
That’s a creative decision to keep it.

Steven Pressfield
37:40
No. I actually have two books. The one you held up, The Arcadia, that’s coming out at the end of May. and another book that has the same character. And the time periods cross in the sense that if one is true, the other could not be true. So I ignore that. And I’m hoping that nobody notices it. There’ll always be one guy that does have a scene. I’ll get one email saying, hey, wait a minute. Like, it never happened, you know. And I go, oh, you caught me.

Dan LeFebvre
38:17
Well, if they see this, then you’ll know that it was a creative decision to tell the story.

Steven Pressfield
38:24
Like I remember there was something that Alfred Hitchcock said. A lot of his movies turn on a detail that’s a little dubious, you know. And he says, if the moviegoer gets home and while they’re opening the refrigerator and getting a snack, a midnight snack, they say to themselves, wait a minute. How could Jane Stewart really see across if so? He says, that’s okay. as long as while they’re in the movie and they’re under the spell of the movie, they don’t get that, you know? So I’m a believer in that too.

Dan LeFebvre
38:57
And in some cases, I mean, that can be beneficial because you’d be like, wait a minute, could that, and you go back and watch it again and be like, oh, wait, oh, I was right about that. And then it sparks this conversation that.

Steven Pressfield
39:08
Yeah, at least they’re thinking about it enough to find out something wrong, yeah.

Dan LeFebvre
39:12
Well, speaking of the characters in your new book, arcadian as you mentioned the main character there i might mispronounce it but tell him on all right tell him who would you cast as tell him on if this turned into a movie

Steven Pressfield
39:28
who would i cast yeah uh well actually if you look at the cover one of the things when they were asking me the publisher was asking me how to give i said make him look like vigo mortensen make him look like arablon and you know that the two cowards 11 you know that it’s And so that’s kind of, or, you know, he’s a kind of a warrior that’s been through a lot of the war. So he should have a lot of age and experience, a lot of mileage on him, but without being too old. So that’s why I love that Alagorn guy. I thought he looked great.

Dan LeFebvre
40:07
I love that. And that goes back to, I talked with John Garth about J.R. Tolkien. And with Lord of the Rings, he’s got his Samwise Gamgee, his caddy, as it were. Almost that same sort of story of a companion that helps him through these difficult times. Great stories, great stories. Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah. Well, thank you again so much for your time, Stephen. before I let you go one last time, The Arcadian, where can people find their own copy?

Steven Pressfield
40:41
That would be on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere. Or check out my website, which is just my name, Steven Bresby of Batman.

Dan LeFebvre
40:50
And I’ll make sure to add a link to all those in the show notes. Thanks again so much for your time, Steven.

Steven Pressfield
40:54
Thanks a lot, Gabe, for your deep thinking about this subject and watching. But one thing I would say to everybody, if they’re at all interested in the Bagler Dents, read the book. You know, I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie or you would be watching the show. Read the book. It’s a really interesting way to see what the story is told one way and then what they had to cut to make it a movie.

Dan LeFebvre
41:19
I love that. I’ll add a link to that in the show notes as well so people can pick up a copy of that book too. Wow. Thank you again, Stephen.

Steven Pressfield
41:26
All right. Thanks, Dan.

Dan LeFebvre
41:37
this episode of based on a true story was produced by me dan lefebvre as steven mentioned if you enjoyed the movie you really should read the book even if it’s just to learn about that 10-year gap that the movie cut out of the story i’ve got a link in the show notes to the legend of bagger vance the novel and while you’re in there why not get a copy of steven’s latest novel too The Arcadian is about a mercenary in 1500s medieval Spain, and it’s just packed with the masterful blend of historical fiction that only Steven Pressfield can deliver. As always, I’ve got all those links in the show notes, as well as on the shows home on the web over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com slash 385. Okay, now it’s time for the answer to our two truths and a lie game from the beginning of the episode. And as a quick refresher, here are the two truths and one lie again. Number one. Stephen also served as the historical consultant throughout the film’s production. Number two, the storyline is based on the Bhagavad Gita. Number three, Morgan Freeman was an early casting idea for Bagger Vance. Did you figure out which one is a lie? Got the answer here. Let’s open that up. And the lie is number one. As Stephen mentioned, he was fired on day one. So even though the movie was based on Stephen’s book, he didn’t have a lot of input on how the movie’s version of his book story was told. It’s a great reminder of how it’s always a good idea to read the book. And speaking of which, I’ve got a link to both The Legend of Bagger Vance as well as Stephen’s new book, The Arcadian, in the show notes for this episode. So go pick up your copies right now. As always, thank you for your continued support listening to and sharing this episode of Based on a True Story with someone that you think would enjoy it. If you are watching the video version of this, stick around for the credits. If you can find out my cat’s name and email it to me, I’ll send you a sticker. Thanks again for watching, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Dan LeFebvre  03:18

Before we dig into some of the details of the movie, one thing I like to do is to take a step back and look at the movie from an overall perspective. So if you were to give Disney’s Miracle a letter grade for how accurately it captured the essence of the true story, what would it get?

Lou Vairo  03:34

1. When I saw it, and I waited until a few weeks ago to even see the movie. I never wanted to watch it because as I lived it. But I remember Patti Brooks, Herb’s wife, telling me it was excellent portrayal. And several of the players really liked the movie. And people that were there and I worked with their all saw it, and they thought it was very accurate and and where it was. I had to agree with them all now.

Dan LeFebvre  04:04

At the very beginning of the movie, it sets up the story. We see Kurt Russell’s version of Herb Brooks being chosen to coach Team USA in the 1980 Olympics. What really stood out to me about this in the movie was the timeline, because we see coach Brooks getting the job about eight months before the Olympics are to start, and it doesn’t really seem like a lot of time to recruit players. Recruit players, build a team expected to compete on an international level. So as I was watching that part of the movie, on one hand, we know movies tend to build extra drama and tension a lot of times, and on the other hand, it’s not like the Olympics really sneak up on anyone less than, you know, eight months or a year beforehand. So I couldn’t help but think that maybe this was an example of the movie trying to build up drama by making it seem like the 1980s US Olympic team was just assembled in eight months. How accurate is the movie’s portrayal of building the US hockey team just eight months before the 1980 Olympics started?

Lou Vairo  04:57

It was, it was accurate. You know, we haven’t we. They call the National Sports Festival, which the Olympic committee put together. So we brought in 80 players in July of 79 Colorado Springs, and we had four teams. And we’re able to, of course, it’s summer time, but we were able to fairly evaluate the players. And also an interesting thing was that it’s not like it was years ago when guys weren’t in any kind of shape in the summer. Kids today skate year round. They go to gyms. They go to different programs. So, you know, they’re pretty well committed to hockey by the age of 1718, they finally figured that’s the sport they want to concentrate on. So they’re year round, in pretty good shape. It was a great sports festival. It was at the Air Force Academy, with which is fantastic, and it was very helpful in the election process. Plus curd was a very active coach, and coached in the WCA, the Minnesota golfers. They were national champions, and he knows all the players. He knew most of the players from the different teams, so it was okay. Worked out, okay, the timeframe,

Dan LeFebvre  06:29

okay, yeah, we see that some in the movie. We see them in Colorado Springs, a little bit before the Olympics, a few months before, and now you were involved in scouting for the team, which we don’t really see a lot in the movie. According to the movie, it almost seems like Coach Brooks was the one to decide who made it onto the team. So as I was watching that, I again got the impression that the movie was maybe oversimplifying the process. Can you fill in some more context around your involvement in helping the 80 Olympic team come together?

Lou Vairo  06:57

Yes, her did make all the final decisions which he should make, but he has to answer it. If it’s a failure or a success, you’ve got that answers. He was very he wanted a skating team. He knew the ice surface would be larger. He wanted a good skating, technically sound hockey team. My role didn’t well. I got involved. I was friends with her because I coached junior hockey in Minnesota and brought a different style of hockey to the what’s now the USHL, and it was called the Midwest Junior League, and we were national champions, and we had a lot of college coaches, followers, the players watch us play, including her. So I got to know all these guys, and he got to know me, and he liked what we did at that time in Austin, Minnesota. He really liked it. And he come to practice sessions. He’d invite my team up on Monday nights. We’d go sometimes during the season, play against this JV Williams Arena in Minnesota on the, you know, on the college ground. And so I got to know him real well. He got to know me. I never heard of the guy, and he’d never heard of me. Why? Why would he before I came to Minnesota, and I only came here because of an old player where mine recommended me for the job, and lo and behold, they gave it to me. I didn’t like pursue. It was all accidental, really. But anyway, but her would expose and consult with his people. Great Thatcher. Greg was a great assistant coach, great communicator, perfect go between for herb and the players. Herb was a disciplinarian, demanding and tough, but fair and honest. Good, good coach, excellent coach, and my role came about. I was coaching the under 20 junior national team in 79 and December 79 our games were in Sweden. Both think they were in Sweden. Was it 79 or 80? I can’t even remember, but on the way overseas, Herb asked me if I would stop in Lake Placid. There was a four nation tournament, the beat teams, national beat Team of Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia was one country then, and Sweden. And my boss said that’d be fine, do it. So I did it. And I was in Lake Placid. First period. I was watching between seed Sweden and the USA. And Sweden was doing something that seemed to dis in their own end coming out that was disruptive to our players, and unusual they were sending a week. Side, Winger out high when we had the puck in their own end, and it caused the defenseman on that side to go back, and he cut across the ice, and the entity got nervous, he went back. And what Sweden did was they created a man of damage in their own end, four against three. And they always had an open man. They took theirs to and walk out of the zone. Killed off for check. And I noticed that, and I mentioned that to Bob Fleming, who was chairman of the Olympic team. He’s basically the guy that selected bird to coach it. And Bob was sitting a couple of seats away from me, and I was writing that down on a brief diagram I had with me. And he said, What do you write? Then I explained it, and he said, Can I have that? I said, Yeah, they’ll get me period entity and her came out from the dressing room where the benches were, and he said, Lou, come on down a minute. So I did. We said, explain to me what he saw. And I told him. He said, Okay, good, very good. And they made an adjustment. I suggested something. He liked a suggestion. Usually they knew it anyway, and it’s just reaffirmed. In fact, when you’re sitting above and looking down, you see a lot, not sometimes all the time, you can see more than the coach on the bench out of you making line changes. You’re walking back and forth. You can’t always be the entire surface of the rink, but as a eye in the sky, you can it’s a very good way to scout. So based on that, from that, he kept in touch with me during the season, when they would play exhibition games, I’d get called every once in a while at home, and he would ask me if I been following the team? I said yes. And then when I got back from the World Junior he asked me if anybody, have I seen, anybody that I thought could help the team? And I told him, yeah, I there’s a few players. I gave you some names, but he had made a commitment when they picked the 26 players in Colorado Springs, that he would honor it, that the team of 20 would come from that, and the players held them accountable. He wanted to make change, and I supported him on that. But the players, led by ruzione, did the right thing, and they said, No, that’s not the deal we put up with you for six months. We’re gonna you know we can win a medal. We can win the gold medal. Leave us alone. Just leave us together. He called me, told me, the next thing that happened in a meeting, I believe in Dallas, who were playing the Dallas team in the Central Hockey League doesn’t exist anymore, the central League for the Goodland. And anyway, I said, Well, that’s perfect. He hadn’t to be right. He says, Yeah, I know they are. And I said, not only are they right, They’ve now taken responsibility and accountability for their upcoming performance. That’s that’s great, and, and we, he honored that, and it was great, and it did work. So anyway, from all of those interactions, he said, would you, are you coming to the Olympics? I said, I am. I’m going to help. You know, I’m, I’m going to help with all the, all the things that have to be done at the Olympics. I’m going to be coming as an employee of USA Hockey. There were only four of us at time, and we were all there. So he came up with the idea, what if you sit upstairs and and we use a walkie talkie from the band to the bench to Craig, Patrick, and anything you say to Greg, and he can relate to me, and also you. I’m going to want you to come down after each period and meet with you every morning in the dressing room and go over the different teams and who the next team is we play, etc. And he said, our first game is against Sweden. So I thought about that. When he said that, I went to my boss, Hal Trumbull. I said, How have you selected a team host of Sweden when they come over before the Olympic games start, and they travel and play exhibition games. He said, No, not yet, but I’m working on that right now. Why did I told him? I said, I should be the team host. I can meet them at the airport, take them to the different venues, and watch all their practices. Gaines who get a guilt for the team. I know the coach, Tommy sandling, very well, and I loaded Peter, pokie Lindstrom, and Hal said, Very good. That’s excellent, a good idea. And I called her and told him. He said, perfect, do it. And I think that’s what I did. So there’s a great team, the Swedish team. I was with them for three weeks. I never saw them miss a pass, not in practical games. They were unbelievable. They might have been the most skilled, ethnically skilled team, better than anybody in all the basic fundamental, skating, passing, receiving, combination play. They were good. And they had great young players. They had deli Lindberg and gold. They had Max Maslin, they had Thomas Erickson, Thomas Johnson, many others. I mean, that was a that was a great team, and I think they won the brunsmetal, but we had to be pretty damn good. So anyway, that’s how that all came about, and it worked. You know, I don’t know how much I contributed, but I did my best. I think I did more to contribute. It helped me. I mean, these are good hockey men, Herb and Greg, Patrick. They know what this thing is, because it does help when you have another set of eyes. It just gives you more confidence into what you think you’re seeing. But the big thing is, you know about it.

Lou Vairo  16:33

We had every area covered. He didn’t know if it was legal or not, and Bob Fleming had gotten permission from some of those, some agency, I don’t know what they call it, that’s AA or something, that we could do that, but I don’t know if we had permission, or we even asked the International Ice Hockey Federation or Olympic Committee if you’re allowed to do it or not. Just did it. And so I think it was we just wanted to keep that quiet. I guess. I don’t know for sure. I don’t see anything legal or wrong with it, but who knows, and that’s really why. And then, besides that, it wasn’t me, it was that great team and in the in the coaching staff, and I feel bad sometimes that the goalie coach, Juarez strelo, never gets mentioned. He was outstanding, just outstanding with Jimmy Craig and janicek, and he was one of the great goalie coaches I’ve ever met anywhere in the world. And a good guy, funny guy, terrific man, and hen appreciated him, but to have, excuse me, worm was more in the background. But that’s how that went down. That’s how that all happened. And it was good, because after the first period, I came downstairs. I sat in a little box upstairs. Mondale came the Vice President to some games, and I walked into my box, and there was the Vice President, Mondale and Secret Service agents, and there was guys with guards rifles laying on the beams above us in this in case, in the Spania. Can you imagine that? And here I am sitting there with a walkie talkie watching the game. He was weird, and he was a real nice guy, the Vice President, very nice man. He I introduced myself. He asked me what I was doing. I told him, he introduced I knew who he was, introduced himself and all that it was. He was a pleasant guy, and from Minnesota, of course, he was a big arty fan, and that’s how that went down. I had one of the best views of that whole Olympics, and I will tell you this behind the scenes Stoke, I felt my best contribution was just being heard spread was after the first period of the Swedish game. One, one he was tasting downstairs. There was a outside the dressing room. There was a exit, and nobody kind of staircase, nobody used. And it was big glass windows overlooking the speed skating oval. And I would meet him in that little area. They had just the two of us. Nobody’s bothering us. Nobody can hear us. He’d lean back against the wall. He had his pencil and pad, and they take lift one foot and put it against the wall and stand there. And I’d stand in front. He would ask me, what’d you say? What do you think? Like that? But he was pacing this guy, and I he was very nervous. I said, What’s the matter? Oh, that Efraim Johansson meeting Tenny was his GM. They didn’t get along. Kenny was a great guy, and he loved her and but they were both alpha guys, and they would, they argue with each other about everything, and he said that schedule, we’re finished. We can’t play with this team. We’re exhausted. I say Easy. Easy. Calm down. You play in the best skating team in the tournament, the best technical team in the tournament. These guys are good. I told you, I spent three weeks with them. They’re good, but they’re beatable. We skating with them in the spirit. Well, we just got to go up a notch, and we’re well prepared. We’re playing good. We’re playing really well. He said, You think so? I said, Yes. And I said, Look her, let me be very blunt with you. I’m glad I did this, by the way. I said we got a chance to win a medal. I wasn’t sure coming in, I’m not talking gold medal. I’m just saying we get a chance to win a medal. We, we need to win this game. We this game is winnable, right, pal, and you’ve done a great job with this team. These kids are good, but we have a young team, and the Swedish team is far more seasoned that a lot of these guys are playing a lot of World Champions ships and international events, but you’ve done a great job. You’re a great coach. And stop worrying about Kenny, and he’s my friend. Remember that? So be careful what you say. Stop worrying about you’re a great coach, and you’ve done a great job. You can’t do more than you’ve done. Just believe in the team. They believe in you. I believe in you. And he looked at me like, stop general and let us forget look. And he said, You really mean it? I said, 100% now let’s go get them. And luckily we we got some breaks in the last minute. The Swedes could have easily created off the boards and out. We lose that game, but we end up with a great goal by Baker and Todd, which was a key guy and all that. And we did the tie. And after that, it was fantastic, the confidence level. And, you know, at the beginning, there were that many spectators. There wasn’t even a full house in a search game. You know, people didn’t believe in us, and a lot of the spectators were from foreign countries, like I was, I knew the Soviet team was in trouble, because I was downstairs right by the dressing room every day, and I could see the goings and comings, and I knew their Guys. Boris mojaro, the president of the Federation of your zoomed out blood. Second coach brought a new museum out. I knew all these guy, laundry, store, voice, tough, the General Secretary and I just either were nervous, because whenever that bus would pull in a practice or games, if the 500 people shouting, waving flags of humbling Czechoslovakia, Poland, Eastern European countries, Russians would be the Soviets, and they’d be shouting at the players as they got off, terrible words in some Russian language. They all studied Russian in school, and the Russians were not comfortable. They were never comfortable. They felt not bad, but very nervous. But why are these Americans treating us this way? Plus of us understand, I guess, and all that. It wasn’t good. It was for them. They were not a they were not a confident bunch that they normally are. I could see it, and that’s never been recorded, but that’s the truth. And there were a lot of the fans came to cheer against them, not cheer for anybody in particular. But then, when our thieves started winning, they were cheering for us, of course. And even if you walk down Main Street in lane classic, I saw Soul Man, I can tell by the way they dress their faces that I hear their language. I know where they were from, and that was a big thing in that tournament, and it affected the Soviet team, for sure. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  24:50

I want to ask about the Soviet team, because in the movie, it seems like everything’s from the perspective of Team USA, but we see bits and pieces here. There to learn that the Soviets have been dominant for like, 15 years. I think there’s even a bit of dialog in there that talks about how some of the players on the Soviet team even played together in 15 years. And that just seems like such a stark contrast to the way the movie sets up Team USA, where, you know, they pretty much just started playing together for the past few months. And they’re not professionals at all that come from colleges and such, and so it just seems like there’s this huge contrast that the movie is setting up between the Soviet team and the US team. Is that pretty accurate?

Lou Vairo  25:32

Yeah, my feeling is this, and I I’ve been a student of their hockey there. My main mentor teacher. Was a great Soviet coach. Anatoly Tarasov, great friend of mine that’s still very close to his entire family that’s left, and so I knew their hockey inside and out. In my lifetime, I’ve been to starting with the Soviet Union now Russia 25 times, and I deal every day, basically, even now, with Russian Russian guys, coaches, players. I talked to some of my best friends. I just wrote a book, and I didn’t write it to author. Wrote it, but I gave him the information and dedicating the book to my friend Yuri kamanos, who died a couple of years ago. He was great friend of mine. He played for the Central Army team and played the terrorist out and played with some of those guys. But anyway, it was a great team. It might have been the strongest Soviet team ever put together, you can make that argument, but they weren’t comfortable. That’s what I noticed. They just weren’t comfortable. And that can have an effect on human nature. You know, at our gene, one of the things I don’t like, the main miracle. I don’t like it at all. It was a great, cocky team. Those players were outstanding. They were in great shape, as good a shape as any of the Soviets who were in great shape and and we had two coaches, three with with the goalie coach, stralo, they’re as good as anybody in the world coaching hockey. They were terrific coaches, and our players were wonderful. If you look at the history of hockey in America, the sentiment, are you kidding me? Mark Johnson, he is a great hockey player. Mark paddlewood was a great hockey player. Neil Broughton called me my favorite old time player, great hockey player. Then you had Wells who had a specific job and heard used him perfectly as a defensive spinnerman. He was terrific guy. And then moving Dave Christian back to defense a month before the Olympic Games, was brilliant, and I credit Gordon Jimmy Christensen. There was a nickname he suggested to her to put David back on defense. He said, he said he’s a he’s a son of man. He said he’s anything. He’s a winger, defenseman. He can even play golf. Just trust him, put him on defense. He’ll get the bug out of his own. He can work it because he can stay Yeah, it ran Baker o’ Callahan and soder and Morrill. This was a wonderful team, and Jim Craig was an outstanding goalie, and he probably played the best 20 days or 18 days, whatever the tournament took of his life. I don’t think he ever played better before or since, and it’s a shame that either the outstanding goalie, but he really rose to the occasion. So it wasn’t a miracle to me. It was doable, but I had to play him 10 times. They probably win six, seven of the games the Soviets, but our team that day against them was great, and that’s all we had to beat. Break that one day against them. You only plays them once,

Dan LeFebvre  29:33

yeah. Well, I want to ask about that too, because in the movie we see before the Olympics, like I think it’s three days in the movie, we see the Soviet team playing Team USA as kind of a warm up game between them. So it doesn’t really count, but according to the movie, the Soviet Union comes away with a like a 10, three blowout victory against Team USA, and it really starts to add to the tension and drama in the movie. At least of you know, are we doing the right. And kind of questioning everything up to that point. Can you share what the atmosphere was like around Team USA when they lost that

Lou Vairo  30:07

that night or that game in Madison Square Garden? I was doubting advanced scouting, and I had gone to Montreal. I drove up to Montreal, and I watched two games up there, Czechoslovakia, because that was our second game after Sweden. The checks played. I can’t remember who, maybe Canada. I’m not sure. Then there was another game I watched. So I had gotten all my notes done, and there were no cell phones in those days, and I was driving back to Lake Placid from from Montreal. It’s only an hour’s drive, and that’s where I was going to check in at Lake Placid and be there for the Olympic Games. But I had no way of knowing what we did in New York against the Soviets in the exhibition game, and the next day, I was able to reach herb in New York. And then talk to him in his hotel, and he said it was, it was something Luke. I said, What was the score? And he told me, I think it was 10th grade. I said, Oh, how did we look to me? Did we do anything? Right? He said, Yes. He said, first of all, we were the kids were overwhelmed. I knew we were in trouble, because when the public announcer was introducing the Soviet players, our guys were banging their spit for them on the ice, applauding each player as they got introduced. These have got these are well known players. You know that our kids know of, and they were starstruck. Some intimidation there, yeah, yeah. But he said the thing that I liked was we could have played another game after that, our conditioning has really been good. These kids have worked their ass off for me, and they’re in they were in great shape, but I wasn’t too worried. I at least I knew we could stay with them. And I think the whole thing was overwhelming, you know, just overwhelmed us. The young kid Madison Square Garden, packed house, chanting, applause. You know. So he says, I think if we, when we play him again, we’ll be better. And then we were, and it was, it was interesting, you know, was fun to watch all these teams, but I told them, I had told them. I said, not the Soviet team is jittery. Hey, we, if we can ever get ahead of them, we can really cause them problems. Just they’ll, they’ll argue with each other. They fight with each other. You know, the people say, Oh, they’re so disciplined than that, but they’re human beings, and they argue with bicker, will blame each other and stuff. That’s no different than any other country, but you never see that, because they’re never behind. They’re always weak, you know? They’re always comfortable. And when they told tradyak, I think that was a horrible decision, and he could out blame gizmo for it, your Zopa won’t talk about it. I know him very well. He won’t. He won’t, even to this day, he doesn’t want to talk about us. Every time I see him, he’s still around. He’s 82 he’s great guy, great archetype. I’ll see him and with you know, saying no and greet and all that I say to him, like Placid, and he goes crazy. He makes the best waves without me. Oh, he goes crazy. He’s a real good guy.

Dan LeFebvre  33:56

That’s funny. Well, if we go back to the movies timeline, after the Olympics start, there are a number of games that the movie just shows very quickly before the big game, we see USA versus Sweden. Talked about a little bit about that. That turns out to be a tie game. And then there’s a seven three win over Czechoslovakia, five to one win against Norway, yeah,

Lou Vairo  34:17

but that was the most unbelievable game for me in the whole Olympics. That was a great Czechoslovakian team. Yeah, and the night before the game, I invited the three Czech coaches. They the last of the three just died six months ago. The head coach was Carl boot, and the assistants were Dr Lud Bucha and Stanislav medvesseri, three outstanding players, former national team players and great coaches and great guys, great hockey men. Carol good later on, became president of the Czechoslovakian Ice Hockey Federation before. Of the, you know, the split, and then they was president, I think, of the Czech Federation for a while so, and they, they have like buildings that they rent out different countries. They call it the US House, Swedish House, or the Italian house. Well, I knew some of the people at the Italian house, and they loved me. And I bring them some pens and some little banners USA, and they would feed me, and they bought their old food and chefs from Italy with them. So it was unbelievable. No, you can’t find a restaurant as good anywhere in the inland, outside of Italy, as good as this was, so they told me. I said, Can I ever bring a Chinese? They said, of course, you bring whoever you want. But I bought three Czech coaches because they were all friends of mine, and we had a great dinner and great night. I remember boot coach. I he couldn’t speak English. Taro good, but Bucha never said he could. But with Carl, good, I can converse with him well enough in German. We could speak in Germany to each other well enough. And the other guys, I speak in English because I don’t know a few, maybe a few words, check or Slovak, but not many. And ludie said, I watched your team practice this morning. Uh, it tracks too hard, in my opinion, coming off the game against Sweden, and now the players tomorrow. And I remember Stan Stanislav saying to me, you know, I said, is everything good with your team? He said, No, not exactly. We lost Ivan Linka Henri was the key to our power play, and we just haven’t gotten that resolved the way we’d like it. And we’re, quite frankly, we’re worried about discuss these escaping, you know, what do they call that when they run away from the country? Uh, whatever that term is, defecting. Is

Dan LeFebvre  37:15

that right? Defecting, the

Lou Vairo  37:18

fact, yeah, they’re worried about detecting, because they had a lot of I would see them their own Secret Service people traveling with those teams from the East countries, from the Soviet Union, etc. They had the credentials. And I would see them in the bowels of the arena, always outside the dressing room, watching every move of every every part of the personnel. So they, and I, like the goalie, I think it was crelik, I’m not sure Yuri krillet. He’s okay, but one of the goodest previous Czechoslovakian goalies, like called a Czech even zerilla. And I have to tell you, if I were you going to predict, I would say I would have predicted the checks to win, 535242, something like that. They were really good. I mean, they’re the only team that ever really eat the Soviets. During those the reign of success that the Soviets had, it was always Czechoslovakia to be the team that beat them and in the 72 stupa series between the greatest Canadian NHL players against the greatest Soviet players, which wasn’t really true, because how how Bobby, you are. They weren’t playing because they were injured or in the WHA and they weren’t allowed to play, which was stupid in the 72 series. And playing that 72 Soviet team, which did a great job sure won. It really surprised. Well, I’m not surprised they lost because of two great players, Phyllis Esposito and his brother Tony. I’ll say it now, and I’ve said it forever. It should be a statue in front of any ice rink in Canada, a bronze bachelor, Tony in goal and Phil scoring, those two brothers with Canada on their back and led the will willed them to that victory in 72 and so, you know, Czechoslovakia was a great team, And they were the world champions that year. In 72 they had beat the Soviet team that was played Canada and then the Canadian team on their way home after the 72 Summit Series, they played, and I believe they beat Czechoslovakia of three two in Prague. I. Believe that’s pretty accurate, something like that. So I was done when I saw us play like we did. We were flying, we were flying, and we beat him. We ran them out of the building Seventh Street. Then I knew we could win a short a medal, maybe the big one. And then the games against Romania, West Germany, Norway, I think that’s who we played. They were. They weren’t easy. You know, these countries can put 1520, good players together. They weren’t easy. They were, I mean, we won them all without being too nervous, but they weren’t easy, and then, then Finland, after we beat the Soviets, we had to beat Finland, and they had a goalie. Jorma volnan yom is the hall of fame goalkeeper in the international SRC Federation, Hall of Fame, one of the greats from Finland, the first of many great finish goalies. Yom is still coaches today. He’s probably close to 80 coaches in Italy now, and he helped develop the great finished goalkeeping program that’s produced all these great finish goalies the last 20 years or so. And I gotta tell you a little side story about Yom. I still was still in touch with each other. Yoma, do you remember the plane from Yaris Lovell that was going to St Petersburg at the opening of the KH Hill season of library years ago that took off and crashed and everybody died. He remember

Dan LeFebvre  41:48

that story, I remember, I remember the story, yeah, yeah.

Lou Vairo  41:52

And he was on that flight, Oh, wow. And they just announced. He told me the story, passing your seat belts. And his cell phone rang, and it was his president of the club. He was working for Yaroslavl, teaching goalies, and Mr. Yaakov called him, and he said, Are you in the air? He said, No, we’re getting ready to take off. He said, tell him to stop. And he did. He yelled out, don’t take off. You know, whatever. And what’s going on? It’s Mr. Yaka Levy. I have to get off the plane. We got two Junior goalies just came in. He wants me to work with them, so I’m not going to make the trip. And he got off. But finally got to the rink. The plane, he crashed. Wow. Imagine that. Wow. I

Dan LeFebvre  42:39

I couldn’t, I mean, I couldn’t imagine, I don’t know what my the thought process would be around that that’s, wow,

Lou Vairo  42:47

wasn’t meant to be. God intervened, I guess I don’t know. Yeah, and, and he still alive. Yeah and, and that was such a tragedy. And, boy, that they do a great job in the Aristotle every single home game, they honored them all the parish. It’s beautiful, and they did it. They still do it. It’s very nice, nice way to remember those poor people.

Dan LeFebvre  43:15

Well, you’re talking about the the Soviets, kind of feeling like they were never really behind and in the movie, we see the games from Team USA that you were you were talking about. But on the Soviet side, we don’t really see a lot of their games, but we find out that they basically blew out their competition. I think they they said they won all five of their games. Scored like 51 goals. No, they

Lou Vairo  43:36

murdered Japan. And a few teams had a very tough game against Finland and a very tough game against Canada. Okay, the key out of all this, I have to say the truth. You’re interviewing me. I’m going to tell you the truth. Yeah, no, that’s what we’re here for with I’m just glad we never played Canada for some reason during the pre Olympic trial. I mean, games exhibition schedule Canada was tough for us to beat. Okay, it is something that’s now, I think, overcome, but for a while, very psychological between just like blow boxing checks. Checks seem to always beat the slow box, but now it’s changing, and the checks are playing well, but it’s changing US and Canada. Canada had maybe a subconscious little advantage over the US, not that often. 1960 Olympics, under Coach Jack Riley, we beat Canada. Harry Sidon was claiming might have been captain of the Canadian team. And Canada was a, not an easy team to play against, and they almost beat the Soviets, you know, they gave them all they could handle and and Finland too. So we knew Finland was good, very. Very good, and I knew involved in was great. I told everybody said their goal is good. We gotta, we can’t raise shots. We gotta spoil when we shoot. This guy is good. He’s one of the best in the history of international hockey, one of the better goalies. So anyway, but her made that great each I was standing outside, but the lotto door was opened, and the typical Brooks beach, and very typical, he said, You know what we did the other day against the service, something like that will mean nothing if we don’t win today. This is, this is a game we have to win. What, believe me, you’ll take it to your grades. If we don’t, you’ll take it to your grades. That’s very powerful words, and I couldn’t describe it better. And, and, of course, we won. Mark Johnson was spectacular. Dover told it. These guys were good players.

Dan LeFebvre  46:05

The kind of climax of of the movie at the end is, is that big game we’ve kind of alluded to and talked about a little bit, but in the movie, the way it sets it up is because, because of the the game beforehand at Madison Square, where the US got beat. Now it’s, there’s all this tension here in the movie, of, are they going to be able to beat? This the Soviet team. And throughout the movie shows bits and pieces back and forth. They kind of going back and forth. There’s a lot of action that’s, that’s fun to watch. It doesn’t focus on a lot of specific details. But it’s, a movie, so it’s focused on just showing a lot of the action of the game itself. But then as time starts to tick away in towards the end of the game, the Soviets find themselves in a position that they’re not familiar with, being down four to three in a game. And we start to sense in the movie, something that you had kind of alluded to was the Soviets started to look like they were not very comfortable. Can you share what the experience was like for that game?

Lou Vairo  47:08

They were very uncomfortable and very, very nervous. And when they told all right, I don’t. I thought tradiac was, I always believed traded to be one of the greatest goalies that’s ever played the game. Really, physically hardest work you all got. He was a great goalie, only guy that ever could score. Two guys could score against him without much trouble, Bill Esposito and must love nedimansky used to score against him, but most people have a tough time with Ronnie Iceman. He’s intimidating. He’s so big and agile and quit you think he’s going to kill you. Well, he can go you want to go in and shoot on him. He charges out he said, Hey, I can tell you that I’m not exactly Sonia Henrik once, but anyway, pulling him to me, I think deflated team a little bit and broke their confidence like we depend on him. He’s our man and Mushkin, excellent goalie. People forget one year previous and the Challenge Cup at Madison Square Garden. It was best of three. He was tired of one game each the NHL all starts against the same Soviet team. He could have started moosekin In the game, which shocked everybody. Mooskin Shut him out, I think shit nothing, which is pretty impressive. And mooskin was a good goalie, but what I’m saying is I think it shook the team up, and Michael was the only he was a hard working guy, wonderful captain, a great leader for that team, but he was something else that he’s never gotten the credit he deserves. He’s a natural goal scorer. He can score a goal anywhere he ever played high schooler. He’s a goal scorer. He can bury the biscuit. And he scored a great goal against Moskin, who was a great goalie. Too great goal for the winning goal. How do you not? How do you not Where did the miracle? Where this was a great goal scorer, who scored a great goal? I want to see these kids get credit heard. And Craig Patrick did a great job, and Warren strelo The equipment managed many to try. Mean old team, Dr Nagi, all the guys, great guys, but the truth of the matter is they, they won a miracle team. They played the game of their lives against Soviets, and they played a a wonderful, wonderful Olympic competition. They were great. Just like our 60 team, they were great. We’ve had other teams that played well and great, but no, none of the other teams won the gold medal. These two teams did, and they should be eluded for their excellence.

Dan LeFebvre  50:35

Just a good, good team. Yeah, no, it’s

Lou Vairo  50:39

a great team. I coached a lot of those players, so myself on teams. I know how good they were, yeah, and they had said this, and I’ll say right, Daniel again, I don’t believe any other coach would have won, won the gold medal with that team, but books, he was just the right, perfect coach, perfect timing. I often told him. I said, if you were to coach in in 76 or 84 it wouldn’t be a legend. You’d be like me, a dummy. You wouldn’t have made a legend. I think it matters. Everything has to be right. Just go right for any team to win a gold medal in the Olympics, not just that we did. Everything has to go right. You got to get bounces. You got to be healthy, you got to it just has to work. Guys have to play at the top of their game for two weeks of their life. And this team did it, and I, I salute the coaches. They didn’t, they didn’t get in the way and mess it up and made it better. And Craig Patrick did a great job in his role, uh, supporting her all year long. It was Estrella you can coach Goldies, you know. So that’s my take on it. Anyway,

Dan LeFebvre  52:09

yeah. Well, I wanted to ask about the Soviets when they replaced their goalie, since the movie kind of focuses on the US side of things, not as much from the Soviet side. You mentioned that that kind of seemed to deflate the Soviets. But according to the movie it shows it seems to be like a morale boost for team USA. Was that kind of the point in the game where you felt, wow, we might actually win this thing.

Lou Vairo  52:35

Yeah. But you know what really when Mark Johnson scored at the end of the period, pinker was David’s Christian flipped the puck up in the air and thought side and mark the two defensemen, Billy tervulkin, on the Soviet side, and even trading at they kind of let up, and Mark was right between them, grabbed the puck and leaked out tradiac and scored. To me, that was, that’s what I said. Oh, we could win this. We got a shot. And, yeah, it was, there was tension still, and like, oh God, the last I liked Herb’s comment, the last 10 minutes of the game, he said, with the longest 10 minutes of my life. And I felt the same way. I mean, I just kept looking at the clock. Move, move, move. They put on a rush the course bar, I think, and maybe the post malfev was in there. Petra, a lama. They’re a great team. I I can comfortably say that. I think that might have been in greatest Soviet team I’ve ever seen, at least on paper. But they didn’t have a great tournament, and they still could think what they went to silver, and they they weren’t comfortable. Those people from the Eastern countries upset them. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  54:07

you were talking about that before, where they just they didn’t feel comfortable the whole time. But it’s

Lou Vairo  54:12

and I was outside their dressing room a lot, and I remember when they beat Canada or Finland. I can’t remember which team the game ended, and it was a such game for them. And as they were walking in, something I never saw coaches do before, but it’s, you know, we’re talking different cultures here too. Uh, Soviet culture was not the Canadian or the American culture, but he could not. Was standing outside the dressing room door, and as each player was coming in off the ice at the end of the game, he was greatly relieved. He would kiss each player on the lips. He would listen to do that, you know, part of their culture, men kissed men on. Lips, relatives and friends, you know, and as they came in, he would kiss him, and he would fold their shoulders, and he would say, bolshei, basiba. Great thanks. Many, many, great plants. Each player, they were so relieved they had won that game, though I knew they were bold enough. I felt it all along. I INAF times. I knew their culture, I knew their nervousness, and I kept saying and never in the position to win. Lucky. You know, they’re usually ahead by three four goals going into the third period. I’d like to see how they’re going to react when things are not going good, and that’s what we thought of it. You know, we

Dan LeFebvre  55:52

don’t see a lot from the Soviet side in in the movie, but the movie seems to imply, as I mentioned earlier, that they were kind of blowing out their opponents, but you mentioned that they weren’t necessarily so at the point at which the Soviets were playing the US. Do you think that kind of the the atmosphere of the games had changed overall?

Lou Vairo  56:13

Yeah, oh yeah. We were Oh. The building was now packed. Everybody waved flags. All the front runners showed up. They weren’t there at the beginning. They all showed up and in the streets, all these people. I mean, I had a USA jacket so and I I didn’t live in the Olympic Village. I lived outside of it because I wasn’t an official part of the team, and I’d walk the streets. I knew everybody from these different countries, because working with USA hocking is part of my job. And just walking around, they’d see USA jacket. People would come up to me, hug me, kiss me. Some women brought me flowers, and they would say with their accents, thank you. Thank you. Thank you America. It was so thrilled to see the Russians get beat and and I’d have a chance for the gold medal. It was, it was never talked about, never spoken about. But there’s people. They’re immigrants to our country, and here they were cheering for us against their role, people you know, against people they felt invaded them their country, and tell them hostage. So it was interesting.

Dan LeFebvre  57:36

There was a point in the movie. I don’t remember the specific dialog to it, but it becomes pretty obvious that there’s more than just the game itself. I mean, the movie doesn’t get into politics or anything like that, so we don’t focus on politics either. But there is a point where Kurt Russell’s version of coach Brooks says something like, we’re about to play the greatest team in the world. Can’t we just leave it at that? But it seems pretty obvious that there’s, there’s something else to Soviet Union playing the United States in the Olympics game. They’re going to have external impacts. Did that imply a lot of extra pressure to the team?

Lou Vairo  58:14

No, I’d say no. I think most of them didn’t care. Most of them, most people, young people like that. They just want to live their lives. And these kids were looking to become pros and or move on with their lights to the next stage, whatever that might be. I don’t, I don’t think so. No, I think that scrum probably, yeah, some, it probably excites me more than others, but most, no. And you know, I dealt with the Soviets a lot, and if you’re dealing with bureaucrats and you’re dealing with politicians, it’s never, wasn’t in any realm. But if you deal with the people, it is just the people. They’re no different than we are to be Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Italian, Irish, Swedish, and it doesn’t matter Argentinian. It doesn’t matter Canadian. All people basically want to do is live their lives. They want to have a job, decent job, raise their family, go to the beach for two weeks in the summer, have food on their table, follow their favorite sports teams, maybe have a doctor in Russia, in Russia, or some of the European countries outside of a big city, where they have a little garden and a place in the summer, a retreat to go to on weekends, that’s all people want. Really, average person, they don’t get deeply involved in the international politics of everything, and if you follow it. On the news. You know, as well as I do, the way it’s the news have deteriorated now it’s half the newscasts, nor more than half the newscasts are politically slanted, and you don’t even know if you’re getting honest reports from either side of the political spectrum. No, I don’t think politics. I think underneath the circus with Carter saying we’re not going to go to Russia for the Summer Olympics in this in the invasion of Afghanistan, yeah, they bothered. We took the same thing years later, and we got chased out just like, just like Soviet now we gotta, really gotta find, we gotta find politicians that look to create peace, not not not fighting, because General people, in general, are just people that the same everywhere. You just want to live, live their lives well, because

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:05

the movie focuses so much on that game against the Soviets, as you mentioned earlier, it wasn’t like Team USA was done. They had one more game against Finland, but the movie doesn’t really focus on that too much. So can you fill in some more details that we don’t see in the movie about the actual gold medal game for team USA against Finland.

Lou Vairo  1:01:24

Yeah, I can tell you that Herb was very concerned and worried that there’d be a letdown, and that’s why he made that great speech in the room. And I think we had very good leadership from luzioni and pakoda and these guys on the team, some of the team leaders of the team, Jimmy Craig was zoned in focus then, and Mark Johnson, you know, like I told you, history USA Hockey, I would put them in The top six, seven sentiment we ever had in our hockey to this day. You gotta have Johnson Pavlov, and they got the job done against a great goalie, Walton and from Finland and a good Finnish team. So we did great. We did great and and like I told you, we had the right coaches at the right time for the right team, and it was in the right place. You know, we won two gold medals in our history, in the Olympics, and one was in Squaw Valley, California, the other Lake Placid, and the silver and Salt Lake City on the when you play in the other countries, it’s a little tough. And I’ve been probably, I think I’ve been about six Olympics, so I have a seal for it. And we did great. Plus we were nervous. I didn’t want to. I kept saying to myself, let’s not blow it now we, you know, we cut but what I heard her words, you’ll take it forever to your grades. It got me fired up. I remember because normally I would leave in enough time to walk up a bunch of steps and get to my little booth. Anthony said that that was enough for me to hear. I ran up the steps. I was juiced. I was fired up. You know, those were perfect words for him to come up with,

Dan LeFebvre  1:03:37

yeah, and all ready to go and ready to bring it home and actually finish off and get the gold.

Lou Vairo  1:03:43

Well, what a release that was to do that. It was such a release. Oh, my God. It was so great. Really, was I cried?

Dan LeFebvre  1:03:53

Yeah, I could see it really emotional just letting

Lou Vairo  1:03:57

1. How much cry with this interview. A few times I get choked up. Those memories were great to see such joy on the faces of the players and the fan. It was great, and it’s important to this day because I still coach little kids off ice, training 910, year olds, and they all saw a miracle 150 times each, and they all know it. And I they always asked me about is, did this really help me coach Lou whatever? And I tell them, yeah, it’s all true, boys and a few girls, because we have girls now playing. And if you guys ever want to get to that position. You got to work as hard as those kids did, and that’s just as hard as smart. And we’re giving you stuff here to learn, and you got to practice it at home on your own also. And they get all fired up. They love it well,

Dan LeFebvre  1:04:55

then the movie ends after the the 1980 Olympics. But do. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you following up in 1984 Olympics after you know, Herb Brooks was not coaching team USA. That was you were the head coach of us hockey that year. Did you feel any pressure following the as the movie puts it, the miracle team from 1980

Lou Vairo  1:05:17

Yes. Let me tell you a little story that’s interesting. I wasn’t there was no pre ordained coach. I didn’t even want to do it. Nothing like that. What happened was nobody wanted to coach. I gave names. I wasn’t officially on the search committee, but I gave names to the search committees, and I can’t remember exactly. Art Berlin is dead now, but art told me how many five or six coaches they asked, I mean, well known names, Coach team, they all refused, different reasons, legitimate, you know, I can’t leave my college team first a year. I don’t want to do that. What other thing might have been? And Ron De Gregorio, art Berlin and Fayette tutter Was the President of the USA Hockey it was called a house, but I’m a Charity Association of the United States. They said to me, you’ve coached the junior national team. You were with her the Lake Placid. You’ve worked with Bob Johnson. You work with the best and you know, you know the European teams better than anybody we have, and you know, I’ll play a pool. Would you like to coach the team? And I said, No. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t feel I earned it. And, yeah, I was still pretty young. I don’t know, 36 whatever. I said, No, and art is the one who convinced me. He said, Look, never get another chance. You do that. Anybody can coach anywhere, but the coaching Olympic team is special, and we need you. We need you. And Fayette Hutt was a favorite person of mine. He was a funny, little old guy, good guy, smart and everything, but also just a good guy. And he was always so nice to me. He said, Luke coach, Dean. So they interviewed me, and they interviewed Tim Taylor, and in the interview, I said, give it to Timmy, and he needs help. He’s more qualified than I am, and when they interview Timmy, he’s going to give it to Luke.

Dan LeFebvre  1:07:52

I’ll help, of course.

Lou Vairo  1:07:56

Finally, art Birdland wore me down, and I agreed to do it, and I have absolutely zero regrets. I’m really happy I did it. I had a great team, but of course, when I agreed, I had looked at the debt chart and I saw some of the players that we had. We’d have Bobby Carpenter, we’d have, let’s see Erickson, Brian Mullen, uh, Craig Ludwig, Phil Housley, Tom Barrasso, Johnny van beatrick. I was, I can’t remember all the names now, but pretty good plays. They all died. They didn’t want to wait a year and a half, whatever. Well, I don’t blame them? I didn’t blame them at all. They all died. Baracko died. He got kidnapped by the buffalo sabers during our training camp in Alaska. We were playing the Soviet wings, wings. They came up and they stole and slowed back on a private plane of Buffalo and signed them, and that year in one first gold star, I think, looking of the year of Desmond award. He’s 18 years old. He was a high school player and and I wish they would have said something to me. I wouldn’t have stopped them. I couldn’t have anyway, but I wouldn’t have liked Tom. He turned out to be a great goalie. And I had no problem with the goalies we had left. Mason and Baron were great. They were great. Loved them. But, I mean, it could have been different. Who knows if it would have been different? Aaron brought me another one up until five, six years ago. He was the all time leading scorer of the New Jersey double. These guys would have been on our 84 team, except they will sign and again, don’t blame them the least bit. Never told anything against them, but it would have been a little bit of a different team, and a spill was a great team as Joliot LaFontaine, Eddie oldchurch, David. So two of them, hna, Tommy Hirsch, the Fusco brothers. No, I was a great team. Terry Sampson, Gotti bukester, these guys could play. They could play. They could play better than I could coach. I’ll tell you that they could play. And they were very that was the youngest team ever. But I mean, Ally, afraid, I think, and old Chuck, he was guys. I think eight of our players could have played on the junior national team. There was a team, or very young team, and they went on, many of them, to great careers. Injuries caused problems for a few others. But I love that team, and my sadness with that team is we only lost, you know, how many games that we only lost two games in the Olympics? You could lose the Czechoslovakia and Canada, you know, in close games, that’s possible. And that wasn’t republic of this. And the Republic you didn’t play Panama and Guatemala. You know, you played great countries in hockey and out of our country. But those kids were so young. I had three kids in high school, three or four kids still taking high school classes, living with building families, and ice check the homework. You know, that’s the way it was. And of course, the expectations were tremendous, and our record was two wins, two losses, two ties. I could live with that. And the only reason I It upsets me is the world didn’t see what a good team this was. This was a good team. We beat a lot of NHL teams in preseason exhibition games, and you can’t do that. And we beat Soviet teams at exhibition games. You can’t do that if you weren’t good. You know the players weren’t good. Can’t happen.

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:03

Yeah, it makes sense. Great experience.

Lou Vairo  1:12:05

I’m glad I did it. Now I look back and I’m happy I did it,

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:12

yeah, yeah, no, that, I mean, that’s great. It’s funny, you’re didn’t want to do it, and the other guy didn’t want to do it. And it’s almost like a game of hot potato. Like, no, I don’t want it. You take it. But in

Lou Vairo  1:12:23

the end, it sounds like it was great. If you don’t win a gold medal, you’re a fan,

Dan LeFebvre  1:12:27

right? That’s why I was, yeah, I was, that was the impression that I got. It would be like, because you’re following up with a team that won the gold medal, it’s like, well, if what else can you do? There’s nowhere to go. But

Lou Vairo  1:12:39

down. I tell people, it’s the second greatest thing I ever did in my life, that I’m proud of, that I did it, and I’m glad I took the I wasn’t afraid to take the risk. I wanted our hockey to be great in America. That’s why I worked for USA Hockey. I seen it grow from nothing, something great that it is today. I was very proud of it, but yelled, there’s more important things than winning games. You know, I always say I got drafted in 66 to the army two years that’s the greatest achievement, personally, that I ever had, serving my country that I cherish as the most wonderful gift, then the hockey comes second, and of course, your family comes family and God comes before any time. That’s the way I look at life, simple.

Dan LeFebvre  1:13:38

Well, thank you for your service in the military. And thank you for coming on to chat about the movie miracle. I want to shift a little bit before I let you go to talk about your new autobiography, I’ll make sure to add a link to it in the show notes for this if anybody’s listening and wants to get a copy. But can you give listeners a little peek in your new book and maybe share one of your favorite stories from it the

Lou Vairo  1:14:00

most sweat I had was if Mike said, Lou, you gotta, we gotta have testimonials. I don’t even know what he meant. I thought I died. I said, What do you mean the testimonials? He said, call up some people you know, in hockey or players, sex players, and get them to spend that a few sentences about you, meaning me. I said, I can’t do that. I’m afraid to do it with some of God knows what they’ll list. So I, I went to people. I worked with Jay Riley, Jack Riley’s son. We worked together with national teams. Years ago, he sent the nice piece. Then when I you think I only destroyed hockey in America, I coached the national teams of Italy in Holland also. So I destroyed hockey in three countries, mice and so I called, I called, he has a big job. Up in column now with a former national team player. He wrote a nice thing in and and I asked Phil Housley, Soviet player, very close friend of mine, and guy, go back 40 years with Igor Ariana. Phil Esposito Christian, Chelios, just to name a few. Those are pretty big names. These are all Hall of Fame guys. And very nice thing. Jim Craig, the real beautiful things are very touchy to me, and I didn’t know they felt that way. And I was even afraid to ask them, God knows what they’d write, and Pat Lafon Payne wrote the forward for the book. It’s beautifully written. What he wrote, it’s very touching to me, emotional, and you don’t realize it, but you never think of yourself as making making a difference in anybody’s lives, but these guys claim I did, so it’s just humbling, and very humbling. I don’t like to talk about myself like that. So yeah, it’s going to be an interesting book and and I think a fun read if me and I’ll tell you something else. I can’t stand when I hear people say I’ve been misquoted or I’ve then, what’s the other word? It’s about what I shared. Shut up. I’ve never I’ve done a million interviews in my life that I’ve said some things later on, a few times, that I might have regret, I might have regrets for but I’ve never been misquoted. Period, what you say is what you say, and you can’t run away from it. You gotta deal with it. And you if you did something that you regret, then you can apologize. Can’t say I’ve been misquoted. You. Blame it on the reporter. That’s not right at all. So yeah, that’s a few thinking they’re probably gonna erase somebody. But I also I don’t care. I said them, and so I said, I’ll live with it. No, but I will. I’ll tell you one little story. It’s not in the book. I could write a book just on some of the things, little stories from different people. But this is funny. I had an 18 city tour in the United States in 79 that I organized because we didn’t have teams. Weren’t doing dry land training specific for Aki in those days. And the guy who had really thought of it officially was Anatoly Tara Soviet Union, and he coached Central Army team, and he was national team coach and assistant coach, or CO coach with akati chairmanship. So I invited Bolger to come. I had a good relationship with the Soviet Federation, and we worked it out. And Dr ladaslav Gorski, unfortunately, they’re all dead now. Worski was some Bratislava. He was the Slovak, but then it was Czechoslovak, and he did specific or vice training for goalkeepers of all ages. Karasad Did under 20, rather 15 years old and up pros and chernochev under 15, and we went to 18 cities. I had Charlie to check he’s alive. He lives in Greenwood Lake, New York. Charlie was originally from Czechoslovakia, Prague, and immigrated to the US. We met him as Brooklyn. I met him in Brooklyn at the rate, and we became friends, which we still are to stay. He was the interpreter for Gorski and the Russian the Soviets, and called then they sent led, she’s alive. He’s in his 80s, and Moscow, good guy. He was the interpreter so the two Soviet coaches, so we went all around. They did a great job. They didn’t make much money. We only charge $15 a head per coach come to the seminars. They absolutely was sensational, and they sold out everywhere, and it changed the fortunes of our hockey because 1000s of coach, I don’t know, hundreds or 1000s of coaches were, and lots of kids that we use this the examples in the workouts, learned something great and new that could help them. It influenced our hockey daytime was a great move, and we thought we were going to lose 10 grand, which was a lot of money then, and we made 10. Steam grand after I got permission to give those guys each a bonus for the great job they did. And so it was a win, win, win, win. I was the only one that lost. There was exhausted heal and carrying medicine balls and weights and ropes and rubber suspenders and all kinds of things on airlines around the country, and then there was a plane crash in Chicago when we were there, terrorists have refused to fly anymore. He said, Only if you have aerosol out. I said, Our next stop is Detroit. There’s no air flight flights from Chicago to Detroit, so I had a rest the van, and that’s how we did the last part of our trip, with van with me driving. And it worked out great. It worked out it worked out great. It was wonderful. But we’re in Niagara Falls, New York, and what I wanted to do in order to increase income, and also to include Canada, because we wanted to have a good working relationship the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. Dennis McDonald was running it. Great guy. Did a great job. He helped me a lot. When I was starting out. We put him in border like Seattle, Hancock, Michigan, Duluth, Minnesota. Where else? Oh, Niagara Falls, New York, right across the river from Ontario. We were able to get a lot of Canadian coaches to come, which was great, and it made him work well. So well in Niagara Falls, and we had a day off. Was a beautiful June day. I said, guys, let’s go see the falls. So we went to the falls. Everybody was impressed. He said that Assaf, he was a very proud Soviet guy. And I said, you don’t think it’s nice. He said, Yes, it’s it’s very nice, but we have better water Forbes and so Henri, I said, it’s okay. That’s who he is, let him say. And I love it now we go to because I would get along great with them, but we’d argue once in a while. Then we went to the aquarium, which was great. You know, with 1000s and they could, they had an aquarium. They still have it. It’s above ground, and you could go down below. You could see the dolphins underwater, as well as on top. So we started out on top, and tarasa wanted to go down to sea, so we all went down, and we’re watching, and I see him make a comment to the interpreter, and both of them laughed at a laugh, but I walked over, I said, Look, what did Anatoly say? He said, Oh, nothing, not important. And of course, but outside, he told me. He said, uh, Lou, you’ll be insulted. I said, No, I won’t. But what did he say? He said, You American? These Americans amazed me. They have beautiful supermarkets, big buildings we’re seeing as we travel across the country. He said they have more mayonnaise than one supermarket to I can find now in all of Moscow combined. They can do everything. They can even teach fish to fulfill the most difficult tasks. Tell me, why can’t they teach their hockey players to make a three meter pass? And I found it was better going and ironically, very true, it was great.

Lou Vairo  1:24:02

This went on week and day after day, week after week. I mean, it was a the height of the Cold War. He was at one of my grandmother’s house. So all these guys for dinner in Brooklyn, this wonderful grandmother of my old Italian lady from Sicily, and she prepared an incredible meal. She was in her 80s that time. She lived to 103 and these guys so respectful and polite and appreciative to her. They just loved loved it that few years after, and it’s at the height of this Cold War. He’s sitting in a club you know, Alison in Brooklyn, eating spaghetti. And it was wild when I look back at wonderful memories every time I would see him anywhere we were in. The world. The first thing he would always say after greeting me, whoa, babushka, okay, grandmother, okay. And I put my thumbs up. It say yes. And he said whoa, very, very in English, he only knew like five words he’d say, very, very, very good spaghetti. And I told my grandmother, she’d get a big kick out of it and ask me how they were doing the last you know, good. You’re okay little wives. So yeah, that’s about it.

Dan LeFebvre  1:25:35

Thank you again. So much for your time, and I really appreciate it.

Lou Vairo  1:25:39

You’re welcome. You’re a pro. Thank you.

October 8, 1967. Bolivia.

To kick off this week’s events from the movies, we’ll go back to the 1969 film called Che! to find an event that happened 57 years ago on Tuesday this week.

About an hour and 21 minutes into the movie, we’re inside a room with a shirtless man’s body lying on a table. A group of men, some in suits and others in military uniforms, are crowded around. One of them points to a bullet wound on body, saying this was the fatal shot less than 24 hours ago.

The camera pans over to the corner of the room where we can see the man in the three-star beret breaking the fourth wall as he talks to the camera. I guess we can give him a name…that’s Albert Paulsen’s character, Captain Vasquez. He explains that the raid on Alto Saco was the beginning of the end for Guevara. Vasquez says they ambushed his rear guard in La Higueras and encircled him in the Churro Ravine.

We’re no longer in the room with the dead body, now, as the scene shifts to what Vasquez is explaining. Rebel soldiers are being shot at by the Rangers in rocks surrounding the ravine. It’s not just rifles, but the Rangers have mortars as well. One of the rebels is killed. Then another. They’re firing back, and some of the Rangers are shot, too.

The intense fighting continues for a few more moments until we can see Omar Sharif’s version of Che Guevara climbing to get out of the ravine. The rebel machine gun is captured, silencing most of the firing. Che and another man seem to be the only two left, and Che is obviously in a lot of pain.

The Rangers close in as the two rebel soldiers fire back from the cover of rocks. The other man is shot and killed. Che, too, is shot, although he’s not killed. Wounded, he lies back and the shooting stops. The Rangers stand up, walking slowly to where Che is lying on the ground.

Che is still breathing as Captain Vasquez reaches him. Pulling out a photo, Vasquez looks at it and then back down at Che. Then, over the radio, Vasquez announces: Puma to Lancer. Puma to Lancer. We’ve got Papa. Alive. Repeat, we’ve got Papa.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Che!

Transitioning into our fact-check of the 1969 film Che!, I’ll first point out that we did a deep dive into the full movie that I’ll link to in the show notes. For this week’s historical event, though, it got the basic gist correct even if it did change a lot of the details from the true story.

For example, remember the guy leading the Rangers in the movie? We talked about him earlier; he’s the guy with the three stars on his beret. The actor playing him Albert Paulsen, and in the movie it’s a character named Captain Vasquez.

In the true story, the leader of the Bolivian Army’s 2^nd Ranger Battalion was Gary Prado Salmón, who was later promoted to General and a national hero in Bolivia for Che’s capture.

The 2^nd Ranger Battalion was trained especially to target the guerilla fighters. While we didn’t cover it in our movie segment this week, a bit earlier in the film Captain Vasquez tells the camera that the CIA was not involved in any way.

Well, most sources that I found say that even though the 2^nd Rangers were from the Bolivian Army, they did get help from the CIA, as well training from the 8^th Special Forces Group from the U.S. Army. I’ll add a link to the show notes for this episode with a fascinating article by Marco Margaritoff over on the website All That’s Interesting that gives a nice overview of a man named Félix Rodríguez, who was the CIA agent tasked with helping in the capture of Che Guevara.

Something else the movie changes from the real story is the number of soldiers involved. In the movie, it looks like Captain Vasquez has maybe a dozen or so Rangers with him. Granted, they’re often among the rocks and moving around the terrain so it’s hard to track down an exact number.

With that said, though, the 2^nd Ranger Battalion had 650 soldiers in it and about 180 to 200 of them were involved in the capture of Che Guevara on October 8^th, 1967. So, there were a lot more soldiers involved than we see in the movie.

In the true story, the Rangers received word during the early morning hours of October 8^th of a little over a dozen men who had walked through a local farmer’s field the night before. They were going toward a canyon area nearby, so that’s where the Rangers went.

The movie was right to show mortars being used, though, as they used mortars and machine guns along with sections, or platoons, of soldiers set up at different areas in the canyon to help seal off the entrances and exits to the canyon while other soldiers in the Battalion closed in on their targets.

It was a tactic that worked, as before long the Rangers pushed back the guerrillas to where they had nowhere else to go. As for Che Guevara himself, somehow his rifle was destroyed—or at least, rendered unusable, and he was shot in the leg. It was in his right calf, so not a mortal wound but between that and not having a weapon, he was forced to surrender when the Rangers came upon him.

Although this, too, seems to have happened differently than what we see in the movie. I say that because in the movie we see the Captain Vasquez character look down at Che and pull a photo out of his pocket to verify that’s who it is. In the true story, though, one of the Rangers, a Sergeant, later told Che’s biographer that Che was the one to identify himself to them.

Either way, Che Guevara was captured on October 8^th, 1967. The next day, the President of Bolivia ordered Che be put to death. And so, on October 9^th, 1967, the revolutionary Che Guevara was executed at the age of 39.

As a last little side note, when the movie shows Che’s body, we can see a bullet wound in his chest that one of the bystanders mentions as being the fatal shot. Even though Che was executed, that sort of shot would still be accurate because according to some sources, it was the CIA agent Félix Rodríguez who suggested they don’t shoot Che in the head to make it obvious he was executed, but rather to shoot him in a way that would look like he’d been a casualty of a run-in with the Bolivian Army.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1969 movie called Che! That’s not to be confused with the 2008 two-part series from Steven Soderbergh that’s also called Che. While that’s another good one to watch this week, the movie we talked about today is the 1969 film with an exclamation point at the end: Che!

And don’t forget we’ve got a deep dive in the show notes that you can queue up right now to hear more about the true story of the entire movie!

October 9, 1919. Chicago, Illinois.

Our next historical event falls on Wednesday this week, and we’ll find a re-enactment of it at about an hour and 22 minutes into the movie called Eight Men Out.

Hitting play on the movie, and we’re at a baseball game.

The crowd seems to be getting ready for the game to start. On the mound for the Chicago White Sox is Lefty Williams. He’s played by James Read in the movie.

<whew> Williams exhales.

There’s text on the screen in the movie saying this is game #8.

Then, Williams winds and offers the first pitch. The batter swings, sending a fly ball into right field. We don’t see how far the ball goes, but what we can see is the reaction from many of the White Sox players who don’t seem happy. Williams returns to the mound with a stern look on his face. He looks into the batter’s box where another hitter steps to the plate.

The camera is just behind the catcher now. We can see Williams wind, and pitch. The batter swings, another hit.

Again, we don’t see where it goes, but we can see a baserunner make it to second base. That must be the guy who got the first hit. Two back-to-back hits, it seems.

In the crowd, Lefty Williams’ wife looks sad.

Back on the mound, Williams is ready for another hitter. He looks at the runner on second. The pitch. Way outside. The catcher has to reach to stop it, but he does. No runners advance. The next pitch.

The batter swings, and Williams’ head snaps around to watch what we can assume is a high fly ball to right field. Again, we can’t see how far it goes, but we can see the catcher throwing his mitt down as a runner crosses the plate to score. The crowd is jeering at Williams, who seems to be starting the game off on a rocky note.

But, the game goes on, and Williams settles in to face the next hitter.

The pitch.

Another high fly ball, this time to left field. It hits the outfield wall, and we can see another runner score as he crosses home plate. Again, the catcher throws his mitt to the ground in disgust. As he does, another runner crosses home plate. Three runs scored so far, and there’s a runner on second.

John Mahoney’s character, Kid Gleason, runs from the White Sox dugout. As he does, he yells, “James, you’re in!”

When he reaches the pitcher’s mound he takes the ball from Williams, ending his day.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Eight Men Out

That sequence comes from the 1988 movie directed by John Sayles called Eight Men Out. The event it’s depicting is the final game of the 16^th World Series, which happened this week in history on October 9^th, 1919.

The movie is historically accurate to show Lefty Williams starting that day for what was game eight of the Series. And it’s also correct to show him giving up a number of hits, but in the movie, it looks like all but one of the hits are going to right field—they weren’t all hit there, but then again, we don’t see where the ball goes in the movie. All we can see are the actor’s reactions to the hits, so maybe that’s nitpicking a little too much.

Here’s the true story.

The first hitter to face Lefty Williams in game eight of the 1919 World Series was the Cincinnati Reds’ second baseman, Morrie Rath. He popped out to start the game. The second hitter was the Reds first baseman Jake Daubert. He hit a single to center field. Next up was Heinie Groh, the third baseman. He smacked another single, this one to right field a lot like we see in the movie. It also allowed Daubert to advance from first to second, just like we see in the movie.

Next up for the Reds was their cleanup hitter, the center fielder Edd Roush. He smashed a double to right field, allowing Daubert to score and Groh moved to third base.

I couldn’t find anything in my research to suggest the White Sox catcher got so fed up by the pitcher Williams giving up these hits that he threw his mitt on the ground like we see happening in the movie. But the movie was correct to show that catcher for the White Sox being Ray Schalk. He’s played by Gordon Clapp in the movie.

The next batter for the Reds was their left fielder, Pat Duncan. He hit a double to left field, driving in Groh from third and Roush from second. At this point, the Reds were up 3-0 with one out in the first inning.

The White Sox manager had seen enough. Just like we see him doing in the movie, Kid Gleason took out his starter and put in the right-handed reliever Bill James.

To establish a bit of context that we don’t see in the movie, the 26-year-old Lefty Williams was the White Sox #2 starter. His real name, by the way, is Claude. “Lefty” was just a nickname. And yes, he was a left-handed pitcher.

In 1919, Lefty had a stellar record of 23 wins to 11 losses with an ERA of 2.64. That’s spread across 297 innings. In fact, Williams not only led the White Sox with 125 strikeouts, he led the majors that season with 40 games started and he tied the White Sox #1 starter, Eddie Cicotte, with five shutouts.

So, Williams had a fantastic season in 1919.

His playoff record wasn’t so great, as he went 0-3 giving up 12 earned runs across 16.1 innings pitched for an ERA of 6.61. And while we didn’t talk about what happened the night before the game, there are a lot of people who believe Lefty Williams was given an ultimatum.

What really happened is one of those moments behind closed doors that we’ll just never know for sure.

As the story goes, Williams was visited by an associate of the bookie and gambler who had offered cash to the White Sox players in exchange for them throwing games. That same story suggests this unnamed associate told Williams that either he purposely lose his next start or else his wife and child would pay the consequences.

And so, as we know from what happened publicly, Lefty Williams had a terrible game. He gave up three runs and couldn’t even get through the first inning before being pulled. The Reds would go on to win the game 10-5, and by extension, the World Series overall, five games to three.

The allegations of throwing the Series hit the White Sox almost immediately, earning the team the nickname “Black Sox” for the scandal. It also changed Major League Baseball as the owners gave over control to establish the position of the Commissioner of Baseball, a position that still exists today, in an attempt to give public trust in the sport again. It’d also end up with eight players from the White Sox being permanently banned from Major League Baseball—hence the title of the movie, Eight Men Out.

One of those players who was permanently banned was Lefty Williams.

So, if you’re feeling like a sports movie to watch this week, check out the 1988 film called Eight Men Out!

And if you want to learn more about the true story, after you watch the movie, we compared that with history back on episode #132 of Based on a True Story. Or, if you want to take a super deep dive, the entire second season of another fantastic podcast called Infamous America is dedicated to the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. You can find a link to that in the show notes for this episode.

October 12, 1492. The Bahamas.

From the baseball field in the last movie, to the Bahamas, our next movie is the 1992 movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. About 54 minutes into the movie, we’ll find this week’s event as we can see two large ships. There’s one in the foreground and another a little distance away, and they’re not moving at all. In fact, the night before in the movie, we saw the anchors land in the water.

Today, we’re seeing smaller boats departing the large ships and heading toward the land we can see in the distance. Lush, green trees and sandy beaches make this scene look like what you’d expect for sailors on ships in the 1400s to be making landfall on an island in the Caribbean.

Because of the camera angles in the movie, it’s hard to see exactly how many boats are leaving the larger ships but I counted at least five in a single frame. Each boat is filled with men, and each boat is carrying flags of orange, yellow, purple, and many bright colors.

The camera focuses on one of the men as he jumps off the boat into the water. The movie goes into slow motion, capturing the moment as he splashes into the waist-deep water. He continues to walk in slow motion, each footstep splashing into the water.

He falls to his knees just beyond the waves in a gesture of appreciation. The camera cuts to other men jumping off the boats now. Some are running onto the land, others are falling onto the sandy beach—overall, it’s a scene that makes it obvious they haven’t seen land for quite some time. Dry land is a welcome sight.

Then, the movie gives us the location and the date. Guanahani Island. 12^th of October 1492.

The man who was on his knees gets up now. He’s approached by a colorfully dressed man.

“Don Christopher,” he says, as he unravels a scroll. Christopher signs something on the scroll. Then he speaks, “By the grace of God, in the name of their gracious Majesties of Castilla and Aragon…”

He pauses for a moment to turn around to the men who are all lined up on the beach now.

“…by all the powers vested in me, I claim this island and name it San Salvador.”

Then, the camera backs up to show the line of men as they start walking inland.

The true story behind that scene in the movie 1942: Conquest of Paradise!

That is a sequence from the 1992 movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The event it’s depicting is Christopher Columbus making his first landing after the long trip across the ocean from Europe.

That happened this week in history, on October 12^th, 1492, right away let’s clarify the ships themselves. In the sequence we talked about today, we could only see two ships at any one time in the movie. In the true story, Columbus sailed with three ships: Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

That we only saw two in the sequence we talked about today isn’t really a point against the movie for historical accuracy—we do see three ships at different points in the movie. It’s just the sequence for October 12^th doesn’t really show all three ships at one time.

With that said, there has been a lot of debate among historians about exactly where Columbus landed.

According to Columbus himself, it was on an island called Guanahani. That’s the name we see mentioned in the movie.

The name, Guanahani, is the Taino name for the island. Just like we see in the movie, Columbus named the island San Salvador upon his arrival. I’m not sure if he did it the moment he landed on the beach like we see in the movie, but then again, Columbus thought he landed in East Asia at first. He didn’t know he actually landed in a chain of islands we now know as the Bahamas.

The name he gave the island is derived from the Spanish “Isla San Salvador” or, in English, “Island of the Holy Savior.”

As a little side note, the name “Guanahani” means “Small Land in the Upper Waters” in the Taino language. The Taino language, in turn, used to be the most popular language in the Caribbean at the time of Columbus’ landing…but that language is extinct now. Also, in the 17^th century, the island was called Waitlings Island after an Englishman who landed there. In 1925, the island was officially renamed to San Salvador.

In 1971, Columbus Day became an officially recognized Federal holiday in the United States—but that recognition has changed in recent years. The observance of the holiday doesn’t always land on October 12^th, but at least now you know a little more about the history behind the event that happened this week in history.

If you want to dig further into the story, of course you can watch the movie called 1492: Conquest of Paradise.

Even that title is a bit controversial when you consider how Columbus landed on lands owned by people who already lived there and conquered them.

Remember when I mentioned the Taino language is extinct now? Well, that’s just one example of something lost to history since Columbus’ landing. There has been a lot of controversy over his and other colonists’ actions.

As a result, in 1992, Berkeley, California became the first city in the United States to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day. Cities like Austin, Seattle, and Philadelphia, or states like Maine, South Dakota, and Alaska, among many others have dropped Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Here in Oklahoma where I’m recording this from right now, many here celebrate Native American Day instead.

So, if you’re looking for something to watch this week, the movie we talked about in this segment is called 1492: Conquest of Paradise. The landing sequence happens at about 54 minutes into the movie. If you watch the movie, or even if you just want to dig deeper into the history, scroll back to episode #186 of Based on a True Story where we covered that movie and the true story behind it.

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 October 9^th, 1895, Eugene Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia. He is considered to be the first African American military pilot to fly in combat. And even though he was born in the United States, he flew for the French during WWI—he was rejected by the U.S. military. He’s one of those historical figures that I wish there was a biopic about his life, but if you want to see a movie in his honor this week, then I’d recommend the 2012 movie called Red Tails. Now, right up front, I’ll let you know that movie is not about Eugene Bullard. It’s about the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, but the filmmakers honored Bullard’s memory by having the commander in the movie be named Col. A.J. Bullard. He’s played by Terrence Howard in the movie.

On October 11, 1884, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City, New York. She’s better known by her middle name: Eleanor Roosevelt, and as the First Lady of the United States during World War II while her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or just FDR as he’s called, was president. And yes, I did a double-check on that too…Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name was Roosevelt, and she married Franklin Roosevelt so both her maiden and married name was Roosevelt. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins once removed. This week’s recommendation portraying Eleanor on screen is called The First Lady, the 2022 series from Showtime. Eleanor Roosevelt is played by Gillian Anderson.

On October 13^th, 1537, Jane Grey was born in Bradgate, England. At least, that’s the date often given for her birthdate—hers is one of those birthdays in history that we’re not 100% sure of. She’s often known as Lady Jane Grey, or sometimes as the Nine Days’ Queen, because she was Queen of England for only nine days. Her name earned more fame when Mark Twain used her as a character in his novel from 1882 called The Prince and the Pauper. So, most movie adaptations of that will have someone playing Lady Jane. My recommendation this week, though, is the 2022 series from Starz called Becoming Elizabeth. As you can tell from the title, it’s more about Queen Elizabeth I, but Lady Jane is played by Bella Ramsey in that series. So, if you’re a fan of The Last of Us, maybe you’ll enjoy seeing Bella star in another series.

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

This week’s movie premiere from history is the film directed by Paul Greengrass called Captain Phillips, which was released in the U.S. 11 years ago this week on October 11^th, 2013.

In the movie, Tom Hanks portrays the lead role of Captain Richard Phillips, who takes command of the cargo ship called the Maersk Alabama. Despite the name, the Maersk Alabama’s home port according to the movie is the Port of Salalah in Oman.

When he’s given orders to take the vessel to Mombasa, Kenya, that takes him past the Horn of Africa where there has been some known pirate activity. So, along with the help of the first officer, Michael Chernus’ version of Shane Murphy, as they get underway, they go through their security protocols.

That’s when they notice a couple small boats following their massive ship.

Fearing they’re pirates, Captain Phillips calls for aid from a nearby warship. Of course, there’s not really a warship, but the pirates don’t know that. And Captain Phillips knows the pirates don’t know that, but he also knows they’re listening to the radio, so he thinks maybe if they think the military is nearby that’ll scare them off.

And it sort of works. One of the two skiffs turns around, while the other loses power in the wake of the huge cargo ship.

But they’re not in the clear yet, because the next day, one of the skiffs filled with pirates returns to the chase. Since their boat is much smaller, it’s also faster, and before long the armed pirates manage to attach their ladder to the Maersk Alabama and climb aboard despite the best efforts of the cargo ship’s crew to stop them. Then, the pirates seize control of the ship at gunpoint, and very soon it becomes clear to Captain Phillips that the pirates intend to ransom off the crew and ship for the insurance money.

The leader of the pirates is a guy named Abduwali Muse, who is played by Barkhad Abdi in the movie.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for the U.S. military to actually find out the Maersk Alabama has been taken over by the pirates. After all, they’re wanting the insurance money, so the pirates aren’t trying to hide the fact that they took over the ship. So, the U.S. Navy launches a destroyer called USS Bainbridge under the command of Frank Castellano. He’s played by Yul Vazquez in the movie.

Things descend into a fight between the mostly unarmed crew and very well-armed pirates aboard the cargo ship. I say “mostly” unarmed, because we do see things like the crew using a knife to try and hold Muse hostage and force all the pirates to leave in a lifeboat. But, they won’t do that unless Captain Phillips goes with them. Trying not to make matters worse, Phillips goes along with the pirates in exchange for them leaving the rest of the crew on the Maersk Alabama.

Meanwhile, on the lifeboat, the pirates beat and blindfold Captain Phillips in what has now become a kidnapping situation as well. We see Bainbridge enter the picture and try to get to a peaceful solution. As part of that process, they hook up the lifeboat to Bainbridge so it’s being towed by the destroyer while inviting the pirate leader, Muse, to Bainbridge to negotiate. He agrees, and in the movie, we also see SEAL Team Six from the U.S. Navy setting up snipers to try and take out the pirates.

Near the climax at the end of the movie, the U.S. Navy pulls off a perfectly timed maneuver that involves stopping their tow of the lifeboat to throw the pirates off balance just as three snipers from the destroyer take three simultaneous shots and kill three of the pirates at the exact same moment.

The movie ends with Muse being the only pirate left alive. He’s arrested and taken into custody as Captain Phillips is rescued from the lifeboat and treated for his injuries.

The true story behind Captain Phillips

Before we compare the true story with the movie, I do want to point out that we did a deep dive into the full movie back on episode #28 of Based on a True Story so I’ll link that in the show notes if you want to give that a listen as well.

For today’s purposes, though, let’s start with the overview of the people in the story.

The character Tom Hanks is playing in the movie, Captain Phillips, is a real person. As of this recording, he’s still alive. Actually, it’s his book that the movie is based on. That book is called A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea. I’ll throw a link to that in the show notes, too.

The pirate leader, Abduwali Muse, is also a real person who is also still alive as of this recording—he’s currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in Terre Haute, Indiana, which means unless something changes between now and then, Muse will be released in 2038, by which time he’ll be 48 years old.

That’s right, Muse was just 18 years old when all this happened in April of 2009. Or…maybe he was 19, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Some of the other characters in the movie are real people, too, like USS Bainbridge’s Commander Frank Castellano, and some other more background crew in the movie are based on real people but with some fictionalization thrown in to help tell the story.

But, of course, there’s always more to the true story that we don’t see in the movie.

So, let’s go back to April 8^th, 2009, because that’s when our true story starts.

Maersk Alabama really is the name of the ship that was hijacked by pirates that day. The name comes from the Danish shipping company headquartered out of Copenhagen called Maersk. They’re a massive company who has been around since 1928, although it’s worth mentioning that Maersk Alabama was registered under a U.S. flag.

That’s because technically Maersk Alabama in 2009 was run by Maersk Line, a division of Maersk that’s based out of Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States. As a little side note, after the timeline of the movie, Maersk Alabama was sold to another company and renamed to MV Tygra. As of this recording, she’s still in operation on the seas.

While I didn’t notice the movie mentioning this, in the true story when she was hijacked that marked the first time a ship bearing the U.S. flag was seized by pirates since the 1800s.

With that said, though, the movie is correct to show the crew on Maersk Alabama preparing for a possible pirate attack because Maersk Alabama was actually the sixth ship to be attacked by pirates just that week! The other ships just weren’t bearing a U.S. flag, but everyone was aware of how dangerous the waters were.

The movie is correct to show that she was heading from Salalah, Oman, to Mombasa, Kenya. On board, she was carrying 401 containers of primarily food aid for refugees in countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, etc.

Any training the crew had done prior turned into reality when the true story behind the movie began on April 8^th, 2009. Just like we see in the movie, that’s when four pirates attacked the ship armed with AK-47s. We learned that Muse was just 18 or 19 years old at the time of the attack, and that actually became an issue in the subsequent trial because at first there were questions about whether or not he could even be tried as an adult.

According to Robert Gates, who was the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time, the four pirates were between 17 and 19 years old, although Muse’s own mother said he was only 16 at the time. At the time, some suggested perhaps she said that so Muse wouldn’t be tried as an adult, but regardless, for our purposes today it’s safe to say all the pirates who boarded Maersk Alabama that day were teenagers.

The movie is also correct to show the purpose for the pirates was to get the insurance money for Maersk Alabama. As we just learned, there were a lot of other ships captured at the time—actually, even the fishing vessel the pirates used as their own “mother ship,” so to speak, was one they hijacked. That was the FV Win Far 161, which was a 700-tonnes Taiwanese ship that Somali pirates captured on April 6^th, 2009, and then used to launch the smaller skiffs to hijack even more ships.

We don’t see any of that in the movie since it’s mostly focused on Maersk Alabama, but FV Win Far 161 was eventually released by pirates in early 2010.

Back to the true story aboard Maersk Alabama, though, after being boarded by the pirates, the ship’s Chief Engineer and First Assistant Engineer, Mike Perry and Matt Fisher, respectively, worked to remove steering and engine control from the bridge, and shut down the ship’s systems. In other words, the ship went dead in the water.

Just like we see in the movie, the pirates boarded the ship and went right to the bridge. That’s where they captured Captain Phillips along with other crew, and they also found out they weren’t able to control the ship thanks to what Perry and Fisher did down below. And as we just learned, the pirates were very young and they were not highly trained engineers like Perry and Fisher so couldn’t really do anything about it themselves without help from Maersk Alabama’s crew—which, obviously, they weren’t inclined to do!

Of course, that doesn’t mean the pirates didn’t try to convince the ship’s crew to get it going again. While they held Captain Phillips in the bridge, Muse went in search of the rest of the cargo ship’s crew to do exactly that. And as you can probably guess, that was something the pirates intended to do at gunpoint.

But here’s where the movie shows the Maersk Alabama crew start fighting back, because for all they knew the pirates were going to sail the ship back to Somalia if they got it moving again…and that wouldn’t bode well for them.

Before I mentioned Mike Perry, the Chief Engineer; he’s played by David Warshofsky in the movie. While I didn’t mention this earlier, while the pirates were boarding the ship and trying to figure out why the controls didn’t work in the bridge, the rest of the Maersk Alabama’s crew hid in a secure hold in the ship. Remember, they had prepared for a possible pirate attack, so kind of like you have a plan for where you’ll go in case of emergency—so did they.

Mike Perry, though, hid himself outside of the secure room. His plan was to try and capture one of the pirates so he could trade the pirate for Captain Phillips. Basically, a prisoner exchange. So, when Muse walked by looking for crew, Perry jumped him with a knife and managed to subdue the teenager. Then, they offered the exchange to the pirates in the bridge. The movie gets that pretty accurate, too, because the offer was for the pirates to get their leader back, Muse, as well as all the cash they had on the ship—there was $30,000 in the ship’s safe, and then they also offered the pirates the use of the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat for them to get off the ship.

Keeping in mind, again, that the pirates were teenagers who no doubt were feeling a little overwhelmed and unable to move the massive ship, they agreed to the deal. So, the crew released Muse with the cash and expected the pirates to hold up their end of the bargain.

But, things didn’t go according to plan. Instead, the pirates took Captain Phillips into the 28-foot lifeboat with them. So, now, the four pirates are off the Maersk Alabama, but now it’s also a hostage situation.

In the movie, we see the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge get called into the picture around this time, and that is true. But, in the true story, the USS Bainbridge was not the only U.S. Navy ship involved—because, as we learned earlier—the Maersk Alabama was also not the only ship that had been hijacked by Somali pirates recently. So, there was a U.S. Navy presence in the area. There was another frigate, USS Halyburton, who was sent to deal with the hostage situation alongside Bainbridge.

And something else we don’t see in the movie is that the pirates’ ships also started to converge on the situation. Remember when we talked about the Taiwanese fishing vessel the pirates used as a “mother ship” of sorts? Well, as the Navy arrived on scene, so, too, did about four other ships all under pirate control. On those four ships were the crew held hostage by the pirates, so over 50 hostages from countries around the world.

Since Maersk Alabama was the only U.S. ship hijacked, though, and Captain Phillips was the captain of said ship…that’s why the movie’s story focuses more on the U.S.-centric version of the story. Also, because it’s based on Captain Phillips’ book, of course.

So, if you recall, the pirates boarded Maersk Alabama on April 8^th. On April 9^th, the Bainbridge and Halyburton arrived on scene and stayed just outside of the range of fire from the pirates. Instead, they used UAVs to get intelligence on the lifeboat and the situation as a whole.

By the way, the lifeboat is a covered lifeboat. The movie shows it pretty well, but if you’re like me and you think of the Titanic lifeboats—well, this happened in 2009 and not 1912, so obviously the lifeboat is a little different haha! Before long, the Navy made contact with the lifeboat and started to try negotiating with the pirates for Captain Phillips’ release—as well as the 54 other hostages on the other pirate-held boats.

On April 10^th, another Navy ship, the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer arrived at the scene, and negotiations continued with the pirates. The next day, everything changed when the pirates fired on USS Halyburton. No one was hurt, and Halyburton didn’t shoot back—no doubt not wanting to make things worse. I mean, Halyburton isn’t the world’s largest military ship, but it’s still a 453-foot-long battle-ready military ship with an array of armaments that could easily take out the 28-foot lifeboat if they really wanted to.

With Captain Phillips still held hostage on the lifeboat, though, Halyburton held their fire.

We don’t really see this in the movie, but in the true story’s timeline, April 11^th was also when Maersk Alabama finally arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, with the rest of the ship’s crew who had gotten it back underway after the pirates made their escape in the lifeboat. The U.S. Navy was involved in that, too, and escorted Maersk Alabama the rest of the way to ensure no other pirates would try to capture her again.

Meanwhile, back in the hostage situation, when the pirates fired on Halyburton, the U.S. Navy’s position changed from attempting to negotiate a release, to arranging a rescue. To help with that, they managed to convince Muse to come aboard Bainbridge for the negotiations the following day, April 12^th.

And so, the end of the movie is quite accurate to the end of the true story.

With Muse aboard Bainbridge, three SEAL Team Six snipers coordinated to simultaneously shoot the remaining three pirates on the lifeboat at the same time. Then, the Navy swooped in to rescue Captain Phillips, and with no more hostage to negotiate, Muse was arrested aboard Bainbridge. They never did find the $30,000, although some conspiracies have arisen that perhaps members of the SEAL Team Six took it before anyone else noticed—that’s never been proven one way or the other, though.

After the situation was handled at sea, Muse was taken back to the United States where he stood trial. Despite what his mother said about him being 16, Muse himself said he was 18, so he was tried as an adult. A few weeks later, in May of 2009, Captain Phillips sold his story to be told in what would become both the 2010 memoir from Phillips as well as the 2013 Paul Greengrass-directed movie we’ve learned about today.

September 30th, 331 BCE. Persia.

We’ll start this week by going back into ancient history from the 2004 Alexander movie.

Just a few minutes into the beginning of the movie we’ll find an event from this week in history as the camera pans across the desert. There are a few clouds in the sky, but it’s hardly a blue sky—more of a hazy mix of gray and an orange that, along with the sand in front of us, makes for a very one-colored landscape.

There’s some text on the screen telling us we’re in Gaugamela, Persia. That’s in modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan.

As we see a man on a horse, another man’s voice is narrating the story. He says it was mad. 40,000 of us against hundreds of thousands of them under Darius. East and West had come together to decide the fate of the known world.

That night, the soldiers camp in the desert. Collin Ferrell’s version of Alexander the Great looks at the moon along with Jared Leto’s character, Hephaestion. He says the moon is a bad omen, to which Alexander says it’s a bad omen for Darius.

They go on, talking a bit more about the battle to come before Alexander goes to his tent while Hephaestion walks off.

The next day, the sun is bright in the sky. We see scores of soldiers marching. The camera cuts between Alexander offering up a cow as a sacrifice and the feet of scores of marching soldiers. Dust gets kicked up as they’re marching. Immediately above the soldiers, the sky is darkened with the lines of long spears carried by the soldiers.

After the sacrifice is made, Alexander jumps on his horse and the camera flies into the sky for an overhead view. Among the sand in the desert, the soldiers are too many to count. The lines of soldiers we can see quickly fade into the dust and sand being kicked up as the men are marching. The battle is about to begin.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Alexander

In the show notes I’ll have a link to the deep dive that we did back on episode #157 of Based on a True Story for the entire movie, but for this week’s event, I actually backed up a day to September 30^th because what we just watched in the movie are the events leading up to the Battle of Gaugamela that happened on October 1^st, 331 BCE when Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia.

The movie’s mention of 40,000 men against hundreds of thousands is a generalization, but it’s close enough. In the true story, Alexander had 47,000 soldiers under his command while Darius had anywhere from 50,000 to over a million soldiers.

As you can imagine, that’s a huge discrepancy in the numbers. But I guess that’s something that can happen about an event that took place thousands of years ago.

And to be fair, most historians today dispute there being over a million soldiers—that comes from some ancient sources. For example, a Greek historian who lived at the time, Arrian, estimated 40,000 cavalry and 1,000,000 infantry for the Persians. Another ancient historian estimated 800,000 infantry and 200,000 cavalry. Another estimated just 1,000,000 troops without breaking them down into cavalry and infantry. Yet another said 45,000 cavalry and only 200,000 infantry.

Only.

200,000 is still a huge army for a battle. But, you get the point of how conflicting accounts make it difficult to know exactly how many were there. Generally, modern estimates range between 50,000 and 120,000 soldiers altogether for the Persians.

On the Greek side, most historians agree the army under the command of Alexander the Great was about 47,000. There seems to be less dispute about that, but anyway you look at it, the Greeks were outnumbered.

Perhaps that’s one reason why the battle is something we still talk about to this day.

Times were different in 331 BCE, and both Darius and Alexander themselves led the attack with their soldiers. After some intense fighting, the decisive blow took place when Alexander charged with a giant wedge of soldiers against the Persian infantry. They managed to weaken the Persian center where Darius was located.

Remember the name Arrian that I mentioned a moment ago? Arrian was a Greek historian who lived from around 86 to around 160 CE, so he wasn’t alive during 331 BCE when the battle was—but, of course, he was still closer to the events than we are today. Arrian’s book called The Anabasis of Alexander is one of the best sources we have about Alexander the Great.

Here’s a quote from Arrian about the turning point in the Battle of Gaugamela:

For a short time there ensued a hand-to-hand fight; but when the Macedonian cavalry, commanded by Alexander himself, pressed on vigorously, thrusting themselves against the Persians and striking their faces with their spears, and when the Macedonian phalanx in dense array and bristling with long pikes had also made an attack upon them, all things together appeared full of terror to Darius, who had already long been in a state of fear, so that he was the first to turn and flee.

By the end of October 1^st, Alexander won what many consider one of his finest and most decisive victories in the face of overwhelming odds. On the other side, the Persian King Darius III did manage to escape on horseback, but it was considered to be the beginning of the end for the First Persian Empire, which later fell completely to the Greeks and Alexander the Great.

October 1st, 1961. New York.

Our next event happened on Tuesday this week, and we’ll find it about an hour and 52 minutes into the made-for-TV movie called 61*.

We’re on a baseball field. The camera dollies down just behind home plate, so we can see a perfect angle of the batter, catcher, and umpire on the right side of the camera frame. On the left side, the pitcher stands on the mound. In the distance behind them is the crowd in the stands.

At the plate is number 9, and we can see from the uniform he’s on the New York Yankees. After a few moments, he gets into position in the batter’s box. The pitcher, wearing a Boston Red Sox away uniform, nods to the catcher the approval of the next pitch. Then, he winds, and throws.

The batter swings. We can hear the crack of the bat as the ball goes soaring into right field. The announcer is excited. It’s going back, back…the camera cuts to the crowd in the outfield looking up. The outfielder races to the fence, tracking the ball. He gets to the wall just in time to see the ball land a few rows into the stands.

And the crowd goes wild!

The true story behind that scene in the movie 61*

That short sequence in the movie is a depiction of Roger Maris hitting his 61^st home run of the 1961 season, breaking Babe Ruth’s record that he had set in 1927. We’ll learn more about that and the movie’s title in a moment, but before we do that, let’s do our fact-check of the movie because it is correct to show Maris hitting his 61^st homer off the Red Sox, but there’s more to the story that we don’t see there.

It was the final game of the 1961 season when the New York Yankees were playing their rivals, the Boston Red Sox. On the mound for the Red Sox was a rookie starter by the name of Tracy Stallard. Technically, Stallard had his major league debut the year prior in 1960, but he only had four appearances that year, so he qualified as a rookie in 1961.

That day, Stallard managed to get Roger Maris to pop out to left field during his first at bat. That was in the first inning. Maris came to bat again in the fourth. On a 2-0 pitch, Maris hit a fastball into the right field stands for his 61^st home run.

Oh, I mentioned the asterisk in the movie’s title of 61*. The reason for that is because in 1961, the American League expanded with the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators joining the league—the previous Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis after the 1960 season to become the Minnesota Twins. With more teams in the league, they decided to change the number of games played from 154 to 162. 1961 was the first year the American League did that, the National League didn’t follow with the 162-game season until the following year, 1962.

So, when Roger Maris was on his record-setting season in 1961, baseball was in the midst of a lot of changes. Not only the expanded number of games, but with new teams in the league that meant there were a lot of players in the majors who had just been called up from the minors.

In other words, a lot of people felt the teams were not quite as good as they had been just a year prior with 50 more players added to the league in the two brand-new expansion teams.

And, in a nutshell, that’s why the asterisk is on Maris’ record. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 154 games. In 154 games of the 1961 season, Roger Maris had 59 home runs. It wasn’t until the final game of the 162-game season for Roger Maris to hit his 61^st home run. Since it took Maris more games to break the record, a lot of people questioned whether or not the record was a legitimate record.

More specifically, it was a New York sportswriter named Dick Young who suggested the asterisk. Officially, the Commissioner of Baseball removed any asterisk from Maris’ record in 1991, but whether or not there’s an asterisk is still something many people debate today, due in large part to the 1998 season. That’s when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Maris’ record with Sosa hitting 66 home runs and McGwire hitting 70 home runs. That record would then be broken three years later when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in the 2001 season. None of those three players, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds, have been inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame because of their alleged use of PEDs.

So, that started to bring up Maris’ record again because if he had the asterisk in his, should Sosa, McGwire and/or Bonds have one? For some baseball fans, the debate continues to this day.

As a little side note, it’s worth pointing out that Maris’ record of 61 home runs was still the most by a New York Yankee until Aaron Judge hit 62 in 2022.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, though, check out the 2001 movie called 61*. Roger Maris’ at-bat with the 61^st home run starts at about an hour and 52 minutes into the movie.

Oh, and since I mentioned Babe Ruth, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that it was also this week in history when Babe Ruth’s called shot took place. That was on October 1^st, 1932.

The New York Yankees were playing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field for game three of the World Series when things got to be pretty chippy on the field with players on both sides doing their fair share of name-calling. When Babe Ruth came to bat in the fifth inning, he made a gesture that looks like he was pointing to the center field bleachers. Then, sure enough, he hit a home run right to those center field bleachers.

Was he calling his shot? This is another thing that’s up for debate. Some people say that’s exactly what he was doing. Footage of the event that you can find online certainly looks like that could be what he’s doing. But, again, it’s footage from 1932 so not quite the high-definition footage we have today. Some say he wasn’t calling his shot but simply gesturing his bat toward fans or other players or something else.

Regardless of what you believe, no one can deny that Babe Ruth calling his shot is an event that has gone down in sports history, and it happened this week.

Oh, and to bring it back to movies, there is a scene about 11 minutes into the 1984 movie The Natural where a nicknamed “The Whammer” that’s supposed to be kind of like Babe Ruth called his shot in a contest between himself and the star of the movie, Robert Redford’s character, Roy Hobbs.

Of course, that happens in a contest at a fair and not the World Series. “The Whammer” may have been based on Babe Ruth, but he’s a fictional character. Just like Roy Hobbs is a fictional character. So, that scene may only be inspired by a true story, but it’s enough of a reason to watch The Natural if you’re looking for more baseball movies to watch this week!

The last baseball movie I’d recommend is a documentary, not a fictional movie. It’s called Say Hey, Willie Mays! from HBO and as you can probably guess it’s all about Willie Mays. I’m throwing that into the baseball recommendation this week because it was actually last week in history when Willie Mays made what we now know simply as “The Catch.”

That happened during game one of the World Series on September 29^th, 1954. With the score tied 2-2 in the 8^th inning, Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians hit a fly ball to deep center field. It traveled some 420 feet or so, that’s about 130 meters, before Willie Mays made an over-the-shoulder catch while sprinting from where he had been positioned in shallow center field. In a single motion, he caught the ball, spun around and threw the ball back to the infield preventing any runners from advancing. It was such an amazing play that it’s been regarded as one of the greatest plays in sports.

So, hop in the show notes for lots of great baseball movies from this week in history!

October 3, 1993. Mogadishu, Somalia.

Our third event falls on Thursday this week, and we’ll find it about 43 minutes into the movie called Black Hawk Down as we find ourselves in the middle of Mogadishu, Somalia. There’s dirt street lined with buildings on either side. Driving down the street is a line of American Humvees, each vehicle is equipped with a machine gun at the top and manned by a soldier in full uniform. As they move forward, people in the streets start running the opposite direction as the Humvees. Whatever is about to go down, these civilians don’t want to get involved and I don’t blame them.

The camera changes angles now and we’re transported to the helicopters flying over the city, offering air support to the Humvees below. It looks like there are four helicopters, each of them loaded full of American soldiers so much so they we can see them sitting partially hanging out the open doors on either side of the helicopters.

Down on the ground, we’re inside a local resident’s car now. He watches as the four helicopters touch down in a line on the street. As the helicopters touch down, the soldiers jump out with their weapons ready. Another helicopter touches down on the top of a nearby building, the soldiers inside hopping out to get an overhead view of the street.

Almost immediately, these soldiers open fire on armed men across the way on another building. The four helicopters lift back off, leaving the soldiers on the ground. Or, well, some on the rooftops, as I just mentioned, but you know what I mean—they’re not on the helicopters anymore.

The camera angle shows us the helicopters leaving and then behind them we can see three more larger helicopters arriving.

But we don’t see much more of that yet as the camera changes again, following some of the soldiers who are entering one of the buildings. Weapons hot, they open fire on people inside. We can’t even see who they are before the soldiers shoot them, although it looks like they’re carrying weapons.

Back outside, the three larger military helicopters are taking up a triangle sort of positioning around a single building. On that building is the word “Olympic.”

These helicopters don’t touch down, but instead, they’re hovering low to the ground as ropes are thrown out either side. By this point, the blades on the helicopters have kicked up so much dirt and dust from the streets below that the normally blue sky has a tint of orange to it as we see from ground level the American soldiers rappel from the ropes.

Back with the Humvees, that line stops now. It’s hard to tell where they’re located from what we’re seeing in the movie. Quickly the movie cuts to another scene of American soldiers kicking in a door. Inside, a bunch of men put their hands up at the sight of the soldiers pointing their rifles at them.

There is someone firing at the Americans, forcing them to take cover.

One of the soldiers from the Humvees looks around the corner to see a helicopter hovering in the street with more American soldiers rappelling down the ropes. So, I guess the Humvees must be just around the corner from the helicopters by the “Olympic” building.

The four smaller helicopters from earlier aren’t anywhere to be seen, and now the three larger helicopters are flying away, too. Except they’re not going far. We can hear what must be the pilots talking to each other, talking about how chalk’s on the ground, so now they’re going to go into a holding pattern to provide sniper cover from the air.

Down below, things are getting more intense as a truck filled with armed men shows up and begins firing back at the American soldiers on the ground. Among the machine gun and rifles, we can see some of the men running up the stairs to a rooftop carrying rocket-propelled grenades: RPGs.

Back inside one of the helicopters, a soldier sees the RPG coming right at them. The pilot manages to move the helicopter out of the way just in time. A soldier on the ropes who was rappelling to the ground loses his grip and falls to the ground—we can’t see him hit because there’s so much dirt being kicked up by the helicopters that he just falls into the abyss.

Another soldier hops out to help his fallen comrade. The soldier who fell isn’t moving. The Americans and Somalis continue shooting at each other. After a while, the action shifts and we can hear the soldiers talking about as it’s time for extraction. We can see some men who seem to be prisoners from one of the rooms the soldiers burst into being guarded as they walk back to where the helicopters pick them up.

The armed resistance is increasing, though, and we can see an armed man leading a couple others with RPGs. Finding a view from below, he instructs them to shoot at one of the helicopters. The Americans inside see the RPG, but not before the tail is hit. A burst of flame and smoke pours out of the tail as the helicopter starts spinning around. Inside, alarms are beeping. Back at the command post, we can see the man in charge of the American’s mission stand up as he watches a screen with the smoking helicopter.

“Wolcott’s bird is hit,” we can hear someone saying.

Down below the American soldiers look up in disbelief as the helicopter continues to spin out of control.

“Super six-one is going down,” we can hear one of the soldiers saying.

Inside the helicopter, the pilot yells at the other men to hold on. Alarms continue beeping as he tries to control the ‘copter. The spinning helicopter manages to make it to a clearing between buildings before it crashes in a huge plume of smoke and dirt.

The true story behind that scene in the movie Black Hawk Down

That sequence comes from the 2001 film directed by Ridley Scott called Black Hawk Down, and it depicts an event that really did happen this week in history when not one, but two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down on October 3^rd, 1993, in what we now know as the Battle of Mogadishu.

Or, I guess, because of the movie and the book it’s based on it’s also often referred to simply as the “Black Hawk Down Incident.”

What we didn’t get to hear in the brief description leading up to the events of October 3^rd was the reason the American soldiers were there that day.

In a nutshell, Somalia had just had a military coup by a group called the Somali National Alliance, or SNA, led by a man named Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Soon after, the United Nations launched an operation to offer food and relief supplies to the country’s affected citizens. So, from an overall perspective, that’s why the American soldiers were there as a part of the United Nations’ mission.

The mission for that particular day, October 3^rd, 1993, was to try and capture some of the SNA’s senior leadership. If you recall, the movie shows a building with the word “Olympic” on it. That would be a point for the movie’s historical accuracy, because it is true that intel had placed some of Aidid’s leadership in a building near the Olympic Hotel.

The movie also got the timing right.

By 3:40 PM, the four helicopters we see at first in the movie arrived. The movie doesn’t say exactly what they are, but they’re Boeing MH-6 Little Bird light helicopters. Their purpose that day was to carry rockets and ammo while authorized to kill any SNA soldiers who shot at them.

Down below, the noise of the helicopters had alerted Somalis in the city of their presence. The Americans’ mission was all about speed and by 4:00 PM, the Delta Force commandos had completed their mission and successfully captured 24 of Aidid’s senior leadership.

“Laurie” was the code word given to let everyone know the prisoners were secured and it was time to go home.

And just like we see in the movie, that’s when everything went wrong for the Americans when an RPG hit one of the Black Hawk helicopters. That was at 4:20 PM, so not long after the prisoners were secured.

In the movie, we hear them talking about Super Six-One, which is true because that was the designation for the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that was shot down.

All of a sudden, the mission wasn’t just about getting out of there with the prisoners anymore. They had to rescue the soldiers in the downed helicopter. While most didn’t know it yet, both pilots had already been killed in the crash and a couple other soldiers were badly wounded. The remaining two soldiers inside set up to defend their ground until help came.

Oh, and one of those pilots was who we heard mentioned in the movie when they’re referring to “Wolcott’s bird.” That would be Chief Warrant Officer 3 Clifton Wolcott, one of the pilots of Super Six-One who was killed in the crash.

The line of Humvees we see in the movie were tasked with making their way to Super Six-One, while one of the smaller helicopters we saw in the movie, an MH-6 Little Bird, went to cover the crash site until the ground forces could get there.

But that posed a logistical problem because even though the helicopter crashed about 300 yards from the target building, the forces on the ground couldn’t see that. So, they asked for help from the helicopters still in the air and slowly made their way in the direction of the crash site.

Another Black Hawk designated Super Six-Eight was sent to the crash site. While the rescue team was rappelling from Super Six-Eight, that helicopter was also hit by an RPG. It didn’t crash, thankfully, but it was forced to return to base.

Another Black Hawk, Super Six-Four, went to the crash site to help both support the soldiers on the ground while also giving a visual indicator to the troops trying to find the crash site from below.

Things went from bad to worse when, at 4:40 PM, Super Six-Four was hit by an RPG, sending it crashing down into some buildings below.

There were now two crashed Black Hawk helicopters. It was the start of what would be a 15-hour rescue mission that would leave 80 American soldiers wounded, 18 American soldiers dead and an estimated 1,000 or more Somali fighters killed.

As you can tell, there’s a lot more to the story of what happened on October 3^rd and 4^th, so if you want to take a deep dive into the true story, scroll back to episode #105 of Based on a True Story where we covered the movie Black Hawk Down.

If you just want to watch the movie, of course, we started our segment about 43 minutes into the movie, but really, pretty much the entire movie takes place this week in history.

Historical birthdays from the movies

This week there are two historical birthdays on Wednesday!

Starting with Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, who was born on October 2^nd, 1847, in the city of Posen in the Kingdom of Prussia—today that’s in Poland.

Paul von Hindenburg was remembered in history as the man who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and then became the President of Germany who proposed Adolf Hitler become the chancellor. Hindenburg remained the President until his death when Hitler dissolved the office of the president so that he could take those powers, too. Because of his association with World War I and Hitler, Von Hindenburg has been portrayed in a lot of movies and TV shows, but if you haven’t seen it yet then I’d recommend the two-part TV miniseries called Hitler: The Rise of Evil. In that series, Von Hindenburg is played by the great actor Peter O’Toole.

Or if you want something more focused on entertainment and not quite as historically accurate, Hindenburg is played by Rainer Bock in the 2017 Wonder Woman movie.

Also on October 2^nd but in the year 1869, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India. Better known as Mahatma Ghandi, he was born in British-controlled India and was a lawyer and activist who was influential in leading India toward a peaceful independence from British rule. Probably the most popular movie portraying Ghandi’s life is the 1982 film from Richard Attenborough simply called Ghandi where he was played by Ben Kingsley.

On October 5^th, 1902, Ray Kroc was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Ray was best known as the businessman who bought a fast-food company from the McDonald brothers in 1961 and turned it into the McDonald’s brand we all know today. That story was told in the 2016 movie called The Founder where Ray Kroc is played by Michael Keaton. We compared that movie with history back on episode #90 of Based on a True Story.

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

Tuesday this week marks the 14^th anniversary of David Fincher’s biographical drama about the founding of Facebook. In The Social Network, we follow Jesse Eisenberg’s character of Mark Zuckerberg as he’s a Harvard University student back in 2003.

According to the movie, he’s dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright, played by Rooney Mara, and in response to the breakup he creates a website called “FaceMash.” That website basically lets Harvard students compare and rank the attractiveness of female students, and it’s an instant hit—so much so that it lands Zuckerberg in trouble with the university administration.

Inspired by the success of “FaceMash,” Zuckerberg decides to create a social networking site for Harvard students, which he calls “The Facebook.”

Meanwhile, we meet two other students named Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The identical twins are both played by Armie Hammer in the movie, and they approach Zuckerberg with an idea for their social networking site, “Harvard Connection.” Zuckerberg agrees to help them but instead uses their concept as a foundation for his own project.

“The Facebook” quickly expands to other Ivy League schools and eventually spreads to universities across the country. Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, is Zuckerberg’s best friend and co-founder of Facebook. He serves as the company’s CFO, providing the initial funding for the venture. However, tensions arise between the two as the platform grows in popularity.

Sean Parker, portrayed by Justin Timberlake, enters the picture as the co-founder of Napster and becomes involved with Facebook. Parker convinces Zuckerberg to relocate the company to Silicon Valley and pursue aggressive expansion, leading to a rift between Zuckerberg and Saverin. Eventually, Saverin’s shares in the company are diluted, and he is effectively pushed out of the business.

The film is framed by two lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg. The first is from the Winklevoss twins, who claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea. The second is from Saverin, who sues Zuckerberg for diluting his shares in the company. These legal proceedings are interspersed with flashbacks to the creation and rise of Facebook.

As the lawsuits are settled, the film concludes with Zuckerberg alone, refreshing his Facebook page while awaiting a friend request acceptance from his ex-girlfriend Erica. The movie ends with text stating the outcomes of the lawsuits: the Winklevoss twins received a settlement of $65 million, and Saverin’s name was restored to the list of Facebook’s founders.

The true story behind The Social Network

So, that’s all from the movie’s version of events.

Shifting from the fiction and into the fact-checking, I’m sure you already know who Mark Zuckerberg is, and maybe you’ve heard of the Winklevoss twins. Erica Albright, Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker…those are all real people, too, and the movie does a pretty good job of setting up who they are in the true story.

The movie is also correct to show Mark Zuckerberg setting up a website called “FaceMash” that was basically comparing two women side-by-side and letting users vote on which one was more attractive. While the movie doesn’t really focus on this, in the true story Mark Zuckerberg based his “FaceMash” website that he built in 2003 on a website from 2000 called “Hot or Not” that, well, is pretty self-explanatory on what it did.

While Tinder didn’t come around until 2012, a lot of people have compared that style of swiping left or right as the same as concept. Except, of course, Zuckerberg’s “FaceMash” website only included voting for women.

To get photos of students for his own website, Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard student directories. Those directories were called “facebooks” – so you can get a sense of where the name came from. You can also get an idea for how happy students were when they found out their photos were on FaceMash without their permission. He launched FaceMash on October 28^th, 2003, and the movie is correct to show that almost immediately it was both very popular—and also something that Zuckerberg got into huge trouble over.

After all, he had used photos without permission and used them to objectify women without their consent. People considered it both a violation legal copyright infringement, as well as just being ethically immoral.

Zuckerberg managed to avoid getting expelled, and shut down FaceMash after just three days.

In the movie, we see the lesson Zuckerberg learned from this was to find a way to get people to give their photos and information for free. That’s where, according to the movie, the Winklevoss twins’ idea of “The Harvard Connection” comes in.

And that’s basically correct, because as Zuckerberg was facing the repercussions of FaceMash, enter the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, along with another student named Divya Narendra. He’s played by Max Minghella in the movie.

And it is true that those three worked on a new networking website they called “The Harvard Connection” back in late 2002, and into 2003. When Zuckerberg’s whole FaceMash debacle made him a name on campus, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins asked Zuckerberg if he’d join their project as the lead developer for “The Harvard Connection.”

The idea they had for “The Harvard Connection” was basically to be a social networking platform online for Harvard students—with an eventual plan to grow beyond Harvard—it was eventually renamed “ConnectU.”

So, that’s how Mark Zuckerberg got involved in what was then The Harvard Connection. At the same time as he was helping them, he also recognized the idea of a social networking platform was the perfect way to get people to upload their information into his own platform—the next “FaceMash,” so to speak.

And so it was that, on February 4^th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched a new website he called “The Facebook” after Harvard’s internal directories. This time, though, he wasn’t hacking the directories to get information. He allowed users to upload their information to share with others. And so, the concept of what we know as Facebook now was born.

The Facebook started getting popular fast—and the movie is also correct to show that the Winklevoss twins and Narendra were not happy when they found out about Zuckerberg’s new website. After all, it was basically what they were wanting to do! On top of that, they also felt like Zuckerberg was slacking on developing their platform while working on his own competitor.

We see that in the movie, but to get a better understanding, it’s helpful to know the timeline of it all.

So, if you recall, it was at the end of October in 2003 that FaceMash was shut down. In November of 2003, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins asked Zuckerberg to help with their project. He agreed. Then, on February 4^th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched The Facebook on his own while still developing The Harvard Connection. It took a few months, but as The Facebook got more popular, around May of 2004, the rest of The Harvard Connection team found out about The Facebook.

Well, I guess technically by then they had rebranded from The Harvard Connection to ConnectU in the hopes of expanding beyond Harvard.

In September of 2004, ConnectU officially filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg claiming he stole their ideas to start Facebook. In return, Facebook filed a lawsuit against ConnectU in 2005 claiming they stole Facebook’s web design for ConnectU.

As you can imagine, the lawsuits didn’t make either side happy for quite some time…until, in 2008, they finally agreed on a settlement that saw Facebook handing over about $20 million in cash as well as over a million Facebook shares—another $45 million or so in valuation at the time.

At the time of the settlement in 2008, Facebook was worth about $15 billion dollars, thanks in no small part to an October 2007 investment from Microsoft of about $240 million for 1.6% of Facebook.

Oh! And I didn’t even mention Justin Timberlake’s character, Sean Parker.

It is true that Sean Parker was the very first president of Facebook.

It’s also true that he’s the same guy who founded Napster, although the movie focuses more on Facebook so it doesn’t really tell that part of the story.

In a nutshell, the true story for Sean Parker’s involvement started years earlier back around the turn of the century in 1999 when Parker and his partner Shawn Fanning launched the file-sharing service they called Napster—named after Fanning’s high-school nickname. Both Parker and Fanning were still teenagers when they launched Napster, after all. And that gives you a little insight into Sean Parker, because he didn’t go to Harvard like Mark Zuckerberg did.

In fact, Sean Parker never went to any college. At 16, he won a tech fair by developing a web browser. That was back in 1995, and Netscape Navigator launched in 1994, so the idea of a web browser was still new at the time—and that win earned him an internship at a company called FreeLoader. That was the first company started by Mark Pincus, who you might know as the guy who started Zynga. You remember FarmVille and Words with Friends?

So, that’s who Sean Parker worked for throughout high school. As Sean said in an interview for Forbes, “I wasn’t going to school. I was technically in a co-op program but in truth was just going to work.”

He also said he made about $80,000 that year which, adjusted for inflation, is about the same as $150,000 today. So, his parents were okay with him not going to college.

And that’s what he was doing when he met Shawn Fanning on a dial-up bulletin board. Together, the two built and launched Napster in June of 1999. It gained popularity to help infuse them with some investment money, but they also started to run into legal troubles. That part of the story comes from the band Metallica. They had a song called “I Disappear” on the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack that showed up on Napster before it was officially released.

In April of 2000, they officially filed a lawsuit against Napster, followed soon by other musicians like Dr. Dre as well as the RIAA overall.

The tricky part to all this, though, is the way Napster worked isn’t by hosting the files themselves. If you’re familiar with BitTorrent, that’s a technology that came out in the wake of Napster and works basically the same way. When you installed Napster, it’d scan your hard drive for any MP3 files—technically you could do more than just MP3s as Napster’s software evolved, but MP3s and music was its focus. So, it’d scan for MP3s and create an index of the files you had on your computer. Then, someone else could request that file and Napster would transfer it from your computer to theirs.

The concept is called peer-to-peer, and what that meant is that Napster didn’t actually store the files themselves. So, when they were hit with lawsuits to remove all the copyrighted files—they couldn’t really do that. Napster was forced to cease operations in 2001 and filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

Of course, as is often the case for tech companies, other companies buy up their assets and branding. So, as a little side note, if you look up Napster today—it still exists, or maybe it’s better to say it exists again, because it’s a completely legal streaming service now.

So, in 2002, Parker started up a new company called Plaxo. It was basically a souped-up address book in Microsoft Outlook, but at the time it was also a precursor to social networking. Parker was forced out of Plaxo by investors in 2004, so when he saw “The Facebook” as it was called then on his girlfriend’s computer while she was a student at Stanford and immediately saw the potential.

Thanks to Sean’s past with Napster, he had connections with investors and helped bring on Peter Thiel as one of the first outside investors for Facebook. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he co-founded PayPal alongside Elon Musk, which he was also the CEO of until they sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

So, around 2004, Thiel was flush with cash and invested $500,000 for about 10.2% of the company. He sold all those shares in 2012 for about $1 billion, although he’s still on the board—actually, there’s a Wall Street Journal article from 2019 that I’ll link to in the show notes if you want to read about some of the controversy swirling around him and his pressuring of Facebook not to fact-check political ads.

And I’m sure you’ve seen the aftermath of those decisions as Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress in April of 2018 about Facebook’s role in the election.

September 24^th, 1780. New York.

At 36 minutes into the third season, episode 9 of AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, we’ll find an event that happened exactly 244 years ago today during the American Revolutionary War.

Hitting play on the series, we’re in a wooded encampment of American soldiers. In the foreground is a cannon, with horses and a tent in the background. On the right side, everything is gathered around a rustic, wooden building. Off in the distance, behind the building, a uniformed officer in blue and white can be seen riding a horse into the encampment. Taking off his helmet, he tells one of the soldiers he’s looking for Colonel Jameson. They point him to the building. Handing the soldier his helmet, he walks to the building and enters.

Once inside, we can see another uniformed man sitting behind a desk. That must be Colonel Jameson, although there’s no one with that name cast in the series. But we can tell the man walking into the building who just entered the encampment is Seth Numrich’s character, Benjamin Tallmadge.

Tallmadge addresses Jameson inside the building, and we can see another man there playing a game of checkers across from the Colonel. The other man isn’t wearing a uniform at all, and when Tallmadge introduces himself as Major Benjamin Tallmadge from General Washington’s staff, the other man seems to noticeably shy away a bit.

Tallmadge tells the Colonel he was sent to find out what happened last night.

Now the three men are all facing each other, and Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing the non-uniformed man. Colonel Jameson goes on, saying an enemy ship got a little rowdy, but she turned tail after a few shots. Oh, and this man was caught by some Skinners a few hours ago. They said he’s a spy, but he has a letter of pass from General Arnold that they couldn’t read.

Tallmadge looks directly at the other man, who we know from the actor is JJ Feild’s character, Major John Andre. He smiles at Tallmadge saying it was a simple misunderstanding. Tallmadge makes no indication of recognizing Andre.

“Yes, of course,” he says. Then, he asks Jameson for a word between just the two men, and they leave the building together. Once outside, Tallmadge asks Jameson to confirm Andre’s story. Then, Tallmadge asks Jameson if he had any shoes on. Jameson pauses for a moment.

No, he didn’t have any.

You didn’t think that was odd?

Then, turning to look at one of the Skinners standing there, Tallmadge continues to talk to Jameson.

“Or, you didn’t think it was odd that one of the Skinners is wearing a pair of royal officer’s boots?”

We can see one of the men standing there is wearing a nice pair of boots. Tallmadge asks what the man’s name is inside. Jameson thinks for a moment, then he says, “John Anderson.”

Tallmadge thinks for a moment, seemingly racking his brain for that name.

Then, Colonel Jameson continues to speak, saying that he should add that he did have plans for West Point on his person. But we didn’t think anything of it because they were in General Arnold’s handwriting. Tallmadge is in disbelief, “Wait a minute, what? And you just thought to tell me this now?”

Jameson stands a little taller now, “Of course not. It’s all in my report to General Arnold.”

Tallmadge pauses for a moment, as the realization starts to set in across his face before rushing away.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Turn: Washington’s Spies

Let’s start our fact-checking of this week’s event by clarifying the timeline, because the series doesn’t give us any indication of dates or anything. But, if I had to guess, I’d say this segment from the movie happened on September 24^th, 1780, because of a line in the series where Colonel Jameson talks about “John Anderson” being caught the night before.

And we know from history that the real Major John Andre was captured on September 23^rd, 1780—so, the night before the meeting we see in the series.

The TV show is correct to mention the name John Anderson, too, because that was the name John Andre used undercover. And it’s also correct to suggest Benjamin Tallmadge was involved as part of Washington’s Spies—as to borrow from the title of the series.

So, in the true story, Major General Benedict Arnold was in the inner circle for the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington. But, Arnold grew disillusioned with his position in the Army because, quite simply, he was going broke and the Continental Army wasn’t paying him what he felt he deserved. So, he offered to turn over the fort at West Point in exchange for about £20,000 and a position in the British Army. While it’s hard to convert British pounds of 1780 to today’s U.S. dollars, a rough ballpark would be about $42 million today.

After nearly a year of communicating in secret, Major Andre took a British ship called Vulture to meet face-to-face with General Arnold of the Continental Army. They met in the evening hours of September 21^st, 1780, and talked all night until the sun started to come up on September 22^nd. Even as the sun came up, Major Andre decided to keep the conversation with Arnold going, so instead of going back to Vulture, he and Arnold decided to go to a nearby house. It was owned by a man named Joshua Hett Smith at the time—he’s not in the TV series at all. Today, though, Smith’s house has another name: The Treason House. That’s thanks to the meeting between Andre and Arnold that took place there. At least, that was a nickname it had before it was demolished. I’ll throw a link in the show notes of a photo of what the house looked like in case you want to see.

So, at Smith’s house on September 22^nd is where Andre and Arnold continued their conversations. Meanwhile, though, the presence of a British ship on the river drew the gunfire of some Continental soldiers. That’s what the TV series is talking about when we hear Colonel Jameson telling Tallmadge about a ship that turned tail after a few shots.

They couldn’t have known it at the time, but that’s a nice little historical level of detail there because the ship they’re talking about is Vulture, which had delivered Andre to the meeting with Arnold and then once it shot at, Vulture was forced to retreat, leaving Andre stranded.

When it was finally time to leave, Arnold convinced Andre that he’d be safer going undercover on land instead of trying to sneak back to the British ship that was long gone by now.

So, that’s why we see Major John Andre in the series without a British uniform on—because he took it off to try and sneak past the American lines. He tried to do that in the early morning hours of September 23^rd, and I say “tried” for a reason. He was not successful.

If you remember from the TV series, Colonel Jameson tells Tallmadge that Andre had a passport from General Arnold that the Skinners couldn’t read.

The term “Skinners” we hear in the series are referring to slang term used in American-held territory for fighters loyal to the British Crown. That was a real term, but it’s how Colonel Jameson says the Skinners couldn’t read the pass that’s a change from what really happened.

In the true story, the men who captured John Andre were named John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. Those were the three Americans who stopped Andre on the morning of September 23^rd, 1780. They didn’t have to read any passport from Andre, because he told them exactly who he was. You see, one of those men, John Paulding, just happened to be wearing a captured Hessian uniform.

Hessians were Germans who were serving in the British army.

So, Hessians were loyal to the British Crown. When Andre saw the Hessian uniform, he assumed the three men were British soldiers. He asked if they belonged to the “lower party” referring to the British camp to the south of them. They said they do, so John Andre told them he was a British officer who was on important business. It must’ve been quite a shock to Andre when the three men replied with, “We’re Americans” and arrested him.

Only then did Andre change his story, telling the men he was actually an American. That’s when he showed them the passport that General Arnold gave him, but again the men didn’t even need to read it like we see in the series because at that point they already were suspicious of this man.

Just like we see in the series, it is true that John Andre was taken to a nearby camp run by Lt. Colonel John Jameson. And Jameson had no idea of Andre’s true intentions, but he was aware of the passport from General Arnold. Of course, Jameson also had no idea of Arnold’s true intentions, either, so Jameson was going to send Andre directly to Arnold!

Very very similar to what we see happening in the TV show, Major Benjamin Tallmadge arrived at Jameson’s camp while Andre was there. He was suspicious of Andre, and instead of sending Andre to General Arnold, he convinced Jameson to send Andre and the letters from Arnold that Andre was carrying to General Washington.

As fate would have it, though, Jameson knew what all this implied. But he still wasn’t sure about Arnold’s guilt. And remember, as far as he’s concerned, General Arnold is still Colonel Jameson’s superior officer at this point—because, technically, he still was. If for any reason General Arnold was found not guilty, you can bet General Arnold’s retaliation would fall on Colonel Jameson.

So, Col. Jameson sent Andre to General Washington, and also sent a letter to General Arnold telling him of Andre’s arrest. That gave Arnold enough time to escape, which he did—also this week in history—on September 25^th, 1780.

And while John Andre’s capture and Benedict Arnold’s betrayal was a major moment during the American Revolution, of course, it’s just one small part of the overall story of the spy ring that’s told in AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies.

So, if you want to learn more about the true story, I’ve got a deep-dive episode all about Turn linked in the show notes—that’s episode #139 of Based on a True Story.

September 25^th, 1944. Arnhem, Netherlands.

Our next event happened on the 25^th, so Wednesday this week, and back during World War II. To see how it’s shown in the movies, we’re at about two hours and 42 minutes into the 1977 film A Bridge Too Far.

Picking up a piece of paper, Sean Connery’s character, Maj. Gen. Urquhart, reads it with an air of disgust in his voice. “Withdraw!?”

He turns around, speaking to no one in particular, although we can see some other soldiers in the background.

“Two days, they said, and we’ve been here nine,” he mutters under his breath as he paces across the floor. Again, in disgust, he mutters something about how you’d think we could accomplish one bloody mile. Then, General Urquhart’s demeanor seems to change slightly as he turns to another man in the room. As if finally accepting the piece of paper, he says they have their marching orders.

In the next shot, we see General Urquhart addressing his men. Referring to George Innes’ character, he says MacDonald will stay behind with the radio to give the Germans something to listen to while the rest of the men sneak away. On top of that, some of the medical staff have volunteered to stay behind with the wounded who are too bad to move. Those wounded will replace the men firing, to allow them to escape.

By the time the Germans find out what’s happening, we should all be safely across the river.

And then, under the cover of a rainy night, we see what looks like General Urquhart’s British soldiers making their escape. It’s so dark and the rain is heavy enough that it’s very difficult to see just how many there are, but we can see a line of soldiers all walking along a rope, using it like a guiding line. They stop when they can hear the sound of German voices over the rain.

After a moment, the voices seem to die down, and the line starts moving again. One of the soldiers turns to Urquhart and says something to the effect of how he’s finally starting to believe they’ll make it. And, in the next few scenes, there are more and more soldiers in the cover of night who are walking the same direction toward a large river. General Urquhart watches for a moment before getting into a small boat with a few other soldiers and making his way across the river, too.

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie A Bridge Too Far

That event we’re seeing is the end of the military operation known as Market Garden—a disastrous failure for the Allies during World War II that many historians believe prolonged the war instead of ending it early.

So, let’s start our fact-check with Sean Connery’s character, Major General Urquhart.

He was a real person, and he really was the man in charge of the 1^st Airborne Division for the Battle of Arnhem. That battle was just part of the overall Operation Market Garden, but the movie is correct to show Arnhem as being the last major part of the overall Market Garden that ended in the retreat of Allied forces.

In a nutshell, the way Operation Market Garden worked was the Allies dropped paratroopers at strategic locations just a few miles away from the bridges they were tasked with taking out. That’s why Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart says something to the effect of going a “bloody mile” or something.

The airborne part of the operation commenced on September 17^th, 1944, and the plan was for the troops to hold the bridges until the land forces could meet them. That’s where the name comes from, because the “Market” part of the plan were the paratroopers, to be relieved by the “Garden” part of the operation—the ground troops.

If you remember, in the movie we hear Sean Connery’s version of General Urquhart mention how it was supposed to be two days, and it’s been nine.

Well, it is true that they were supposed to be relieved within 48 hours.

It’s also true that didn’t really go according to plan, though, because there were a lot more Germans in the area than the Allies anticipated. Somewhere around 100,000 Germans were in the area, compared to a little over 41,000 Allied troops. Of course, that’s for the overall operation, for the part of the true story we’re seeing in the movie with General Urquhart, there were about 10,000 of the British 1^st Airborne Division.

But, it’s still important to know the overall military operation, because all that fighting slowed down the reinforcements that were supposed to make it to them. The British paratroopers who had managed to make it to the bridge, there were only about 800 or so that made it to the bridge at Arnhem only to find themselves surrounded and alone. Despite that, and in spite of constant artillery bombardments and ground assaults from the Germans, the British held their positions for four days.

By the time the 21^st of September rolled around, the British at the bridge were being forced to surrender. The Germans continued their heavy assaults on the Allied troops. Still, they held out for a few more days. Finally, it was this week in history during the late-night hours of the 25^th or early morning hours of the 26^th that General Urquhart ordered a withdrawal.

So, that’s the scene in the movie A Bridge Too Far—the Battle of Arnhem, and also the bridge at Arnhem proved to be too much for the Allied troops. And although the scene from the movie we watched today made it hard to see how many soldiers managed to escape, only 2,000 of the 10,000 troops who were dropped managed to get out.

Oh, and just to clarify about the name of the movie. The name “A Bridge Too Far” comes from the book by Cornelius Ryan about Operation Market Garden. That’s the book the movie is based on, and the term “a bridge too far” is referring to the bridge at Arnhem where General Urquhart’s men were at, since it overstretched the Allies and led to the eventual withdrawal.

Would Operation Market Garden have been successful had they not tried to capture the one bridge at Arnhem? Despite that being something the book and movie title implies, in the true story, Operation Market Garden is debated among military historians to this day because as you might imagine, the true story is a lot more complicated.

But, if you want to watch the disastrous end of the operation that happened this week in history, hop in the show notes for where you can watch the movie A Bridge Too Far!

September 28^th, 1978. The Vatican.

At about two and a half hours into the film Godfather 3, we’ll find our next event from Saturday this week as two men dressed in black clergy robes walk down a dimly-lit hallway. The walls are a dark red color, with a huge painting in an ornate frame hanging on the wall, as well as fancy, old chairs and wooden furniture set along the wall. One of the two men is carrying a small tray with a saucer and cup.

As the movie plays, they walk down the marble-floored hallway and around the corner. After a pause, there’s a slight knock at the door. As the door opens, we can only hear someone saying, “Tea, Your Holiness? It will help you sleep” and the man with the steaming hot cup of tea on the saucer walks into the room.

The door closes behind him as the movie shifts to another scene of what looks like a mob hit as the character on the bed is smothered by two other men holding a pillow. Another cut in the movie, and we can see a sequence of even more dead men—apparently others taken out by the mob.

In the luxury box of a play, someone comes up to Al Pacino’s character, Michale Corleone, and whispers something in his ear. It must be something important, because he gets up and leaves with the man. In the dark hallway of the theater, we can hear what sounds like Andy Garcia’s version of Vincent Mancini telling Michael that their man inside the Vatican says something will happen to the Pope.

He’ll have a heart attack?

This is serious.

Michael says this Pope has powerful enemies, we might not be in time to save him. Then, they decide to go back into the play so no one notices them missing.

Back in the room we saw the man enter with the tea cup earlier, now it’s a nun knocking on the same door. She doesn’t wait very long for an answer before she opens the door herself, saying something as she walks into the room. There’s no reply, so she walks further into the room. On the nightstand, she picks up the saucer with what seems to be a now-empty teacup.

The nun is still trying to get the attention of whomever is lying on the bed.

The camera cuts to the man, smiling as if calmly sleeping in the bed. She nudges him. He doesn’t move. She nudges a little harder, making the reading glasses fall off his nose. He still doesn’t get up. The nun gasps, and rushes out of the room. We can hear the sound of the teacup shattering on the ground as she runs out of the room screaming, “The Holy Father is dead!”

The true story behind this week’s event in the movie Godfather III

Let’s kick off our fact-checking segment by stating the obvious: This is an example of a movie using a very real historical event as part of its fictional story. That real event is the death of Pope John Paul I.

And you guessed it, this week in history is when the real Pope John Paul I died.

Was he poisoned by a cup of tea like we see in the movie?

Well, that’s where the fictional part of the story comes into play…and not necessarily because the movie is wrong, but more that we just don’t know everything about the true story.

And here’s where this part of the story ventures into the land of conspiracies, because if you’ve ever done any research into the Catholic Church, you’ll know they’re not really known for being forthcoming with all the intricate details about how a Pope dies. Oh, sure, there’s the official version…but is that what really happened to Pope John Paul I?

Like any good conspiracy theory, let’s just lay out what we do know about the true story so you can decide what you believe.

We didn’t talk about this part of the movie, but if you’ve seen Godfather III, then you’ll know that earlier in the movie we see Pope John Paul I being elected to the papacy.

In the true story, that happened on August 26^th, 1978, and if you got the impression from the movie that perhaps he wasn’t 100% on board with the papacy, you’d be correct. We know this because of an interview that Father Diego Lorenzi did to honor the former pope. Lorenzi had worked with Pope John Paul I before he was Pope John Paul I, back when he was the Patriarch of Venice.

As a side note, his name before being Pope John Paul I was Albino Luciani. He picked Pope John Paul I because Pope Paul VI was his papal predecessor who had named him a cardinal, and the pope before that was Pope John XXIII, who had named him a bishop. So, that’s how he got the name.

So, anyway, as the true story goes, Luciani had said before going to the College of Cardinals where they vote for the pope, that if they voted for him—he would turn them down. But, in the end, he must’ve changed his mind…because when he was voted in, he said “yes” just like we see in the movie.

Well, I guess in the movie he says, “I accept,” but you know what I mean.

Pope John Paul I was only the Pope for 33 days, though.

He died on September 26^th, 1978. That falls on Thursday this week.

To say his death was a surprise is an understatement. He was the shortest-reigning pope since Pope Leo XI died of a cold just 27 days after being elected—back in the year 1605.

According to the official version of the story, Pope John Paul I died very similar to the way we see in the movie: Peacefully and in bed. The bedside lamp was still lit…and while the movie shows him smiling as if he’s just sleeping with a happy dream, we don’t really know if he had a smile on his face when he was found.

With that said, though, it is a little nod of the hat from the filmmakers to the real history because Pope John Paul I had the nickname “The Smiling Pope” because, well, he smiled a lot.

The official version of the true story is that Pope John Paul I most likely had a heart attack at some point during the night.

As you can imagine from such a short papacy, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. And one of them is very much in line with what we see in the Godfather III that it surrounded something to do with the Vatican Bank and maybe even the Mafia. Check out the show notes for a link to David Yallop’s 1984 book called In God’s Name where he lays out that conspiracy in more detail.

Historical birthdays from the movies

Time now for some birthdays from historical figures in the movies that were born this week in history.

On September 25^th, 1764, Fletcher Christian was born in Cumberland, England. He’s best known as the master’s mate on the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty under the command of Lieutenant William Bligh. It was Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. That story has been told in multiple movies, including the 1962 movie simply called Mutiny on the Bounty where Fletcher Christian is played by Marlon Brando. And we did a deep dive into the historical accuracy of that movie back on episode #156 of Based on a True Story.

On September 26^th, 1888, Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was better known as T.S. Eliot, who is now considered one of the 20^th century’s greatest poets. He was played by Willem Dafoe in the 1994 biopic about his early life called Tom & Viv.

On September 27^th, 1389, Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici was born in the Republic of Florence, in modern-day Italy. Cosimo was best known as the Italian banker whose immense riches allowed him to establish his family as one of the most powerful families during the Italian Renaissance. He was played by Richard Madden in the Netflix series simply called Medici.

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

This Sunday is the anniversary of the Denzel Washington movie called Remember the Titans! The movie was directed by Boaz Yakin and when it opened 24-years ago this week, it earned back almost everything it took to make the movie. With a budget of $30 million, Remember the Titans opened with about $21 million on its way to over $130 million worldwide.

Released in 2000 and set mostly in 1971, Remember the Titans gives us the “Based on a True Story” text about 45 seconds into the movie as it goes on to tell the tale of the T.C. Williams High School football team from Alexandria, Virginia. That football team goes by the Titans—hence the name of the movie.

According to the movie, T.C. Williams High School are newly integrating Black and white players, as well as coaches. That’s where Denzel Washington’s character, Herman Boone, comes into the movie as he’s appointed the head coach of the football team, replacing the former head coach Bill Yoast—he’s played by Will Patton in the movie.

And that’s where the first racial tensions arise in the movie, because Coach Yoast doesn’t appreciate being replaced. Then again, in the movie, Coach Boone doesn’t like that he’s been appointed the new head coach despite Coach Yoast having a fantastic career. He almost doesn’t accept the position, but he eventually does, and similarly Coach Yoast decides to stick around as Coach Boone’s defensive coordinator.

In the movie, we see Coach Boone taking the team to a rather rigorous training camp in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in an attempt to unite the team. Using the history of the Battle of Gettysburg to emphasize the importance of unity and overcoming racial divides, the team gradually begins to bond. The movie really focuses on two key players and team captains, Gerry Bertier, who is white, and Julius Campbell, who is Black, and as those two start to develop a close friendship so, too, does the rest of the team.

Gerry is played by Ryan Hurst while Wood Harris plays Julius Campbell in the movie.

When the team returns to Alexandria, there’s still the societal pressures and ongoing racial tensions they have to face. But the Titans go on to have an extraordinary season, remaining undefeated and eventually making it to the state championship—no thanks to a scheme by the school board to have Coach Yoast reinstated by having the refs make bad calls against the Titans. But, Coach Yoast is onto the scheme and calls out the ref in the middle of the game, so things go back to the Titan’s way once the refs go back to making fair calls.

As they’re celebrating their trip to the state championship, tragedy strikes when Gerry Bertier is driving his car when a truck side-swipes him, leaving him in the hospital for the big game. Despite this, the Titans still manage to win the state championship…and then, we find out at the very end that Gerry died ten years later, bringing everyone back together for his funeral.

The true story behind Remember the Titans

Shifting to the fact-checking segment, and let’s start with what is probably the biggest historical inaccuracy: Gerry Bertier was not in a car accident that left him handicapped before the state championship game.

With that said, though, it is true that he was in a car crash…but, it wasn’t like what we see in the movie.

In the true story, this was after Titans’ 1971 season when they had a banquet to honor Gerry. Afterward, he was driving some of his friends home in his mother’s new Camero when he lost control of the car, it crashed and resulted in Gerry being paralyzed.

Speaking of their 1971 season, the rest of the key plot points in the movie are basically correct.

T.C. Williams High School in the movie was a real place. That name comes from Thomas Chambliss Williams, who was a former superintendent of the school system from the 1930s to the 1960s. Today, it’s the Alexandria City High School.

During the movie’s timeline, though, T.C. Williams High School was pretty new, having first opened its doors in 1965. That same year, the city of Alexandria integrated all their schools, and T.C. Williams High School received all the 11^th and 12^th graders in the city.

So, the movie is correct to show the racial tensions and prejudices throughout the team, and the school overall. On the football field, though, the Titans had an amazing year. Earlier I mentioned Gerry Bertier, so he was a real person. So, too, was Julius Campbell.

In the true story, they were both team captains whose friendship helped bond the team despite the racial tensions outside. And on top of that, helped the Titans become simply a great team as well. After all, they had players from three different schools coming together at T.C. Williams for the first time that year.

And they ended up going 13-0, and not by a close margin. Gerry Bertier alone had 142 tackles and 42 sacks! What about Julius Campbell? He had 34 sacks of his own. That’s 76 sacks for just two players—in 13 games! So, it’s no wonder the Titans outscored their opponents 338-38.

Then, as we talked about before, Bertier’s car crash left him paralyzed. Oh, to give you a better idea of how the movie’s timeline compressed that part, the Titans’ final game in 1971 was on December 4^th. The car crash that left Bertier paralyzed was on December 11^th.

The movie skipping ahead to 1981 for his death is, sadly, also true.

Gerry Bertier was on his way home in Charlottesville, Virginia, when a car going the opposite way on the highway crossed the center lane and smashed into him. He died at the hospital later. Gerry Bertier was 27 years old.

July 30, 1945. Philippine Sea.

Our first movie is USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, and the event from this week in history starts about 35 minutes into it.

The movie has some text on screen telling us it’s zero dark hundred. Midnight.

That explains why the scene in the movie is very dark. We’re on the water and we can see a ship beneath the camera as it’s slicing through the dark waters. The camera cuts to inside and we can see men in American uniforms covered in a red light.

Nicholas Cage’s character, who seems to be the captain of the ship, asks about the visibility.

“Just this side of poor, sir,” is the reply. There’s a fog rolling in.

He decides to stop their zigzagging so they can get through the weather as fast as possible. Full speed ahead.

The camera cuts a Japanese sub while the soundtrack switches to some rather ominous music. The submarine is on the surface of the water, and a few of the sailors are on deck looking through binoculars. One of them spots a ship. Possible enemy contact. The order is given to dive, and in the next shot we can see it slipping beneath the water.

On the ship, some jazz music is playing through the PA. Some of the sailors are arguing about a fight that happened the night before.

Now we can see through the periscope of the Japanese sub as it lines up the target lines on the ship.

The captain says the ship is in sight and orders all tubes ready, which is immediately repeated down the stairs to sailors who rush to action to make it happen.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, the sailors are placing bets and rolling dice. When the dice end up a six and a one, everyone cheers. They seem completely unaware of the enemy who has them in their sights.

Back on the Japanese submarine, range and distance is calculated. Then, we can see torpedoes launch from the front of the submarine. They race through the water toward the ship.

The camera cuts back to the ship where the sailors are still rolling the dice, and then…

Explosion.

Everything shakes. Some of the sailors lose their balance and fall to the ground. We see text on the screen that tells us: “First Torpedo Hits. Zero Dark Fourteen.”

12:14 AM.

The captain orders everyone to general quarters.

Back on the Japanese submarine, another torpedo is launched. Then another.

We don’t really see these traveling through the water, because the camera quickly cuts to the ship as a huge ball of fire explodes. Flames are spreading through the ship and we see some of the men themselves are on fire. Before long, we can see water in the hallway.

In the submarine, the Japanese celebrate the direct hit.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage

It is true that Captain Charles McVay was skipper on USS Indianapolis. Captain McVay is played by Nicholas Cage in the movie. As for USS Indianapolis, she had just finished a mission to deliver top-secret cargo to Tinian Island: Some of the components for the Little Boy atomic bomb that was later dropped on Hiroshima.

And while I don’t think we’ll ever know the amount of details like what dice were rolled or whether the sailors on Indianapolis were playing a game right when the first torpedo hit, the basic idea is true…although there is more to the true story.

For example, USS Indianapolis was a cruiser who didn’t have sonar to detect submarines. So, it’s likely the movie would be correct to show that most sailors wouldn’t know about the submarine until it was too late.

That’s why usually a cruiser would have a destroyer escort. That’s something Captain McVay had requested for the mission, but it was denied and instead he was ordered to zig zag to avoid submarines. Some people would later say the order was to zig zag at the captain’s discretion.

Four days after successfully delivering the mechanism for Little Boy and about half of the uranium to Tinian—the other half was flown there—Indianapolis was hit by two torpedoes on their return journey. Explosions ripped through the cruiser that nearly ripped her in half. She sank in less than 12 minutes. In that time, many of the men on board were killed either by the explosions, pulled into her propeller, or drowned.

Of the 1,195 men on board, about 900 were left stranded after Indianapolis sank beneath them. Little did they know, things were about to get even worse.

Imagine what it must’ve been like.

The remaining sailors were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, left clinging to whatever debris they could find from the ship. The heat of the day. The cold of the night. The lack of food or, more importantly, the lack of drinkable water. All those elements would’ve been bad enough. In the movie, we see Captain McVay ask if a distress signal had been sent out. That is true, an SOS had been sent. On top of that, they were expected at their destination the next day, July 31st.

On the other end, though, through some miscommunication, no report was filed when she didn’t arrive. Of course, the men in the ocean had no idea about that. And without communication, they had no idea when help would be coming.

What did come ended up going down as one of the worst shark attacks in history.

You see, with the men who didn’t survive the initial sinking that meant there were dead bodies in the water. Those bodies attracted sharks from hundreds of miles around. Before long, the sharks shifted from the dead bodies to those who were alive.

In an interview with BBC many years later, one of the surviving seamen named Loel Dean Cox recalled what it was like:

“We were losing three or four each night and day. You were constantly in fear because you’d see ‘em all the time. Every few minutes you’d see their fins. A dozen to two dozen fins in the water. They would come up and bump you. I was bumped a few times. You never know when they are going to attack you.”

Men were dying of dehydration or exposure to the elements. Even more men were being killed by the sharks, leading to constant fear every minute of every hour of every day. That’s what it was like for the next four days…or in some cases, even longer, since not all survivors were picked up in a day.

But it was four days later, on August 2nd, that a plane spotted the men. Help was called, and a life raft and a radio transmitter were dropped. Rescue ships finally came, and 316 survivors were pulled from the water.

Oh, and that brings up something else that the movie seems to have gotten wrong. If you look for posters for the movie USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, some of the variations of the movie poster have text on it that says there were 1,196 men who spent five days on the water and there were 317 survivors.

That doesn’t match the number that I just said, and to be honest, I did find some conflicting sources—some of them did mention 1,196 men and 317 survivors and five days like the movie poster said. However, the numbers I mentioned throughout this segment were ones that I found on the official U.S. Navy’s website, and they mention 1,195 men on board with 316 survivors meaning that 879 were killed. As far as the timeline, the Navy says Indianapolis left Guam on July 28th, 1945. They sank on July 30th, and at 10:25 AM on August 2nd the survivors were spotted—and it wasn’t until August 8th that a 100-mile search radius looking for survivors was completed.

Regardless of how you look at the numbers, though, no one can deny it was one of the worst shark attacks and disasters in U.S. Navy history.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, you can see it depicted in the 2016 movie called USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage. The start of July 30th that we started our segment with today begins at about 35 minutes and 52 seconds into the movie.

And we covered that movie here on the podcast a few years ago, so you can find that episode over at https://www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com/48

August 1, 1976. Nürburg, Germany

For our next event, we’re starting an hour and six minutes into the 2013 movie called Rush.

There’s some text on screen telling us that we’re at the German Grand Prix.

The sound of engines can be heard as we see a quick succession of shots between different race car drivers. One of them looks to the clouds in the sky just as the camera cuts to a TV anchor giving a report. He explains the conditions are still dangerously wet, but a decision—just then, the movie cuts to another TV anchor. It’s in the same location, but this anchor is speaking in French as he lets viewers in his country know the race will continue despite the wet conditions.

We can see crews making their final preparations for the race as the drivers are in their Formula 1 cars. From overhead, we can see a row of cars lined up and ready to go. Throngs of people are lined up and in the stands for the live event. Based on the TV anchors we saw just a moment ago, I’m sure countless more are watching at home.

The hum of the engines grow louder as the flag is raised…and they’re off!

The cars race down the wet track, kicking up little sprays of water from their large tires. Going around the first turn, it’s neck-and-neck for the lead cars. We hear the TV announcers giving a play-by-play, saying it’s Lauda with the lead into the first corner. Hunt is in second place. Now it’s Mass, storming past Hunt and taking the lead as he passes Lauda.

After only one lap, everyone decides to change tires, leaving Mass the chance to grow his advantage. But will the tires hold out on the wet track?

In the pit, we can see just the eyes of Chris Hemsworth’s version of James Hunt beneath the British flag on his helmet. Someone on his crew says Lauda made the same mistake with the tires and behind him we can see a red car pulling into the pit.

The tires on both cars are being changed at lightning speed. Hunt takes off first. Daniel Brühl’s version of Nikki Lauda yells at his pit crew to hurry up. Every fraction of a second counts in a race like this. A moment later, Lauda is off as well, both drivers trying to catch up to cars already on the track.

Engines rev. Gears shift. Lauda’s car zooms around the track, trying to catch up to Hunt and the rest of the pack. The TV announcer says the race has gone wrong for him so far as his championship rival, James Hunt, is a long way up the road.

Lauda keeps pushing his car, trying to gain every inch he can in the race. He passes one car. Two. Mario Andretti’s Lotus gets passed. Another car is passed and another.

We see more shots of the mechanics inside the car as gears shift, the engine revs, and tires spin at incredible speeds, and then…the sounds of the race start to fade away into a silence.

Then, the sounds come back as we see Lauda’s car go careening around the corner. It smashes into the side railing, spinning out of control before bursting into a ball of flame as it skids across the track.

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

The event we see in the movie really did happen this week in history when Nikki Lauda crashed his Ferrari during the F1 German Grand Prix at Nürburgring.

The movie does a good job of showing the race, too, although there is more to the true story.

While the movie was correct to show the track was wet that day due to a rainstorm, that wasn’t the only reason the race wasn’t safe. The Nürburgring had a long history of racing dating back to when it was built in the 1920s. By the timeline of the movie, though, the track didn’t seem to be safe enough for the amount of power that Formula 1 cars had in the 1970s.

Nikki Lauda proposed a boycott of the circuit with the other drivers, but he was outvoted. Just like we see in the movie, the race was on. And just like we see in the movie, most of the drivers returned to the pit by the end of the first lap to switch to tires that’d handle the wet track better.

It was on the second lap of the race that Nikki Lauda’s car was coming around a corner when he lost control. Maybe there was a mechanical failure, maybe he simply lost control coming around the corner—I’ve seen some conflicting reports about that. After all, the corner was a notorious tight right-hand turn just after a long, fast section.

But, after the fact, Nikki Lauda was quoted as saying:

“I was going down the straight at 280 kilometers an hour when something broke. I went straight into the wall and my car turned into a fireball and I was in there for 55 seconds at 800 degrees, until they got me out. I was right on the point of death for days and I think I really did die once.”

For the record, 280 km/h is about 174 mph. So, you can imagine how difficult it is to time a tight turn at that speed.

So, the movie was accurate to show Lauda’s car burst into a ball of flames as it bounced back onto the track. To make matters worse, there were three other drivers who were also coming around the corner. One of them managed to miss Lauda’s flaming car. Two of them smashed right into it.

Thankfully, those drivers weren’t badly hurt, though, and all three drivers got out of their car to help get Nikki Lauda out of his car. Their quick reaction likely saved his life. He was rushed to the hospital where he continued to fight for his life for a few days. He lost his eyelids, half an ear, much of his scalp, he was in a coma for some time, even administered his last rites by a priest…amazingly, just six weeks later, Nikki Lauda made his return to racing. He’d only missed two events, and finished out the remainder of the season.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week as it was depicted in the movie, check out 2013’s Rush. The text on screen for the day of the German Grand Prix starts at an hour, six minutes and 26 seconds.

We covered that movie here on the podcast at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/70

Oh, and as the movie correctly shows, the event really was on TV…so there is real footage of Lauda’s crash. If you want to do your own comparison to how well the filmmakers recreated the actual event, I’ll throw a link to it in the show notes…but fair warning, it’s tough to watch.

August 3, 1943. Southern Italy.

Our third event this week comes about an hour and a half into that classic World War II film, Patton.

The camera is looking at a light filling the center of the frame. After a moment’s pause, it pans down to reveal we’re in a medical tent. There are nurses and doctors attending injured soldiers lying on beds on either side of the tent.

Some have bandages on their heads. Some bandages are bloody, others are not.

George C. Scott’s version of General George S. Patton is walking in front of some of the doctors, going around to the beds to greet the injured soldiers. He walks over to one of the beds. There are no apparent bandages, although we can only see the soldier’s head and shoulders sticking out from the blankets on the bed.

Patton sits down next to the man, who he calls Gomez, and chats. He asks where he’s hit. In the chest, is the reply. Patton says, well, if it’s interesting to you, the last German I saw didn’t have a chest. Or a head. Gomez smiles. Patton smiles back, wishing him a quick recovery.

Then, he gets up and walks over to another injured soldier. This man’s face is covered with bandages and he seems to be on an oxygen tube. With everything hooked up to him, we can’t tell if he’s awake, asleep, or even aware of what’s going on around him.

But, we can tell the soldiers in the other beds are all watching what Patton is doing.

He kneels by the injured man’s bed and an officer nearby hands him a small box. Patton takes off his gloves, sets down his cane, and pulls a Purple Heart medal out of the box, pinning it to the soldier’s pillow. Then, leaning close, he whispers something in the man’s ear. We can’t hear what he says, and the soldier doesn’t seem to indicate he heard any of it.

Patton doesn’t say anything aloud, but he’s clearly in deep thought for a moment on one knee with his hand on his forehead. Then, he gathers his gloves and cane and gets up.

He’s just about to put on his helmet when he spots a soldier sitting at the end of his bed on the other side of the tent. This soldier is still wearing his helmet, and he doesn’t have any apparent bandages.

Patton asks what’s the matter with him.

The soldier says he just can’t take it anymore. Patton gets down on one knee.

“What did you say?” he asks, as he gets closer to the soldier.

Now the soldier starts crying as he says he can’t take the shelling anymore. It’s my nerves, sir.

Patton stares at the man. Your nerves? He gets up, calling the soldier a coward. Then, angrily, he yells at the soldier and slaps him with the gloves in his hand.

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

It is true that the real General George S. Patton slapped Private Charles Kuhl and called him a coward. And I’d give the movie’s depiction a C for this event because it gets the gist of what happened across, albeit in a dramatized way.

For some historical context not shown in the movie, Private Kuhl had been in the Army for eight months at that point and had been diagnosed with exhaustion three times. Doctors had noted that he kept getting returned to the hospital.

Just like we see in the movie, Patton happened to be at the hospital to visit patients when he noticed Private Kuhl didn’t seem to be injured. After Kuhl told Patton he was nervous and couldn’t take it—those really were things he said, like we see in the movie—Patton got angry.

He slapped Kuhl across the chin with his gloves, just like we see in the movie. What we don’t see in the movie, though, is that Patton dragged Kuhl to the front of the tent and kicked him on the backside. He demanded Kuhl both not be readmitted to the hospital, and ordered him back to the front.

In Alan Axelrod’s biography of Patton, chapter nine is called The Slap Heard ‘Round the World and digs into more depth, but in that book is a quote of the directive that Patton issued to the men under his command in the Seventh Army that said:

“It has come to my attention that a very small number of soldiers are going to the hospital on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat. Such men are cowards and bring discredit on the army and disgrace to their comrades, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the dangers of battle while they, themselves, use the hospital as a means of escape. You will take measures to see that such cases are not sent to the hospital but dealt with in their units. Those who are not willing to fight will be tried by court-martial for cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

So, what happened after this incident?

Well, General Patton had another incident a few days later, on August 10th, where he threatened a man under his command with a pistol for similar reasons. Word reached General Eisenhower, who sent a letter to Patton which said, in part:

“I clearly understand that firm and drastic measures are at times necessary in order to secure the desired objectives. But this does not excuse brutality, abuse of the sick, nor exhibition of uncontrollable temper in front of subordinates.”

There’s a lot more to the letter, which you can read in detail starting on page 329 Martin Blumenson’s book Patton Papers, but the gist of the letter was that Eisenhower didn’t formally do anything. The letter was a private one to explain why Eisenhower was going to break up Patton’s Seventh Army and Patton himself would no longer be a part of the plan for the invasion of Italy by the Allies.

If you want to watch an on-screen depiction of the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1970 film Patton and the slapping sequence starts at about an hour, 23 minutes and 39 seconds into the movie.

And if you want to dig deeper into the true story behind that movie, including that event, the aftermath and how Patton may not have been directly involved but still helped with deceiving the Germans in times leading up to the D-Day landings, you can hear our episode covering the Patton movie over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/163.

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 July 29th, 1928, test animations of Steamboat Willie were created by Ub Iworks and Walt Disney that included for the first time none other than Mickey Mouse. So, if you remember from last week, it was Bugs Bunny’s birthday, and now we can kind of think of this week as Mickey’s birthday. The completed Steamboat Willie short animation wasn’t released to the public until November of 1928, but I thought it’d be fun to include these two cartoon characters—since July is a big month for cartoon characters!

We covered a bit more of that history back on episode #43 of Based on a True Story when we dug into the movie Walt Before Mickey.

On August 1^st, 1809, William Barret Travis was born in Saluda County, South Carolina. He was a lawyer and soldier who is best known as the commander at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, where he died at the age of 26. He was played by Patrick Wilson in the 2004 movie The Alamo, and we covered the true story with the historical consultant on that movie back on episode #172 of Based on a True Story.

On August 4^th, 1901, Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was a jazz musician and singer whose music has been heard in too many movies to name. He’s also been portrayed on screen in quite a few movies, including a 2010 movie simply called Louis which is, ironically, a silent film. He’s played by Anthony Coleman in that movie.

‘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.

On July 29^th, 2022, the Ron Howard-directed movie called Thirteen Lives was released. With an all-star cast that includes Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgarton, and Tom Bateman, Thirteen Lives tells the story of the how a soccer team in Thailand was rescued after they got stuck in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system.

Do you remember that story? It happened in 2018, so this is one of those few movies that covers an event from just a few years before the movie is made…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start as we always do, with a quick synopsis.

As I mentioned a moment ago, Thirteen Lives tells the story of the how the 2018 Thai soccer team was rescued from the cave. And in the movie, it seems to happen rather harmlessly at first. The 12 young boys on a local youth soccer team called the Wild Boars and their coach decide to go on a little adventure after a practice session.

At first, it’s fun.

The kids, who look to be maybe around the 10 or 11 age range in the movie, are armed with handheld flashlights as they love splashing in the puddles and exploring the wonders of the cave. But while they’re inside in the darkness of the cave, what they don’t realize is that outside a storm is rolling in.

The movie shows closeup shots of individual water droplets on the stalactites, but the drops quickly multiple as the camera shows other parts of the cave with water rising fast. Meanwhile, the movie cuts to show us that the kids’ parents are starting to get worried because the rain is coming down hard and they’re not home from soccer practice yet.

You can see where this is going…before long, the fun stops as torrential rains flood the cave’s narrow passages. When it does, not only is their exit cut off, but as more rain falls and passages fill up more, the boys and their coach are forced to keep moving deeper and deeper into the cave.

And while we can always caveat any movie made for entertainment purposes with any number of nitpicky-level historical inaccuracies, but once you get past that—if you take a step back and realize the movie is trying to recreate something that was experienced by only 13 people in the world.

With that said, the movie’s version of events is very accurate. At least, that’s from all my research as someone who is very obviously not one of those 13 people to have experienced it.

Rick Stanton, John Volanthen, Harry Harris, and Chris Jewell really were some of the men involved in the rescue. Those are the characters played by Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton, and Tom Bateman, respectively.

If you want to see a full-scale deep dive into the movie, let me know, but one of the biggest things to keep in mind about this is just how massive and complex that cave system is.

You know how sometimes you take a beautiful photo out in nature—maybe it’s rolling green hills with a mountain nestled along the horizon. There’s a winding river coming down from the mountain, extending all the way to the riverbank at your feet in the foreground.

Did you start to get that mental picture?

Maybe? But not quite as good as the real thing, right?

Sometimes that’s just how it is: A picture doesn’t do the real thing justice.

And that’s kind of how I felt after watching this movie, I think the movie does an amazing job to show just how difficult the rescue must’ve been in a cave complex that’s so immense…but, even then, I also got this gut feeling that it’s one of those situations where the imagery just doesn’t do it justice.

But still, let me try to paint a little bit of a picture because that’s when you start to see both how the situation could’ve happened to begin with, as well as the daunting task ahead of the rescuers.

The Tham Luang Nang Non cave system, located in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province, is a sprawling network of underground passages stretching approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). This intricate cave system winds through the limestone mountains of the Doi Nang Non range, presenting a complex labyrinth of tunnels, chambers, and narrow passageways.

Don’t forget the boy’s soccer team had 12 kids. The coach was a 25-year-old man named Ekk. Well, that’s his nickname, as you can guess from my butchering my way through pronouncing the cave system name, I’m not great at speaking Thai.

But Ekk was the only adult. There were a couple 16-year-olds, a couple 15-year olds, then 14, 13, and one 11-year-old. But, my point, is that there was one adult to wrangle 12 kids. That’s not easy if we are in those rolling hills on a perfect weather day, let alone in a massive cave during monsoon season.

The cave’s entrance, at an elevation of about 446 meters (1,463 feet) above sea level, leads to both expansive caverns and tight squeezes, some as narrow as 38 by 72 centimeters.

In my mind, when I try to put myself into Ekk’s position, I’m imagining maybe he was just trying to keep up with those kids as they’re playing in the caves to start with. Then, by the time they realize the heavy rains are starting to flood the caves, it’s too late. And that part of it is true, they were forced inside the cave deeper to avoid the flooding passageways that led to the exit.

That’s another important thing to keep in mind about this mental image we’re painting: The system descends to depths of 800 to 1,000 meters (2,625 to 3,280 feet) below the mountain tops and adding to its navigational challenges: There’s one entrance. One exit.

And finding another one was considered a viable plan.

Actually, in the true story, they had a handful of solutions they wanted to try—so we see a lot of that in the movie, too.

One of those ideas was to simply let divers give the boys food and water, but then wait for the waters to recede after monsoon season was over. In that region, that’s typically in the October-ish time frame. The kids got trapped in there on June 23^rd, right near the start of monsoon season. So, waiting for it to end would be a few months. Keeping 12 kids and their coach in a cave for that long? Maybe, but in the meantime, surely there are better options. They’d also likely run out of oxygen by then, so they’d have to build an oxygen line which represents a logistical nightmare of its own.

Some of the other ideas they came up with in the true story included things like digging down from above. They even tried that, digging about 100 or so different holes before they finally gave up on that idea. They couldn’t find a good place to break all the way through. Maybe they can just find another entrance; we talked about that. Or maybe they can just teach the kids inside how to dive.

In the true story, the soccer team was first located after being stuck in the cave for nine days. And it really was the two British divers John Volanthen, Colin Farrell’s character, and Rick Stanton, Viggo Mortensen’s character, who first found the kids. But, finding them doesn’t safely extract them.

That process took another nine days until, on July 10^th, 2018, and after 18 days of being stuck in the cave, all thirteen people were rescued from the cave. Sadly, though, not everyone survived. Two of the rescue divers were killed—one during the operation, and one diver passed away months later due to health complications from the rescue.

If you want to watch it all re-enacted on screen, you’ll find a link in the show notes to find where you can watch the 2022 movie called Thirteen Lives this week!

July 1st, 1916. Northern France.

The sky is an eerie yellow-orange color. Silhouetted against the eerie light in the foreground we can see two soldiers wearing British-style helmets. While they face the left side of the camera’s frame, another soldier walks on the right side of the frame in the trenches. Also, on the right side we can see posts with barbed wire strung between them.

The camera cuts to a soldier sitting in one of the trenches. Text on the screen tells us it’s 5:30 AM. The soldier is smoking a cigarette as he writes something down, presumably a letter. When the camera angle cuts closer, we can see his face a little better. This is Daniel Craig’s character, Sgt. Telford Winter. After examining the letter one last time, Winter folds it up and puts it into an envelope. Then, he picks up his rifle and puts on his helmet.

He walks down the trench a little way and says “good morning” to some other soldiers. It’s still very dark, so it’s hard to see how many soldiers are there, but I can count at least five or six at any one time on screen. It makes for what looks like cramped quarters in the trenches.

A few minutes further into the movie, it’s brighter outside now as the sun seems to have risen further. The battle is about to begin.

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

That is how the 1999 movie called The Trench shows an event that happened this week in history…and right up front it’s helpful to know this movie is trying to capture the essence of what it was like for the British soldiers leading up to the battle. So, it’s not going to be entirely accurate to everything that happened or even the soldiers who were there. For example, I couldn’t find anything in my research to suggest Daniel Craig’s character, Sgt. Winter, was based on a specific soldier.

With that said, though, the movie is correct to show the Battle of the Somme starting this week in history on July 1^st, 1916. The name coming from the Somme River in Northern France.

By the end of July 1^st, the British Army alone suffered 57,000 casualties marking the bloodiest day in its history. The battle lasted for 140 days, from July 1^st to November 18^th, 1916, and in that time over three million soldiers fought.

The British suffered 420,000 casualties, the French around 200,000, and the Germans lost at least 450,000 men. So, with over a million men killed or wounded, the Battle of the Somme went down as one of the deadliest battles in human history.

Some people refer to the Battle of the Somme as the start of modern warfare because it was during this battle that the first tanks were used when the British sent them into action on September 15^th, 1916. It was also the first time a creeping barrage was used in battle. That’s when artillery continues to move forward to lay cover for infantry close behind it.

Well, I guess, technically that wasn’t the first time—the Bulgarians used a creeping barrage during the siege of Adrianople in March of 1913, but with the start of World War I in 1914, most of the rest of the world had already forgotten about that event and in a way it was re-invented at the Battle of the Somme.

If you want to watch the depiction on screen, check out the 1999 movie called The Trench. Most of the movie is set this week in history as it starts on June 29^th, 1916, but the beginning of July 1^st starts at an hour, eight minutes and 47 seconds into the film.

July 3rd, 1776. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A piece of paper reading July 2 is torn off to reveal the new date underneath. July 3.

We’re inside a large room with tall ceilings. And we’re not alone; there are a number of well-dressed men sitting at desks scattered throughout the room.

David Ford’s version of John Hancock bangs a gavel on his desk and stands up. He addresses the room, asking if there are any objections to the declaration as it stands now. William Daniels’ character, John Adams, stands up and says he has one. He points out that the correct word is “unalienable” and not “inalienable.”

Ken Howard’s version of Thomas Jefferson replies by saying that, no, “inalienable” is the correct word. Adams disagrees. The men in the room murmur. Calling the room to order by banging the gavel again, Hancock asks if Jefferson will yield to Mr. Adams’ request. Jefferson refuses.

After a moment, Adams withdraws his objection and sits back down.

Then, John Hancock puts a large piece of paper on the desk. The camera cuts to a closeup as we see him signing his name beneath all the writing. Someone comments how large his signature is and Hancock replies it’s so “Fat George” in London can read it without his glasses. Everyone laughs at this.

Hancock tells everyone to step up. “Don’t miss your chance to commit treason,” he says.

Just then, a messenger enters the room and hands a piece of paper off. Standing in front of everyone, it’s read aloud. The message is a report. It says the eve of battle is near. It also says the forces consist entirely of Haslet’s Delaware Militia and Smallwood’s Marylanders—5,000 troops to stand against 25,000 of the enemy.

The laughing from just a moment ago turns to a somber note as everyone realizes this is serious. The report continues to say the enemy is in plain sight beyond the river. We do not know how this will end, but there will be brave men lost before it does. The report is signed, “G. Washington.”

As the reading of the report is finished, William Duell’s version of Andrew McNair gets up from his chair. He steps up to the piece of paper that reads July 3. Tearing off the top piece, now it is July 4.

Hancock instructs McNair to ring the bell.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie 1776

That is how the movie called 1776 tells the story of an event that happened this week in history when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th, 1776.

The true story? Well, it’s not really what we see in the movie. But that’s not too surprising because even though it’s not so obvious from the segment we’re talking about today, the movie 1776 is a musical interpretation of the events.

With that said, though, it is true that John Hancock was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence. And his signature was the largest and horizontally centered on the Declaration—that’s why the saying of leaving one’s “John Hancock” is a term people use for signing a document today.

The other people in the movie are based on real people in history, too. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the custodian in Continental Congress, Andrew McNair, was known as the official ringer of the Liberty Bell.

Although the movie’s timeline is simplifying things quite a bit, too.

What really happened on July 4^th, 1776 was that after the final wording was approved on the Fourth, a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence was sent to a nearby print shop owned by a man named John Dunlap. That night, Dunlap got to work on printing a couple hundred copies of it for distribution.

On July 6^th, the first newspaper printed a copy of the Declaration.

And while it is likely that Andrew McNair was the one to ring the Liberty Bell to announce independence, that didn’t happen until July 8^th. They had delayed it by four days to allow for printing the document for the first public readings of the document. That reading happened on July 8^th.

From there, the word started to spread like wildfire. On July 9^th, John Hancock sent a copy to George Washington who read it to his troops in New York City. Crowds of people started to tear down statues and anything representing British or royal authority.

As a quick side note, the movie’s joke about “Fat George” isn’t referencing George Washington—you probably already guessed that. It’s referring to King George III, who was the monarch on the British throne at the time.

While British officials sent copies back to Great Britain, it wasn’t until mid-August that the Declaration was printed in British newspapers.

If you want to see this week in history as it’s shown in the movie, check out the 1972 film called 1776. Andrew McNair tearing off the paper to mention it’s July 3^rd started at about two hours, 39 minutes into the movie while July 4^th starts a little later at two hours, 43 minutes and 38 seconds.

And as a little bit of extra trivia knowledge for you to share with your friends and family this July 4^th, it was actually 20 years later that Independence Day was celebrated for the first time: July 4^th, 1796.

And in a bizarre twist of fate, it was exactly 50 years after America’s birthday that two of the Founding Fathers mentioned in this segment died when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both passed away on July 4^th, 1826. They died within five hours of each other. Exactly five years after that, another Founding Father died when James Monroe passed away on July 4^th, 1831. Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe were not only Founding Fathers but they were the second, third, and fifth President of the United States, respectively.

July 4th, 1939. New York, New York.

Our next movie is in black and white. In the foreground, a man sits in front of a microphone doing something a lot like what I’m doing right now: Describing what he sees happening in front of him.

Except he’s not describing a movie like I am. On the other side of the table with his microphone we can see some netting, and beyond that a huge baseball stadium. He’s the radio announcer for the game.

He tells us that 62,000 people have jammed into Yankee Stadium this afternoon to pay tribute to the man who gave his all to the team for the past 16 years.

The camera cuts a little closer a marching band in uniform on the field, and it’s obvious there’s not an empty seat in the house. There are shots of fans enjoying the performance on the field as the radio announcer continues to talk about the man known as Larruping Lou and the Iron Man playing 2,130 consecutive games over those 16 years.

Now, he says, everyone is here to say farewell to Lou Gehrig—the pride of the Yankees.

In the tunnel, Gary Cooper’s version of Gehrig is wearing a Yankees uniform. By his side is his wife, Eleanor Gehrig. She’s played by Teresa Wright in the film. Slowly, they walk hand-in-hand, down the stairs. Lou stops part-way down and looks back at Teresa, who smiles at her husband.

Then, he lets go of her hand and continues down the dark tunnel to the light on the other side and out onto the field. The camera cuts back to Eleanor so we can’t see Lou stepping onto the field, but we can hear the crowd erupting into cheers. We can only assume they’re cheering at the sight of Lou on the field.

Instead of seeing him, though, we can see tears in Eleanor’s eyes for a moment before bursting into a full sob. She continues crying until the camera cuts back to the field.

Now we can see two rows of uniformed baseball players. On the right side of the frame are players in Yankee pinstripes. On the left side is a row of players with a “W” on their arm. All of them have their hats off, and they’re all looking at home plate in the center of the frame.

There, on the far side of where the camera is angled, we can see more people near home plate. Some are wearing business suits. There’s a podium with a banner of stars and stripes by the plate. And then there’s Lou Gehrig, wearing #4 on the back of his Yankees uniform.

Although it’s not visible in the movie, based on how this scene is framed it looks like the camera is on the pitcher’s mound with Gehrig and the other men by home plate and both teams lining the space from the mound to home.

The radio announcer continues to describe what’s going on as he says the Yankee’s manager Joe McCarthy hands Lou Gehrig a plaque. And then, just as he describes, on the screen in the movie we can see actor Harry Harvey’s version of Yankee manager Joe McCarthy hand Gary Cooper’s version of Lou Gehrig a plaque. Most of the writing is too small to read, but the headline at the top clearly says “Don’t Quit” in all caps.

McCarthy puts the plaque down, now, and turns to be handed a trophy. He then gives the trophy to Gehrig. It’s from his teammates on the Yankees, as a token of their appreciation for him. As Gehrig holds the trophy, the camera cuts back to the angle with the rows of players and we can see all of them start clapping for Gehrig. In the stands, everyone follows the players and they give Gehrig a standing ovation.

Then, a man in a suit identified by the radio announcer as New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia steps up to the podium with his back to the camera but facing toward the crowd behind home plate. We can’t hear what he’s saying, but he seems to say something briefly before turning to Gehrig and giving him a hearty handshake before making way for yet another man in a suit who steps up to the podium.

The radio announcer tells us this is the Postmaster General of the United States, Tim Farley. And again, he seems to say something to the crowd that we can’t hear. And again, only a few seconds later, he turns to shake Gehrig’s hand before leaving the podium for the next person.

Wearing a white suit, that person is identified by the announcer as none other than the Sultan of Swat: Babe Ruth. After saying something into the mic, he walks over to Gehrig to give him a handshake. This time the movie cuts up close to show Babe Ruth putting his arm around Lou Gehrig. After a moment, Ruth lets go of Gehrig and walks off.

Yankees Manager Joe McCarthy steps up to the podium now. Then, he gives Gehrig another handshake and walks with him to the podium. Finally, it’s Lou Gehrig’s turn to address the crowd.

As Gehrig steps up, the crowd goes crazy. They had sat back down, but now again everyone gives him another standing ovation. At the microphones, Gehrig takes in some deep breaths with his eyes cast down to the ground. Then he looks up as if to speak, but the crowd is still cheering, hooping, and hollering. He smiles a little bit as he looks around.

Then, he opens his mouth, and the crowd starts to quiet.

By the time Gary Cooper’s version of Lou Gehrig speaks, the crowd is hushed so they can hear what he has to say.

“I have been walking on ball fields for 16 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left, Murderer’s Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right, the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today. I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire in the press box. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy. I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth.”

The camera cuts to show an older man and woman, who we can assume are his mother and father. She puts a handkerchief to her face in a move that looks as if she’s dabbing away tears. Back on the field, Gehrig continues his speech. And now we can see what looks like tears starting to grow in his eyes, too.

“I have a wife, a companion for life…”

Again, the camera cuts away, this time to Eleanor who is still in the same place in the tunnel where Lou left her. She’s still crying, but a slight smile crosses her face when he talks about her.

“…who has shown me more courage than I ever knew. People all say that I have had a bad break. But today…today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

With that, Gehrig covers his mouth in thought for a brief moment before turning away from the microphones and the crowd goes wild. He walks past Babe Ruth, Joe McCarthy, and the rest of the Yankees. The crowd continues to cheer as he walks toward the third base dugout.

When he reaches the dugout, the movie cuts closer as he walks down the steps and back into the tunnel he came from a few minutes earlier. As Gehrig disappears out of the sunlight and into the shadows of the dark tunnel, in the background we can hear the umpire yelling, “Play ball!”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Pride of the Yankees

That is how the 1942 movie called The Pride of the Yankees shows an event that happened this week in history: Lou Gehrig’s final public appearance at Yankee Stadium just a few years before the movie on July 4th, 1939.

If you’re a baseball fan, you know who he was…if you’re not a baseball fan, Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history.

Gehrig’s final appearance at Yankee Stadium, however, wasn’t to play a baseball game. It was to say goodbye.

Let’s get some more historical context that we don’t see in the movie’s segment I just described. To do that, we’ll go back about a year earlier to the Yankee’s 1938 season.

As that season progressed, Gehrig started noticing more and more that something was off. He couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but his hands would ache, and he just couldn’t hit as well as he used to. So, he adjusted his swing, his stance, and the weight of his bat while his manager moved him in the batting order to try to get him out of his slumps throughout the season.

Of course, his slumps didn’t change that he was still Lou Gehrig. Even with signs of an issue, he worked hard to overcome it. In the 1938 season, Lou Gehrig hit .295 with 29 homers and 113 RBIs. So, he still had a great year.

But then, during the offseason, things didn’t get better. They got worse. Much worse. Gehrig’s balance was off. He wouldn’t be able to grasp things as well.

In the movie, we see Teresa Wright’s character, Eleanor Gehrig. And that really was Lou Gehrig’s wife’s name.

And in the true story, during the offseason as her husband was more clumsy than usual by dropping items or tripping over curbs, she started to be worried it might be something more. Maybe a brain tumor?

So, she and Lou went to the doctor. The diagnosis was a bad gallbladder, and he put Lou on a diet of fruits and veggies.

Even before the 1939 season started, during spring training, things had degraded enough to be noticeable to some of Gehrig’s teammates. They could tell he wasn’t right. But, he’s still Lou Gehrig…so, of course, when the 1939 season officially started, he was in the lineup just like he was in every game.

But he started in a bad slump. A career .340 hitter, Gehrig started the 1939 season hitting only .143. Not only that, but Gehrig could tell things hadn’t gotten better.

So, Gehrig asked to be taken out of the lineup. He did that on May 2nd, 1939, meaning his last game on April 30th was officially the end of his consecutive game streak playing in 2,130 games over 14 years. We learned more about that on episode #316 of Based on a True Story for the week that happened.

After taking himself out of the lineup, for the rest of May he still suited up and traveled with the team even though he didn’t play. In June, he tried playing again in a minor league exhibition game. He didn’t last the whole game, though, so he and Eleanor went back to the doctors to get more answers. Within a few weeks, those doctors diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS…or, as it’s most commonly known today, “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

Taking a step back for how fast a lot of this happened for the public, the 1939 season started in April as it did for the past 14 years with Gehrig continuing his consecutive games streak. On June 21st, 1939, the world found out Gehrig was officially retiring from baseball.

And then, on July 4th, 1939, the Yankees were playing a double-header against the Washington Senators. Between the two games, they held a special ceremony they simply called Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. The movie was correct to show a few people addressing the sold-out crowd, including the mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, as well as the Postmaster General, a man named James Farley.

The movie was also correct to show bands playing as they march around the field. It was also correct to show the framed sign given to Gehrig with the headline “Don’t Quit.” I’ll include a link in the show notes for some actual footage from the event where you can see those things.

Something we don’t really see in the movie, though, is that after others expressed their appreciation for Gehrig, the man himself almost didn’t speak to the crowd. The emcee for the event, reporter Sid Mercer, announced Gehrig, but he didn’t step up to the mics. Instead, he whispered something into Mercer’s ear who, in turn, told the crowd that Gehrig was too moved to speak but he asked Mercer to thank everyone.

Imagine being in a stadium packed with people–the movie mentions 62,000 people, but in the true story it was actually 61,808. I guess we can give it to the movie, though, haha! But all those people started chanting, “We want Gehrig!”

So, Gehrig stepped up to the mics and gave what many people consider to be one of the most famous speeches in sports history. Let me set this up real quick…because you’re going to hear Lou’s voice and my voice…because, unfortunately, a recording of the whole speech doesn’t exist.

But we do have part of it; the rest of it has been filled in by historians through newspaper reports from the day. And you’ll notice in the movie they actually do the “luckiest man on the face of the earth” at the end, but in the real speech you’ll notice that’s how he starts the speech…so, let’s start with Lou’s actual audio from July 4th, 1939:

Fans, for the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break.

[pause]

Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in this ballpark today?

Sure, I’m lucky.

Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift—that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies—that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter—that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body—it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed—that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. — Thank you.

In the movie, we see Babe Ruth at the ceremony. And that is very true. Not only was Babe Ruth at Lou Gehrig Appreciation day in 1939, but the real Babe Ruth played himself in the 1942 movie that re-enacted the event from this week in history.

If you want to watch that, hop into the show notes to find where you can watch The Pride of the Yankees. We started our segment from this week in history about two hours into the movie.

July 6th, 1917. Aqaba, Jordan.

A bell rings, alerting everyone to the attack.

The lookout ringing the bell is in a square-shaped defensive position lined with sandbags. On the sandy desert below, we can see rows of white tents. Tiny people in the distance are moving around the tents, mostly running in the opposite direction as the oncoming attackers.

From an angle behind the lookout, we can see the attackers charging in the distance. After he’s done ringing the bell, the lookout raises his rifle and shoots.

The camera cuts to a closer shot on the attackers. They’re all riding on either horses or camels, huge plumes of sand getting kicked up by what must be hundreds of horses charging the enemy ahead. One of the soldiers gets hit, presumably by the lookout’s shot. But it doesn’t slow anyone down as they gallop ahead.

All the men on horseback start ululating as they charge forward. Some of them are on camels, and the camera focuses on one of the men wearing all white as he urges his camel onward. The camera cuts to a further away shot and we can see the attackers on horses and camels rushing the encampment. They reach the white tents to be greeted by the sound of gunshots. Some of them fall, but others continue forward with the attack.

Defenders are cut down and before long, it seems obvious the attackers have the upper hand. The cinematic music swells as we see the attackers rushing passed the tents to the city behind it—pushing the defenders back toward the water just beyond the city.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Lawrence of Arabia

That depiction comes from the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia and it’s showing an event that happened this week in history on July 6^th, 1917, when Arab forces led by Sherif Nasir and Auda abu Tayi along with the British officer T.E. Lawrence defeated the Ottoman Empire at the important coastal city of Aqaba.

For a little more historical context, this whole conflict was part of the Middle Eastern theater of World War I, and the British were assisting the Arabs revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

This specific battle is referred to as the Battle of Aqaba, and in the movie, we see it being almost as if the attackers overrun the defenders. There seems to be hardly any slowing them down, and for the most part that’s true.

There were about 5,000 men in the Arab force that attacked about 1,100 defenders. The attack mostly came from the desert, although the British Navy assisted as well. Coming from the desert was a complete surprise to the Turks, though, because they assumed no one could make the 600-mile desert journey.

But, that’s exactly what they did.

And the result was a lopsided victory for the Arabs, with only two Arabs killed while the defending Turks suffered about 300 casualties.

As T.E. Lawrence wrote in his book:

The Arabs needed Akaba: firstly, to extend their front, which was their tactical principle; and, secondly, to link up with the British.

Or, in other words, because Aqaba was a port city, it allowed the British Royal Navy to help supply them from the water.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia and the day of the battle starts at about an hour and 47 minutes into the movie. And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that back on episode #49 of Based on a True Story.

STOPPED RECORDING HERE

July 7th, 1947. New Mexico.

A line of military vehicles are driving along a dirt road. It seems to be a mixture of larger transport trucks and some smaller Jeeps. The terrain around the dirt road is desolate with little more than rocks, sagebrush, and dirt.

One of the men in one of the Jeeps points ahead, “There it is!”

We can catch a glimpse of some smoke rising up from something ahead.

In the next shot, it’s a little easier to see what’s happening. There’s a depression in the terrain. Along the ridge, men in military uniforms walk up to look at the smoke billowing out from below. Not everyone is in military uniforms, though, a couple of the men are in plainclothes.

Now we can see what’s causing the fire. A huge pile of tires are burning. Orange flames and black smoke are flying into the sky.

One of the military men, who seems to be an officer, barks out orders to other soldiers to put the fire out. There’s a flag in the middle of the flames.

“Get that flag out of there!” the officer yells.

As the soldiers spring to action, one of the plainclothes men wearing a white hat notices one of the soldiers carrying a box. The soldier says it’s locked. It’s a little easier to identify the men now, and the man in a white hat is Aidan Gillen’s character, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He turns to the other plainclothes man, Michael Malarkey’s character, Captain Michael Quinn, and asks him when the original crash was reported in the press.

Quinn says it was July 8^th, 1947. Hynek uses that code to unlock the combination lock on the box. It works. Inside is a single piece of paper. Quinn reads it:

“In 1947, alien spacecraft crashed in this desert. Before you stands the man who covered it all up, General Harding. Tomorrow at 9 am I will show the world proof of what really happened in Roswell, New Mexico.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series Project Blue Book

Okay, so there’s a few things to separate here to get to the true story.

Let’s start with where this scene comes from, it’s from the first episode of season two in the History Channel’s TV series called Project Blue Book.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek was a real person who really was in charge of Project Blue Book—that’s what the U.S. Air Force called their official investigation into UFOs. The character of Captain Quinn, though, is a fictional character.

And I’ll admit up front this sequence is not showing something that happened in 1947. The reason for that is because the TV series is set much later, so this is a fictional scene to try and backtrack and talk about one of the world’s most popular conspiracy theories: The UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico.

Also, the date the TV show just mentioned is right, although you’ll notice that the series mentioned that’s when it was reported in the press…not when it actually happened.

That’s a bit of a loaded phrase, isn’t it? I mean, when it comes to the topic of a UFO crash…did it actually happen at all? Plenty of folks will disregard it simply because of the topic.

Well, if we could say without a shadow of a doubt then it wouldn’t really be a conspiracy theory, would it? But, regardless of whether or not you believe the Roswell crash was a real event, no one can deny that the story of what supposedly happened around July 7^th in Roswell has had an impact on countless people around the world.

As the story goes, a rancher named W.W. Brazel, who goes by the nickname “Mac”, found some debris scattered in a field. That happened in June of 1947. But his ranch didn’t have a phone or a radio, so he didn’t think much of it until he was driving to town on July 5^th. There, he heard stories of flying disks being seen. For example, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold had seen what the press quickly referred to as flying saucers on June 24^th, 1947. Just the day before “Mac” Brazel went into town, on July 4^th, United Airlines Flight #105 also talked about seeing some flying disks.

Countless other copycat sightings started popping up fast as word spread about the flying disks.

So, hearing some of these stories, Brazel was reminded of the debris he saw in the field. So, a couple of days later, on July 7^th, he took some of the debris into the sheriff’s office in Roswell. The sheriff called the Roswell Army Air Field nearby, and one of the officers, a man named Major Jesse Marcel, went out to the field with Brazel where he found the debris. Marcel didn’t take the debris right to the airfield. Instead, he simply took it home for the night and delivered it the next morning when he went to work.

The next day, on July 8^th, the public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field released a statement that a “flying disk” had been recovered from a ranch near Roswell. It hit the papers and news reports soon after. The Roswell Daily Record newspaper ran a story on July 8^th, 1947 with the headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.”

RAAF standing for Roswell Army Air Field.

Now, I’ll play a clip from a radio broadcast on July 8^th, 1947 that talks about the flying disk at Roswell. But before I play it, just so you know there are some other new items mentioned as well. I thought about cutting that out, but I decided to leave it unedited so you can hear the report as it was broadcast.

So, here it is:

Note: This transcript is automatically generated.

On July 8, 1947, the Army Air Forces has announced that a flying disk has been found and is now in the possession of the Army. Army officers say the missile found sometime last week has been inspected at Roswell, New Mexico, and sent to right field, Ohio, for further inspection. Russia has demanded U.N. action to get all foreign military personnel out of Greece. Southern Cross collaborators have not yet reached agreement with John Lewis, but the rest of the soft coal industry has resumed production. The House of Representatives has passed the tax reduction bill by more than the two thirds, which would be required to override a veto. Headline of this new special report and set of views in a moment. The American Broadcasting Company had a period in session for that headline edition received a grant from all over the world forever. The day’s headlines were made headline figures and brings you accurate, timely reports on the news behind both headlines, plus informative and personal interviews with the men and women who made the headlines today. Today’s edition presents a roundup of the latest developments in the finding of a flying and eye witness report of the day’s significant actions at the UN Security Council. Ohio Congressman Thomas Duncan commenting on today’s House action on tax legislation. A special report on the status of so-called negotiations and the details of today’s All-Star Baseball game, reportedly because they ended up with history in the making. Stay tuned to headline Now is telegraphed late this afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that the widely publicized mystery of the flying saucers may soon be solved. Army Air Force officers reported that one of the flames had been found and inspected sometime last week. Our correspondents in Los Angeles and Chicago have been in contact with Army officials endeavoring to obtain all possible late information. Joe Wilson reports to us now from Chicago that he may be getting to the bottom of all this talk about the so-called flying saucers. As a matter of fact, the 509th Atomic Bomb Group headquarters at Roswell, New Mexico. Reports that it has received one of the deaths which landed on a ranch outside Roswell. This landed at a ranch at Corona, New Mexico, and the rancher turned it over to the Air Force. Roger W w Rozelle was the man who discovered this office. William Blanford of the Roswell Air Base refuses to get details of what the plane this looked like in Fort Worth, Texas, where the object was first sent. Brigadier General Roger Ramey says that it is being shipped by air to the ADF Research Center at Wright Field, Ohio, moments ago. I talked to officials at Right Field and they declared that they expect the so-called flame supper to be delivered there, but that it hasn’t arrived as yet. In the meantime, General Ramey describes the object as being a flimsy construction, almost like a bus. So he says that it was so bad, but he was unable to determine whether it had a disc form, and it does not indicate its size. Rainey says that so far as can be determined, no one saw the object in the air, and he described it as being made of some sort of tin foil. Other Army officials say that further information indicates that the object had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet and that nothing in the operation section indicated any capacity for speed and that there was no evidence of a power plant. This also appeared to flimsy the carrier man. Now back to photograph in New York. There was important activity within the U.N. Security Council today.

The next day, the Army said it wasn’t a flying disk at all. As the story goes, Major Marcel reported to the commanding officer at RAAF, Colonel William Blanchard. Colonel Blanchard, in turn, reported to General Roger Ramey at the Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas. General Ramey ordered them to fly the debris to him, so Major Marcel did that. As soon as Marcel arrived, he showed the debris to General Ramey who recognized it as pieces of a high-altitude weather balloon.

So, the story of the flying disk was retracted and, for the most part, forgotten. That changed in the 1970s when Major Marcel was interviewed by a man named Stanton Friedman. In that interview, Marcel said the story of the weather balloon was a cover-up and the debris he saw was extraterrestrial. In 1991, a retired USAF General named Thomas DuBose who was one of the men posing for press photographs of the debris in 1947 also said Marcel was correct in saying the weather balloon story was a cover-up.

And so, the story has been talked about ever since.

If you want to watch the way story is shown on screen, check out the History Channel’s TV series called Project Blue Book. Because of the timeline of the series, it doesn’t really show the event itself but the first two episodes of the second season are dedicated to it. And if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, so to speak, I’ve covered Project Blue Book multiple times from different angles, and you can find them all at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/projectbluebook.

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history…and we had five events in this week’s supersize episode, so why not have five historical birthdays, too?

On July 1st, 1899, Henry Walton Jones, Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He’s best known by his nickname: Indiana Jones. Haha! Okay, so he’s obviously not a historical figure…but if you’re interested in historical movies, I’m sure you know who he is so I couldn’t help but include him. Do you have a favorite Indiana Jones movie? It’s Last Crusade for me, but I was surprisingly impressed with the latest movie that just came out last year—Dial of Destiny. Did you see that one yet? Hop into the Based on a True Story Discord and let’s chat about it!

Also on July 1st, but in 1921, Seretse Khama was born in Serowe, Botswana. He was a politician who served as the first president of Botswana and the story of his controversial marriage was told in the 2016 film A United Kingdom where Seretse was played by David Oyelowo. We covered that movie back on episode #238 of Based on a True Story.

On July 5th, 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut. He’s best known by his initials, P.T. Barnum, and as the man who founded the Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey. Barnum was played by Hugh Jackman in the 2017 movie The Greatest Showman and we covered the true story behind that back on episode #123.

Oh, and as a fun little side note, even though Bailey from Barnum & Bailey never made it into The Greatest Showman movie, the real James Anthony Bailey was also born this week in history, on July 4th, 1847, in Detroit Michigan.

On July 6th, 1747, John Paul Jones was born in Scotland. Even though he wasn’t born in America, he emigrated to America and became probably the most well-known naval commander for the United States in the American Revolutionary War. John Paul Jones became famous throughout history for the quote, “I have not yet begun to fight!” when he was asked about surrendering. Although, there’s plenty of debate about whether or not he really said that exact line. But, he was played by Robert Stack in a 1959 biographical film simply called John Paul Jones. And yes, that Robert Stack—the same guy who hosted the popular TV show Unsolved Mysteries.

On July 7th, 1906, Leroy Robert Paige was born in Mobile, Alabama. He’s best known by his nickname, “Satchel.” Satchel Paige was a Hall of Fame baseball player whose career spanned 50 years. He debuted in Major League Baseball with the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at the age of 42. To this day, that is the oldest debut for any player in Major League Baseball. He played in the Majors until he was 59, another record that stands to this day. His story was told in the biopic from 1981 called Don’t Look Back: The Story of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige with Louis Gossett Jr. playing the lead role of Satchel Paige.

Onto our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies, since we’re doing a supersize episode this week, I’ve got a couple movies: One that was released in the past, and one that is being released this week!

Let’s start by going back to 15 years ago this week when Public Enemies was released on July 1^st, 2009.

Directed by Michael Mann, Public Enemies stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The storyline revolves around Depp’s character, John Dillinger, who really was a notorious bank robber in the 1930s who many have compared to a Robin Hood-type character. On the other side, though, is Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent played by Christian Bale who is leading the hunt to track down Dillinger.

According to the movie, the FBI is relatively new, so a lot of the storyline around the hunt for Dillinger shows things we might consider normal today, but at the time were state-of-the-art techniques such as fingerprinting and tapping telephone lines.

The movie was right about that, although as you might expect there’s more to the true story.

Let’s start with Dillinger’s reputation as a bank robber in the 1930s.

To be more specific, the Dillinger’s crime spree was less than a year between September 1933 and July 1934. In that time, they killed 10 people, wounded seven others, organized three jail breaks, and robbed at least a dozen different banks in that time. Some have thought perhaps as many as 24 banks, but we know of 12 for sure. And it’s said that Dillinger got away with about $11 million that he hid…and maybe it’s still out there waiting for a treasure hunter to find it. Check out the TV show Expedition Unknown, season 9, episode 1 for more about the search for Dillinger’s treasure.

For today’s movie, though, Public Enemies was correct to have an FBI agent named Melvin Purvis in charge of taking down John Dillinger and his gang. Purvis had been a field agent at FBI offices in Birmingham, Oklahoma City, and Cincinnati, before being assigned to the Chicago office and tasked with leading the takedown of Dillinger.

Although the movie mostly shows Purvis taking the lead, another FBI agent named Samuel Cowley was also assigned to leading the takedown of Dillinger. In the movie, Cowley is played by Richard Short and has a smaller role than he did in the true story.

According to the FBI’s official documentation on the case, the way it worked was Agent Cowley was sent from Washington by J. Edgar Hoover himself to head up the investigation against Dillinger. He was sent to where Dillinger’s crimes were being committed, around the Chicago area. Agent Purvis was in charge of the Chicago office, so that’s how Cowley and Purvis started working together to take down Dillinger.

Oh, and while some have romanticized Dillinger as a form of Robin Hood-type character, in the true story that’s simply not the case. In the movie we’re talking about today, Dillinger never gave of the money he stole away…and that is true.

I’ll include a link in the show notes to a list of 10 myths about Dillinger on the FBI’s website, and #10 directly addresses the idea of Dillinger being a Robin Hood-type character.

Here’s what they had to say:

Dillinger certainly had charm and charisma, but he was no champion of the poor or harmless thief—he was a hardened and vicious criminal. Dillinger stormed police stations in search of weapons and bulletproof vests. He robbed banks and stole cars. He shot at police officers (and may have killed one) and regularly used innocent bystanders as human shields to escape the law. Worse yet, he stood by as his ruthless gang members shot and killed people, including law enforcement officials. And what of his ill-gotten gains? They were used to line his own pockets and those of his partners in crime, not those of impoverished Americans in the midst of the Great Depression.

Speaking of being a bank robber, if we go back to the movie, we see Dillinger along with a couple other gangsters named Tommy Carroll and “Baby Face” Nelson rob a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When they plan the robbery, they anticipate coming away with $800,000.

If we’re to believe the movie’s version of history, during the robbery, both Dillinger and Carroll are shot. Carroll is left behind and arrested while Dillinger manages to escape, but quickly finds out they only got about $46,000—not nearly what they were expected.

And that really did happen, although I found some conflicting sources on whether or not Dillinger’s gang expected to get away with $800,000.

But there’s a lot of details we don’t see in the movie, too, here’s what we do know about that particular bank robbery.

On the corner of Ninth and Main in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sat the Security National Bank. At about 10:00 AM on the morning of Tuesday, March 6^th, 1934, a green Packard car pulled up to the bank. There were six men in the car.

When they got to the bank, four of the men got out and went inside. Two others stayed with the car. Inside the bank, one of the men issued an order saying, “This is a holdup; lie down.” The 30 or so people in the bank did as they were told, although someone managed to hit the alarm first. In 1934, Sioux Falls had about 26,000 residents, so it didn’t take long for word to spread of a bank robbery in progress.

As a crowd gathered outside, the two guys with the car periodically shot their Thompson machine guns into the air to keep the crowd away. Of course, it no doubt also drew attention for those who hadn’t yet heard about the robbery. One of those people happened to be an off-duty cop by the name of Keith Hale. When he came to investigate the sound of gunshots, one of the robbers inside saw him and opened fire through the front window, injuring Hale.

The robbers exited the bank, forcing everyone from inside the bank outside with them to help give them cover as they got into the car. Then, to protect themselves from the police shooting at them, the robbers forced five bank employees to ride along with them on the car’s running boards as they made their escape. They released the hostages before leaving town.

While this wasn’t the only bank robbery for the Dillinger gang, it was one that really drew the attention of law enforcement because Dillinger himself had escaped from jail just three days beforehand—on March 3rd—so it was a busy week for Dillinger that really pressed on law enforcement to bring him in.

Back in the movie’s timeline, the storyline comes to an end as Dillinger is shot by Purvis and other FBI agents in an ambush, they set up for him at a brothel. One of the agents named Charles Winstead manages to hear Dillinger’s last words. Winstead is played by Stephen Lang in the movie. He goes to visit Dillinger’s love interest in the movie, Marion Cotillard’s character, a woman named Billie Frechette. She’s in prison when Dillinger is shot, and she’s moved to tears when Winstead tells her Dillinger’s last words were: “Tell Billie for me, ‘Bye, bye, Blackbird.’”

Were those really John Dillinger’s final words? To be honest, we don’t know.

Officially, no, Dillinger had no last words as far as any official reports go. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of theories around what his final words might’ve been.

What is true, though, is the character of Billie Frechette being Dillinger’s girlfriend. She was arrested by the FBI in April of 1934 when she visited a friend in Chicago. She was charged with harboring a fugitive.

So, it is true that she was locked up near the end of the story.

The hunt for Dillinger continued, though, and it was a lot like the movie shows, an ambush at the end. In the movie, the woman who helps law enforcement is named Anna Sage. She’s played by Branka Katic in the movie. In the true story, Anna Sage’s real name was Ana Cumpanas—although she called herself Anna Sage, probably because it’s easier to pronounce for Americans like me.

The real Ana came from Romania and was in the process of being deported thanks in no small part to her job at the brothel. She met with Agents Cowley and Purvis, who promised to put in a good word for her with the government agency in charge of the deportation—the Department of Labor at that time.

So, she agreed to help. She told the agents one of her friends, a woman named Polly Hamilton, was going to see a movie with Dillinger the next evening. The next day, she confirmed the plans with agents and the ambush was a “go” for that evening: Sunday, July 22^nd, 1934.

At about 8:30 PM, Anna Sage, Polly Hamilton, and John Dillinger showed up at the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. After the movie, which was a Clark Gable film called “Manhattan Melodrama,” Dillinger and the two women emerged from the theater. Here is the official FBI explanation of what happened next:

At 10:30 p.m., Dillinger, with his two female companions on either side, walked out of the theater and turned to his left. As they walked past the doorway in which Purvis was standing, Purvis lit a cigar as a signal for the other men to close in.

Dillinger quickly realized what was happening and acted by instinct. He grabbed a pistol from his right trouser pocket as he ran toward the alley.

Five shots were fired from the guns of three FBI agents. Three of the shots hit Dillinger, and he fell face down on the pavement.

At 10:50 p.m. on July 22, 1934, John Dillinger was pronounced dead in a little room in the Alexian Brothers Hospital.

The agents who fired at Dillinger were Charles B. Winstead, Clarence O. Hurt, and Herman E. Hollis. Each man was commended by J. Edgar Hoover for fearlessness and courageous action. None of them ever said who actually killed Dillinger.

If you want to watch the movie released this week in history, you’ll find a link in the show notes for where to find 2009’s Public Enemies on streaming services.

Oh! And that reminds me, as a quick bit of trivia for you, the FBI labeled John Dillinger as “Public Enemy #1” in 1934, so a lot of people think that means Dillinger was #1 on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, but that’s not true…John Dillinger was never on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted because that list didn’t even exist until 1950. Although I guess if we’re being technical, the FBI itself didn’t exist in 1934…that name came about in 1935, so during the time of John Dillinger it was simply the Bureau of Investigation or BOI.

With that said, though, if the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted existed back in when Dillinger was alive, he probably would’ve been on it.

So, that’s Public Enemies.

Now, let’s fast forward to this week, because there’s another “based on a true story” movie coming out. It’s called Boneyard, and it’s directed by Asif Akbar, starring Mel Gibson and Curtis Jackson—better known as 50 Cent. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s not too surprising, it looks to be a low budget film and according to my research, it looks like it’ll be releasing in select theaters and straight to video on demand on July 2^nd.

But as it is a new movie, I haven’t seen it yet—and I’m guessing you haven’t seen it yet. So, let’s learn a little more about the true story so you can be the one who knows how much of the movie really happened if you see it this week.

The one-sentence synopsis of Boneyard they have listed on IMDb says it is, “Inspired by the true events of a serial killer that may still be out there today.”

The movie is a true crime story that starts when they discover the remains of 11 women and girls in the New Mexico desert. Enter Mel Gibson’s character, an FBI agent named Agent Petrovick, and 50 Cent’s character, the Chief of Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who team up to try and identify the killer. Before long, they start to realize it’s likely the work of a single person: A serial killer.

So, what’s the true story?

The movie is based on what’s become known as the West Mesa Murders. And the movie’s IMDb synopsis is correct to say the serial killer might still be out there—as of this recording, the West Mesa Murders are still unsolved.

West Mesa is the name of the mesa—that’s the raised landmass to the west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Well, that’s where the true story starts back on February 2^nd, 2009, when a woman named Christine Ross was taking her dog for a walk. On that walk, her dog found a bone. As you might imagine, she was surprised by that. She thought maybe it was a human bone, but maybe not…she wasn’t sure. So, she took a photo of it and sent it to her sister, an RN, who confirmed it was a human bone.

The police were called, and in the weeks that followed, they unearthed bones from 11 women and girls, one of whom was pregnant. Their ages ranged from 15 to 32 years old. They were able to determine the identity of the women and found most of them were sex workers or runaways.

Sadly, when they disappeared, they weren’t reported missing.

Piecing together information from interviewing hundreds of people who knew or at least knew of the victims, police were able to piece together a rough timeline between 2001 and 2005 as when the murders took place. The bodies were likely dumped in the West Mesa area because it was a remote area.

And it took years for them to be found, putting law enforcement way behind on unraveling the case. But that doesn’t mean there were no suspects. In fact, there were a number of suspects over the years. From pimps who knew some of the murdered women, to men with a history of violence against women, but there are probably two top suspects…and those two start with a guy named Lorenzo Montoya. He had a history of violence against sex workers, as well as his girlfriend. Some people also pointed out that he lived just a few miles from where the bodies were found; and his co-workers even said Montoya claimed to have killed women and buried them on the West Mesa.

Remember when I mentioned the police determined the timeline was between 2001 and 2005? Well, some have suggested perhaps they stopped because Lorenzo Montoya was killed in 2006. He didn’t die of natural causes, either. He had just finished strangling a sex worker to death when her boyfriend showed up and shot and killed Montoya.

Or maybe the guy who shot Montoya was her pimp. Or maybe he was both; the sources I found vary on his relation to her.

Would she have ended up on the West Mesa? We might not ever know.

The other top suspect came more recently, about ten years ago, in 2014, when another suspect named Joseph Blea came to the police’s attention…and before I go further, let me give a trigger warning for rape and sexual assault, skip ahead 30 seconds if you want to skip past that.

Blea was a rapist who targeted teenage girls in the 1980s and ‘90s, known for stealing their underwear. He wasn’t a suspect, though, until 2010 when a rape test kit was re-tested, DNA pointed to Blea, and although he lived with his wife and daughter, the police found underwear and jewelry not belonging to either of them in the house. The police thought perhaps they were trinkets from victims.

And then while Blea was in prison, it’s alleged that he admitted a connection to the West Mesa murder victims, saying he’d hired them for sex. Finally, police suspected Blea of killing another sex worker in 2015. When they had enough evidence against him, Blea was arrested and in June of 2015 he was sentenced in the ‘80s and ‘90s rape cases and sentenced to 36 years. Assuming Blea is still alive in 2051 when that sentence ends, he’ll be 94 years old.

Neither Blea nor Montoya were charged with anything related to the West Mesa Murders. As of this recording, officially, they’re still unsolved.

But, if you want to watch the movie version of this true crime investigation, hop in the show notes for a link to where you can find Boneyard!

And if you do give it a watch, chances are you’ll watch it before me, so let me know what you think of it and maybe give me your own historical letter grade for how well it told the true story!

April 30^th, 1939. New York, New York.

Our first movie this week fades up from black to show the entrance of Yankee Stadium. Immediately we can tell the film is in black and white, and a huge crowd of people are outside the stadium. They’re walking away as if a baseball game just ended in the stadium, and everyone is heading home. To do that, they’re taking cars in front of the stadium that look like cars you’d expect to see in 1939.

The camera cuts closer to one of the cars as two guys, both in suits and donning different colored fedoras. They’re talking about the game.

“You call that baseball?” the shorter man says to the other.

He scoffs, “Gehrig booted the game. Threw it right down the drain!”

They both continue chatting about how terrible the game was as they get into the car.

The movie cuts to inside the Yankees locker room just as the players start filing in. Similarly, they’re disappointed in the game. It’s probably safe to say the game was a loss.

As the players enter the locker room, the camera focuses on one of the men who says the same thing as the guys outside, about how the game was just booted away. This must be the pitcher who is upset at the loss, because he’s talking about how he didn’t get any support out there.

The camera is focused on the pitcher, and next to him is another man. The locker room says the name Bill Dickey and even though the movie doesn’t mention this at all, if we hit pause on the movie for a moment we know from history that Bill Dickey was a catcher on the Yankees. And the man playing Bill Dickey in the movie is also Bill Dickey—the real person playing himself in the film.

The pitcher, though, is hard to identify because something else we know from history is that in April of 1939, the Yankees played eight games to start the baseball season. They lost three of those games, and we can assume from the reaction in the film this is one of those losses. In those three games, Lefty Gomez lost one of the games while Oral Hildebrand lost the other two. But none of those characters are cast in the movie.

When we see the back of the Yankees’ pitcher, we can see he’s wearing #16. In 1939, #16 on the Yankees was a pitcher named Monte Pearson. Pearson is also not in the credits for the movie. And we know from history the real Monte Pearson had only pitched in one game for the Yankees in April of 1939. That was against the Philadelphia Athletics on April 24^th. And the Yankees won that game by a score of 2-1. Sure, Gehrig went 0-3 that day, but the Yankees overall only got three hits. So, it wasn’t a great day at the plate for anyone on the team…but they still pulled away with the win, which was credited to Monte Pearson.

So, I suppose, we can consider that to be the first historical inaccuracy.

When we hit play on the movie again, though, that bit of nitpicking on accuracy doesn’t really matter to the storyline because when Pearson starts talking about the old man on first base needing crutches, Bill Dickey punches the pitcher.

Just then, Harry Harvey’s version of Yankee’s manager Joe McCarthy and Gary Cooper’s version of Lou Gehrig enter the locker room to see the commotion. They don’t tell him why they got into an argument, but Gehrig tells his teammates to save their fight for the field.

The camera focuses on Gehrig as he walks across the locker room. A closeup on Bill Dickey as he watches his teammate sit down at a small wooden stool in front of his locker on the far end of the lockers. Sitting on the stool, Gary Cooper’s version of Gehrig has a concerned look on his face as he puts his left hand up to his left ear. Does he sense something is wrong?

He reaches down to untie his left shoe. After a moment, he falls over to the ground. His teammates all stand up as if to help, but before they do Gehrig gets back up onto the stool. The other players go back to what they were doing, as if they’re pretending like nothing happened. Sitting on the stool again, Gehrig looks around as if he’s trying to see if anyone noticed what just happened. No one is looking at him anymore.

The movie fades to a newspaper headline that reads: “Baseball World Mystified By Lou Gehrig’s Slump.”

Then it transitions to a montage sequence now. There are five different shots of unnamed people around the city of New York going about their daily life. One man getting a shave, another in a taxi as he and the driver are listening to the radio report about Gehrig, and so on. They’re all talking about how Gehrig will break out of the slump soon. He’s made of iron!

The montage ends with a pennant flying in the wind that says, “Detroit.”

We’re at another baseball stadium as the New York Yankees are visiting the Detroit Tigers. The scoreboard shows the bottom of the fifth inning just ending, and the score is 4-2 in favor of the Yankees. In their away uniforms, the Yankees are coming up to bat in the top of the sixth. Lou Gehrig is in the dugout as he’s clenching and opening both hands. No one else seems to notice, but the camera focusing on him shows there’s clearly something wrong. He holds his hands together and looks down, and while this is my own interpretation of the film it looks like what happens when your hands fall asleep and you’re trying to get them to wake up and have feeling again.

The batter, who we can see is #29, takes a ball. Quick side note, but no one had #29 on the Yankees in 1939.

Oh well, minor nitpick. That unknown Yankees player takes another ball and walks. He goes to first base as the next batter steps into the batter’s box at home plate. Gehrig walks out of the dugout and onto the field. He picks up two wooden bats to swing in the on-deck circle. It’s almost his turn to bat—wait, no, he tried to pick up two bats—but only managed to grab one of them. The other one slips through his hand and falls back to the ground. Gehrig reaches back down to get it, holding onto both bats now as he feels the weight of them in their hand.

From the on-deck circle, Gehrig watches the player currently at bat. We can see the #15 on the back of his uniform. #15 on the Yankees in 1939 was a pitcher named Red Ruffing. Another quick side note, but pitchers actually did hit back then. That day, the real Red Ruffing actually had six at bats. Two hits, too. But he didn’t bat in the lineup in front of Lou Gehrig. He actually batted ninth in the lineup, meaning the leadoff man, shortstop Frankie Crosetti, would’ve been in the on-deck circle while Red Ruffing was hitting.

But, again, I’m nitpicking.

Back in the movie, Lou Gehrig is in the on-deck circle for a moment. Strike two is called. Gehrig looks down at the bats in his hands. At the plate, the batter swings and misses for strike three. That’s the third out, so end of the inning. Gehrig will lead off the next inning. Both teams switch sides and Gehrig walks back to the dugout.

When he gets there, he asks manager Joe McCarthy to take him out of the game. He simply says, “I can’t make it anymore.”

McCarthy asks if he’s sure that’s how he wants it. Gehrig says he is. So, McCarthy calls down to another player on the bench named Dahlgren to go play first base. As the two players pass each other, Gehrig wishes Dahlgren good luck. With that, Gehrig walks along the dugout bench to an empty spot and sits down as the announcer says over the PA, “Your attention. Dahlgren now playing first base for New York, replacing Gehrig.”

The stadium filled with fans start to murmur at the news. The movie focuses on one men in the media box. He says, “2,130 games. 14 years.”

Then, a closeup cut on Lou Gehrig on the bench as the umpire on the field announces, “Play ball!”

His head hangs, focusing on the Yankees logo on his ball cap as the movie fades to black.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Pride of the Yankees

That sequence comes from the classic film from 1942 called The Pride of the Yankees, and it shows us a couple events that happened this week in history: Lou Gehrig’s final game in a Yankees uniform, which happened on April 30^th, 1939, as well as the first game with Babe Dahlgren replacing Lou Gehrig, which is the game in Detroit that we see. That was May 2^nd, 1939.

As you can probably guess, though, the movie is a little unclear about some of the details. It goes from what seems to be a loss with players complaining in the locker room, then it shifts to showing news of Gehrig in a slump before showing the game in Detroit where he takes himself out of the game.

So, let’s unpack what really happened.

The 1939 season started for the Yankees on April 20^th against the Boston Red Sox. Starting at first base for the Yankees was Lou Gehrig, just like he’d done since his streak of consecutive games started on June 2^nd, 1925. So, the movie was correct to mention that Gehrig played 2,130 consecutive games over the span of 14 years—of a total 17 in his career.

The streak survived some big injuries, like being hit in the head by a pitch on April 23^rd, 1933. He was almost unconscious, but Gehrig stayed in the game anyway. Or, in June of 1934, when he was again hit in the head by a pitch during an exhibition game. That time he was unconscious for about five minutes. Having already played up until that point, he left that game but was right back on the field the next day.

That’s why the movie references things like Gehrig being made of iron. Because of his amazing streak, he earned the nickname “the Iron Horse” from sportswriters in the early 1930s, and that nickname stuck with him. Up until that point, the record for consecutive games played was 1,307. Gehrig smashed that and left a record of consistency that lasted for 56 years until Cal Ripken Jr., broke it on September 6^th, 1995.

So, back to the 1939 season, when the Yankees started the year at home against the Red Sox on April 20^th, it was no surprise to find Gehrig in the starting lineup just as he’d done 2,122 times. That day, Gehrig went 0-4. Not a great day, at all, but it’s just one game so not a concern.

After that, the Yankees went to Washington D.C., to play against the Nationals for a three-game series from April 21^st to the 23^rd. They won the series, two games to one. In that series, Gehrig went 1-10. No doubt that point, people started to wonder what was happening with their star player. Everyone goes through slumps, but during his career, Gehrig hit .340, so people weren’t used to seeing him go nearly hitless for long.

The reason I point this out is because the film shows the montage of Gehrig’s slump and how people reacted to it—and it is true he was in a slump to start the year.

April 24^th and April 25^th, the Yankees were back at home against the Philadelphia Athletics for a two-game series. In the first game, Gehrig again went hitless at 0-4. But then there was a glimmer of hope that he’d be breaking out of the slump in the second game as he went 2-4, and his first RBI of the year.

The Yankees won both games, giving them a record of 5-1 so far.

On Saturday, April 29^th, 1939, the Yankees again played against the Washington Nationals. This time in New York. They lost that game 1-3, and Gehrig went 1-3 with a walk. On Sunday, April 30^th, the Yankees lost the game 2-3, marking the first time in the young season they’d lost back-to-back games. Gehrig went 0-4, dropping his average to .143 on the year.

And this is where the movie deviates from the true story.

It is true that the Yankees played in Detroit against the Tigers next. As I mentioned earlier, that was on May 2^nd, 1939, and it was the start of 12 games on the road through the first half of May.

What the movie got wrong, though, was to show that game on May 2^nd being in progress when Lou Gehrig was coming up to bat only to take himself out of the game in the middle of the sixth inning.

For one thing, up until that point, Lou Gehrig had been in the starting lineup. He had been hitting fifth in the lineup, although in the movie it shows the game in the sixth inning which means three outs per inning, no matter what that’d mean the lineup would’ve gone all the way through at least once.

And that did happen sometimes in Gehrig’s streak, where he’d join the game as a pinch hitter to keep the streak alive.

But the movie also makes a point to show manager Joe McCarthy calling Babe Dahlgren off the bench to go in for Gehrig. There’s the announcement over the PA saying Dahlgren is replacing Gehrig, and all of that implies that Gehrig has been in the game up until that point. Which means he would’ve been in the field at first base through the first five innings and, since there are only nine players in baseball and a minimum of three of them get to hit each inning for each team—in other words, there’s no way Gehrig would’ve just been going in the game for the first time in the middle of the sixth inning unless the movie was trying to imply he was going in as a pinch hitter.

So, the movie got that wrong.

But, that’s not all the movie got wrong, because in the true story Gehrig didn’t even start that game on May 2^nd. After a travel day on May 1^st, and on the morning of May 2^nd, Gehrig approached manager Joe McCarthy at the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit where they Yankees were staying for their series against the Tigers. Citing his slump and not feeling like he was holding his weight on the team, Gehrig asked his manager to bench him for the game.

McCarthy later told reporters, “I told him it would be as he wished. Like everybody else I’m sorry to see it happen. I told him not to worry. Maybe the warm weather will bring him around. We’ll miss him. You can’t escape that fact. But I think he’s doing the proper thing.”

It is true that Babe Dahlgren went in for Gehrig—he just did so as the starter that day. Gehrig became a spectator of the game for the first time in 14 years, officially ending his streak at 2,130 games.

After the game, reporters clamored to talk to Gehrig about why he wasn’t in the lineup. He was matter of fact about it, saying, “I haven’t been a bit of good to the team since the season started.” But he didn’t expect to be out long, he said he’d be back in a couple games.

And at the time, no doubt fans thought he would be back. It was just a slump. Even the best players have slumps sometimes, right?

The movie was correct to show Eleanor Gehrig being Lou’s wife. As the rest of the baseball world expected to see Gehrig back in the Yankees lineup again soon, she suspected it was more than just a slump. So, she reached out to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. After six days of tests, the doctors determined he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or, ALS, or, as we know it today, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

It’s an incurable disease that leads to paralysis and death. On June 21^st, 1939, Lou Gehrig’s retirement from baseball was officially announced with a ceremony held at Yankee Stadium on July 4^th, and Lou Gehrig passed away on June 2^nd, 1941, at the age of 37.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1942 film called The Pride of the Yankees. We started our segment at about an hour and 44 minutes into the movie.

May 2, 1863. Chancellorsville, Virginia.

“It’s confusion, sir!”

An officer delivers this news to his general.

The two men talking to each other are each on horseback, as are the other half-dozen or so men in the background watching the conversation. Everyone is wearing the grey uniform of the Confederates during the United States Civil War. They’re surrounded by green trees, although it’s also obvious the sun is starting to go down as things are getting a little dark in the early hours of twilight.

One of the men, Stephen Lang’s character, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, tells the other officer that he’ll tell General Hill to push forward to keep driving the enemy. Then, a moment later, General Hill rides up and General Jackson does exactly that—he tells Hill to take his division forward. Hill replies that it’s late in the day and they don’t know the ground.

That’s not a good enough excuse, Jackson calls on someone else to help get used to the area and find the rear of the enemy’s position so we can cut them off!

General Hill and a few others ride off while General Jackson and the remaining soldiers turn their horses off the road and go into the woods nearby.

In the next shot, it’s almost pitch black. It seems to be full night now, or maybe part of that is because we’re inside the woods now and the trees are blocking out what little remaining light of the day is left.

Regardless of the reason, it’s dark, but there’s just enough light to see General Jackson and a few other men on horseback walking slowly through the woods. With pistols drawn, look around them carefully—on guard and at the ready in case they encounter the enemy.

Then, they stop. The camera switches to up ahead.

It’s impossible to see anything, but through the dialogue, they’re thinking it’s Federal soldiers who are digging in. Since these men are Confederate soldiers, that’s the enemy. General Jackson points out that sound carries at night, which lets us know they’re not seeing anything but they’re hearing something. Jackson also thinks they might be a ways off. But, they might be closer. It’s hard to tell.

It’s also not worth the risk.

Then, one of the men points out that they’re behind enemy lines.

“This is no place for you, sir.”

Jackson agrees. They’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

“Gentlemen, let us return to the road,” Jackson says, and they all turn their horses around to head back to where they came from. After a moment of retracing their steps, the camera cuts to a row of soldiers raising their rifles.

Then, the silence of the night erupts into a hail of gunfire.

The men on horseback are taken by surprise, many of them falling to the ground under the barrage of fire. Immediately, one of the men on horseback yells at the soldiers shooting at them to stop firing.

“You’re firing at your own men!” he yells. Another yells something similar, alerting the firing soldiers to the fact that they’re shooting at their own men.

Someone yells back, “It’s a lie! Pour into them, boys!”

For a while, the gunfire continues. More men are hit.

When they finally stop shooting, General Hill arrives to see what has happened. It was their own men. Confederate soldiers shooting at Confederate soldiers.

Among the wounded is General Jackson.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Gods and Generals

This scene comes from the 2003 movie called Gods and Generals, and it shows us an event that happened this week in history when, on May 2^nd, 1863, “Stonewall” Jackson was fatally shot by his own men in something that many historians believe might’ve altered the course of the entire war.

We’ll circle back to the reason for that in a moment because the movie actually does a pretty good job of showing the event we’re talking about today.

The battle we see happening in the movie is now known as the Battle of Chancellorsville because it was located around the town of Chancellorsville, Virginia. For some geographical context, the closest large city nearby is Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is about 10 miles or 16 kilometers, to the east of Chancellorsville.

United States General Joseph Hooker was leading a force of about 130,000 men, which he planned to use to trap the 60,000 or so troops commanded by General Robert E. Lee, who was the overall commander of the Confederacy.

On May 1^st, 1863, the two sides fought for a few hours before Hooker ordered his men back to Chancellorsville. Faced with a larger force, that evening, Generals Lee and Jackson devised a plan to face the larger force. That plan involved taking their smaller force and dividing it up even more so Lee’s men could keep Hooker’s attention on them while Jackson’s force would flank them.

So, on May 2^nd, General Jackson took about 28,000 men and secretly made their way behind enemy lines to swing around behind Hooker’s soldiers. It took most of the day for Jackson’s men to make it around the other side without being noticed, something that surely was helped by Lee’s 14,000 or so remaining men holding their focus the opposite way.

At about 5:00 PM on May 2^nd, only two of Jackson’s three divisions were in place for their surprise attack on the right, rear flank of the Union position. The sun would go down soon and it’s not like they had night vision in 1863, so when the sunlight ended so, too, did most of the major fighting.

Jackson had to make a decision about whether or not to launch his attack before the sun goes down or wait until the next day.

In the movie, we see Jackson’s decision to attack being a wild success for the Confederates. And that is true. This is a quote from a military report written by General Robert Rodes of the Confederate States Army about what happened as a result of that decision:

“So complete was the success of the whole maneuver, and such was the surprise of the enemy, that scarcely any organized resistance was met with after the first volley was fired. They fled in the wildest confusion, leaving the field strewn with arms, accouterments, clothing, caissons, and field-pieces in every direction. The larger portion of his force, as well as intrenchments, were drawn up at right angles to our line, and, being thus taken in the flank and rear, they did not wait for the attack. On reaching the ridge at Melzi Chancellor’s, which had an extended line of works facing in our direction, an effort was made to check the fleeing columns. For a few moments they held this position, but once more my gallant troops dashed at them with a wild shout, and, firing a hasty volley, they continued their headlong flight to Chancellorsville.”

What slowed the Confederates more than any resistance from the Union army was nature. Although it’s not that way today, in 1863 that area around Chancellorsville was filled with dense bushes, thorny vines and trees that were some 30-feet tall. That’s over nine meters.

In the movie, we see the darkness of how it looked inside the woods at night, and in reality there were some soldiers who said even at the brightest point of the day the sunlight couldn’t penetrate to the ground—that’s how dense it was.

Between the retreating sun and the dense vegetation in the area, the Confederate army was forced to slow their assault on the Union army. By dawn, the element of surprise would be gone. That’s why, in the movie, we see Stephen Lang’s version of General Jackson urging his men to continue the pressure.

He thought he could use the nearby road, called Plank Road, and the better visibility it provided to continue the pressure on the Union soldiers to keep them on the run. If he stopped the attack, he knew the Union soldiers would fortify their positions overnight and in the morning, they’d be facing a much more difficult task against well-defended positions.

Would Plank Road provide the visibility he needed overnight? He wasn’t sure.

Another man in the cavalry who grew up nearby was called on to give a recommendation. That man, a Private named David Joseph Kyle, told General Jackson there was a smaller road nearby that might work. It was the kind of road in the backwoods that only someone local would know—it wasn’t on any maps. That’d be the perfect place for Jackson’s men to use to pull yet another surprise on the Union army.

Just like we see in the movie, General Jackson and some other soldiers rode ahead. The movie doesn’t mention that they were riding ahead to check out whether or not the place Private Kyle recommended would work or not, but we do see them riding ahead to scout the location—so the basic idea is kind of there.

And similarly, there were some other differences with the details of what happened compared to what we see in the movie.

For example, in the movie, they hear a noise. That really did happen. It was so dark they couldn’t see for sure who or what it was, but it sounded like they were digging in and knowing the Union soldiers were nearby they decided to turn around.

Remember when earlier I mentioned that two of the three divisions under General Jackson’s command were ready for the assault before the sun went down that surprised the Union soldiers? Well, the third of those divisions was under the command of General Hill.

And as it would so happen, General Hill’s men were getting close and with the darkness upon them they also decided to do some scouting around. But unlike General Jackson, Hill and his men didn’t have someone who had grown up locally. So, they didn’t know about the little road that Private Kyle told Jackson about.

Meanwhile, as fate would have it, there actually were a few Union soldiers who got lost in the thick woods. They were found and captured by the Confederates, which left them on high alert for anyone else who might be in the area. When another Union soldier on horseback happened to appear, the Confederates opened fire. But it wasn’t like they opened fire on just that one soldier on horseback. They didn’t know how many there were, so a bunch of Confederates started firing. The more that shot, the more joined in the shooting down the line of Confederates.

Most of the men with General Hill who were scouting were caught in the fire and killed. General Hill himself wasn’t killed, though. Just like we see in the movie, they started shouting for a cease-fire—you’re firing into your own men! But the Confederates in the line had seen the Union soldiers pull a lot of tricks, and since they’d seen a soldier on horseback just moments ago they knew was a Union soldier as well as the others they captured, they thought this was just another trick. So, just like we see in the movie, they shouted back that it’s a lie and more gunfire ensued.

General Jackson’s scouting party got caught in the barrage. He and others were hit. Interestingly, even despite this coincidental turn of events, many historians still think the likelihood of General Jackson himself being hit was very small. After all, it’s not like the muskets of the time were extremely accurate with a great line of sight. And that’s far from what they had in the dark of night in the middle of woods so thick it was reportedly pitch black even in the brightest part of the day.

The movie was also correct to show that Jackson didn’t die immediately, although it doesn’t mention how long it took. After being shot on May 2^nd, Jackson was being treated for his wounds and thought to be recovering despite having to have his left arm amputated as a result of his injuries.

He also developed pneumonia as a result of those injuries, which ultimately took his life on May 10^th, 1863, at the age of 39.

So, circling back to what I mentioned earlier, why was this event considered a turning point in the Civil War?

The reason for that can be summed up in a single line from an article published in The New York Times back on May 14^th, 1863, which said the “rebels have unquestionably lost by far their greatest military leader.”

His military skill was something acknowledged by soldiers on both sides of the struggle, meaning not only did the Confederacy lose his leadership but it was also a massive blow to their morale. As is the case with any war, you’ll never get every historian to agree that there was a single moment to change the course of the entire war. And that’s certainly the case for the death of “Stonewall” Jackson, too, but it certainly did have a major impact on the war.

The overall commander of the Confederate States Army, Robert E. Lee, said of Jackson’s death that he “lost his right arm” leaving historians since then to mark this event as one of the “what if” moments that could’ve changed the shape of history had it gone a different way.

Oh, and that little quote is something the movie shows, albeit the sources I saw mentioned Lee said that after Jackson’s death while in the movie we saw Lee mention it after Jackson lost his left arm.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 2003 film called Gods and Generals. The event we talked about today starts at about the 4-hour mark in the movie.

May 5, 1961. Florida.

There’s text on the screen telling us we’re at Cape Canaveral.

It’s nighttime. Some lights are being powered on.

There’s a sequence of shots to give us some more context. In the first, we can see a rocket dimly lit against the night sky. Then, a white truck with the words “NASA Transfer Van” written on the side drives by.

Meanwhile, as these shots continue, we hear some voiceover that says it’s been three weeks since Yuri Gagarin’s flight surprised everybody. He goes on to say many people question whether or not we’re ready to send a man into space.

Now we can see who is talking, and it’s a news anchor sitting behind a desk as he’s speaking into the camera. He’s not in a newsroom, but he’s out here in the dark along with everyone else at Cape Canaveral.

He goes on to say that despite the questions, out here in the night sits a rocket. Soon, one American astronaut will climb atop that rocket. Then he points out a new question that everyone is asking: Which astronaut will be first?

Behind him, we can see the white steam from the rocket being highlighted by the lights against an otherwise dark, night sky.

The camera cuts to the astronaut. We can’t see who it is yet, though, because the camera is looking from behind him. All we can see is his helmet and suit as he walks toward the rocket to the claps of the men around him. The camera work cleverly conceals his face, even though we can see his visor is up, as he walks up the red scaffolding surrounding the rocket. NASA workers and people on the ground continue to clap as the elevator takes him up.

Once at the top, the camera focuses on his feet as he climbs into the capsule at the top of the rocket. Inside the capsule, we can see a note taped to the control panel. The note reads:

NO HANDBALL PLAYING IN THIS AREA

The astronaut takes it down. Just then, another man peers inside and takes the note with a smile. This is Ed Harris’ version of John Glenn. Now we can tell who the astronaut inside the capsule is: Scott Glenn’s version of Alan Shepard. He laughs about the note. It’s not funny, John, but I do appreciate it. John Glenn shakes his colleague’s hand and smiles.

Then, they close up the capsule and the launch process continues.

From outside, the sun is starting to come up. It’s a beautiful scene with the sunrise in the background and the rocket in the foreground.

The news reporter mentions there’s another hold from NASA. Another delay as Alan Shepard is patiently waiting in the capsule.

Just then, the camera cuts to Alan Shepard who informs the command center of something very important: “I have to urinate.”

Inside, one of the scientists questions this. We didn’t plan for this, it’s only a 15-minute flight! But, he’s been up there for hours waiting. Can he just do it in his suit? That might be dangerous to introduce liquid into the pure oxygen environment. It could cause a short circuit; it could start a fire. No, he cannot urinate.

This is passed on to Shepard.

The movie doesn’t indicate how much time has passed, but from outside we can see the sun is fully up now. Back inside the capsule, Shepard starts fidgeting in a way that I think we’re all familiar with when you have to go but can’t.

The camera cuts to shots of liquid in other areas. The coffee being poured by Alan’s wife and friends. The water cooler in the NASA control center, bubbling up. The sound of the toilet flushing as another NASA scientist exits the restroom.

Shepard can’t hear any of this, of course, but when the camera cuts back to his face we can tell it’s getting more and more difficult to hold it in.

He radios back to the control center: “Request permission to relieve bladder.”

Then, the camera cuts to the control center as they look around at each other.

A brief pause and we can hear Shepard’s voice.

“Gordo.”

“Gordo.”

Dennis Quaid’s character, Gordo Cooper, is sitting behind the mic that communicates with Shepard in the capsule. He relays the obvious. Either they let Shepard go, or we get out the lug wrench and pry him out.

The movie doesn’t mention it, but it’s obvious this would cause even more delays.

Finally, they get permission to go in the suit. Cooper relays this to Shepard and we can see a smile crossing Shepard’s face as he relieves himself in the suit. Sensors start going off as the temperature changes in the suit. They ignore the alarms and resume the countdown.

From outside now, we can see the observers turn to watch the rocket as it’s T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…ignition!

The rocket blasts off from the ground as NASA ground and command crew cheer the successful launch. We can see the atmosphere outside the capsule window go black as Shepard enters space for a brief moment. Inside the capsule, Shepard counts the G-forces he’s feeling as he re-enters the atmosphere: Eight. Nine. “I’m okay! I’m okay!” he grunts as the capsule shakes and rattles violently.

Then, a band plays triumphant music as we see the capsule peacefully descend to the ground underneath a parachute.

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

That’s a sequence from the 1983 movie called The Right Stuff and it’s depiction of an event this week in history: Alan Shepard becoming the first American to enter space, which really did happen on May 5^th, 1961.

And the movie is also true to suggest this was as a direct result of the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin traveling to space. That happened on April 12^th, 1961 when he did a single orbit around the Earth, meaning the Soviet Union won what’s commonly been known as the “Space Race.”

That drove the United States to do something as a response. And on April 18^th, the U.S. performed their first simulation of a launch for their own spacecraft—the one we end up seeing in the movie. The capsule Alan Shepard was in was called Freedom 7, the number at the end to commemorate the original group of seven NASA astronauts.

Freedom 7 sat on top of what’s called a Redstone rocket—something the U.S. Army first used as a missile.

There’s a lot of the true story the movie doesn’t mention, though. For example, the mission was first planned for May 2^nd. Bad weather pushed it back a few days, though, which is partially why they didn’t want there to be any further delays. Not only that, but the movie was also correct to show people watching the launch. There were about half a million people gathered around beaches in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral to watch it and another 45 million or so watching it on TV—including then-President John F. Kennedy.

But, things don’t always go according to plan, and the movie was correct to show that there were delays of the launch on May 5^th.

It doesn’t really go into the details of them, though.

The original launch was supposed to happen at 7:20 AM. No doubt eager to make history, Shepard entered the Freedom 7 capsule at 5:15 AM. That’s why it was so dark in the movie.

Oh, and that funny “NO HANDBALL PLAYING IN THIS AREA” sign that we see in the movie? I’m pretty sure that happened based on anecdotal evidence, but it’s also the kind of thing that wasn’t officially documented by NASA. Nor were there any photos of that exact moment, and a sign like that wouldn’t last long—like we see in the movie, it gets taken down pretty fast.

But, the idea behind that joke from John Glenn was that he knew Alan Shepard loved to play the game handball. So, it was intended to relieve the stress of the situation.

If you’re wondering why John Glenn was there when we just learned about seven NASA astronauts, for this particular mission, Alan Shepard was assigned as the primary pilot while John Glenn was the backup—so they both prepped for the flight. That includes the steak and eggs breakfast with coffee and juice they had beforehand, something that would become a tradition for astronauts afterward. They ate that breakfast at about 1:30 AM.

Then, as we just learned, Shepard was in the capsule at 5:15 AM.

Fifteen minutes before the launch was supposed to happen, at 7:05 AM, they decided to postpone the launch to let some clouds pass by. While the rocket could obviously go through clouds, they wanted to photograph Earth from a perspective no American had ever seen before, and clouds would block that. You can find the photo that Shepard took on NASA’s website, something I’ll add a link to in the show notes.

When the clouds passed, a power supply had to be fixed. Another short delay. Then a computer had to be rebooted at the flight center, causing another delay—computers in 1961 didn’t reboot quite as fast as they do today.

By this time, Alan Shepard had been in the cramped Freedom 7 capsule lying on his back for about three hours.

So, that whole sequence with Shepard needing to urinate? Yup, that happened. The original plan was for the flight to last between 15 and 20 minutes, so no one even thought about building anything into the suit to allow for him to relieve himself.

While this is purely my speculation, since they only started the tests and final plans for Shepard’s launch in April, adding the ability for him to urinate in his suit would add extra space, extra weight, extra time to develop, extra everything. So, in my mind, this is the result of the rush in the Space Race.

Alan Shepard had to go.

At first, he asked if he could leave the capsule to hit the restroom. Well, I’m sure he didn’t phrase it like that. But just like we see in the movie, they denied his request.

The reason for that was because leaving would mean they’d have take the time to open the capsule. I saw something in my research that suggested there were 70 bolts sealing the hatch shut, each one having to be opened with a wrench. That would take quite some time. On top of that, they’d also have to redo what essentially amounted to a clean room around the spacecraft. Basically, that would cause another delay.

There had been enough delays.

No, you can’t leave.

So, there was a problem. Without being able to leave, there only seemed to be one solution. Shepard said he’d have to go in his suit.

They didn’t factor this into the equation either. But…what are you going to do?

In the great words of Jeff Goldblum from the movie Jurassic Park: “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”

And Alan Shepard went.

Soon after, the countdown resumed and at 9:34 AM, the Redstone rocket with Freedom 7 atop lifted off.

Fifteen and a half minutes later—well, 15 minutes and 28 seconds to be precise—Alan Shepard had experienced an altitude of 116.5 miles at a velocity 5,134 miles per hour.

To convert that to metric, that’s an altitude of 187 kilometers at a velocity of 8,262 kilometers per hour.

In the movie, we see Scott Glenn’s version of Alan Shepard mention the G-forces of eight and nine. In truth it didn’t stop there, because Shepard experienced a maximum G-force of 11.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1983 movie called The Right Stuff and the text on screen starting the events of May 5^th, 1961 start at an hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds.

And once you watch that, you can learn even more about the Space Race when we compare The Right Stuff with history on episode #75 of Based on a True Story.

March 29th, 1795. Vienna, Austria.

We’re in a very ornate room. The camera is angled so it’s shooting up, meaning we can see a huge, crystal chandelier hanging on the right side of the frame. It looks like it’s over the wooden piano that’s on the bottom right of the frame, although it’s obvious that’s just the way the camera angle makes it look. The chandelier is actually hanging in the room behind the piano.

On the left side of the frame is a young man, who is sitting up straight as he’s playing the piano.

With a closeup of his hands, we can see as they dance around the keyboard, making lovely music. He’s obviously a very accomplished musician.

The camera cuts to a woman running through a field with hedges and into woods nearby. In an unexpected move—at least, I didn’t expect it while I was watching for this episode—she takes off her dress as a man follows her into the woods and they embrace. The piano music continues as a backdrop as the scene cuts to a woman in a bath now as her voiceover explains that she was invited to a musical performance at Prince Lichnowsky’s palace, and Beethoven was going to be there.

Then, we’re back in the room with the man playing piano. That is the palace and Beethoven is the man playing the piano. He’s played by Gary Oldman in the movie.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Immortal Beloved.

That’s how the movie called Immortal Beloved portrays an event that might have happened this week in history. This is one of those scenes where the movie’s re-enactment makes it very hard to tell if it’s actually trying to be the event we’re talking about in this segment. That event, of course, is when Ludwig van Beethoven had his first-ever public performance as a pianist when he was 24 years old. That was on March 29^th, 1795. And it was in Vienna, Austria, just like the scene we see in the movie.

There’s also truth to the mention of Prince Lichnowsky, although that is a clue for why the performance we see might not have specifically been the first public performance in 1795.

You see, Beethoven’s first public performance as an adult took place at a charity concert in the Burgtheater in Vienna. It was a series of performances that was scheduled for March 29^th and 30^th, but then a third performance was added as a charity event put on by Mozart’s widow—he died at the end of 1791.

So, looking back on the event with a historical lens, it was on March 29^th that was the first public performance for an adult Beethoven performing one of his own pieces, Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭, Op. 19, as it would become known later when it was published. Although, some have suggested it may have been Op. 15 in C.

One of the reasons we’re not entirely sure is because Beethoven himself didn’t seem to be so sure of what he was going to play.

According to one of his friends who was there, Beethoven wasn’t feeling so well and he was running late on writing the pieces for the concert. So, he kind of had to wing it and do some improvisation on day two. That friend, a man by the name of Franz Wegeler, said, “Not until the afternoon of the second day before the concert did he write the rondo, and then while suffering from a pretty severe colic which frequently afflicted him. I relieved him with simple remedies so far as I could. In the anteroom sat four copyists to whom he handed sheet after sheet as soon as it was finished.”

Records then suggest that on the second day of the charity event, on March 30^th, Beethoven did some improvisation.

On the 31^st, Beethoven performed again but as we just learned that last day was technically a different charity event organized by Mozart’s wife. So, Beethoven didn’t perform one of his own pieces, but rather played one of Mozart’s concertos.

As a fun little side note, since Beethoven was a child prodigy his first-ever public performance also happened this week in history, too! It was on March 26^th, 1778 when Beethoven was seven years old. He performed with another of his father’s students.

Back to the movie, though, the mention of Prince Lichnowsky still has some historical accuracy to it because in the true story, Prince Karl Lichnowsky was one of Beethoven’s earliest financiers. In fact, Beethoven lived with Lichnowsky in a room at his palace and many of his compositions were dedicated to Lichnowsky.

So, the scene we see in the movie is rooted in some truth.

If you want to watch Beethoven’s early performance recreated on screen this week, check out the 1994 movie Immortal Beloved and it starts at about the 18-minute mark.

March 29th, 1827. Vienna, Austria.

For our next story this week, we’ll be staying in the same movie.

We’re not in Prince Lichnowsky’s palace anymore. There’s a group of people standing outside. The first thing that’s noticeable about the group is they’re all wearing black. Behind them are lush green plants and four torches burn in the background, something also noticeable since it’s daytime.

Between the four torches, the camera angle frames Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler, as he explains Beethoven to the people gathered.

He says things like, “He was an artist,” and “The thorns of life wounded him deeply, so he stuck to his art.”

While Schindler’s voice continues, the scene cuts to four pallbearers wearing black suits and top hats as they carry a casket through a street filled with throngs of people.

Then the camera cuts back to the scene at the grave and now we can see the casket lying there. Behind the casket is a mausoleum with the initials “LvB.” There are somber looks on everyone’s faces as they listen to Schindler continue to talk about Beethoven’s life. There are more scenes of the procession as the casket makes its way through the street. It’s lined with soldiers now, and the casket is on a carriage pulled by a pair of beautiful, black horses.

Reaching its destination, soldiers help the casket off of the carriage so it’s back under the power of the four pallbearers. They carry it to a doorway where a V-shape formation of priests in white robes contrast everyone else wearing black clothing.

The music swells as the pallbearers walk inside to the richly decorated church interior. On either side of the aisle the casket is being carried down are pews filled with people. There doesn’t look to be an empty seat.

Everyone is wearing black as the camera cuts around to a few solemn-looking faces in attendance.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Immortal Beloved.

Just like our last event, this scene also comes from the 1994 movie called Immortal Beloved. Unlike the last event, however, this one is a little more obvious about its timing and it was this week in history that Ludwig van Beethoven was buried on March 29^th, 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

The movie’s portrayal of the event is very dramatized, but it does hit on some key truths. Probably the most accurate thing we see in the movie is the idea that Beethoven’s funeral procession was a big deal in Vienna.

According to accounts of the event, somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people attended. So, the scene we see in the movie of streets lined with people to watch the casket being carried was true.

What’s not true about the movie is the prominent portrayal of the man who we see giving the speech at the funeral in the film. That’s Jeroen Krabbé’s character, Anton Schindler.

Schindler was a real person and he was a friend of Beethoven’s for many years, even working as Beethoven’s secretary for a time. After Beethoven’s death, Schindler was the one who owned most of Beethoven’s conversation books where he’d communicate with his friends. So, it stands to reason that Schindler would be the best person to write Beethoven’s biography.

And, he did. That was first published in 1840, 13 years after Beethoven’s death.

However, most historians now don’t believe many of the things in that biography. You see, Schindler made a lot of it up. For example, Schindler said he was very close to Beethoven for 11 or 12 years but further research into it revealed that number was more likely half that at five or six.

Since Schindler had the conversation books, we can assume he’d pull a lot from that, but over the years it became evident that Schindler also fabricated many of those and burned many of the pages to cover it up.

The first scholarly biographer came along in the form of Alexander Wheelock Thayer, who sailed to Germany from the United States in 1849 after realizing there were some discrepancies in Schindler’s biography. Thayer spent the first two years learning German so he could do the research required to write a truthful biography of Beethoven.

That was first published in 1866, with subsequent volumes being added in 1872 and 1879. That told Beethoven’s life up until 1816. Then in 1907 and 1908 the fourth and fifth volumes were published, which covered the remainder of Beethoven’s life and completed the overall work.

So, just as a recap, this week is a great one to listen to some Beethoven. If we go by order of the day and not the year, it was on March 26^th, 1778 that a seven-year-old Beethoven had his first public performance. And while we didn’t talk about this yet, it was exactly 49 years later on March 26^th, 1827, that Beethoven died at the age of 56.

On March 29^th, 1795, a 24-year-old Beethoven had his debut performance as a pianist, launching his career. And then it was precisely 32 years later on March 29^th, 1827 that Beethoven’s funeral attracted between 10,000 to 30,000 attendees.

That scene in the 1994 biopic about his life called Immortal Beloved starts at about 2 minutes into the film, but if there’s ever a week to watch a movie about Ludwig van Beethoven, this is the perfect time…so, I’d suggest just watching the whole thing!

And maybe throw some of his music on your playlist this week, too! If you’re looking for a recommendation to start with, I’d have to go with my favorite piece of his that’s probably his most common composition: Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor for solo piano. Or, as it’s more commonly known, Für Elise.

Oh, and as a fun little side note, Beethoven never knew how successful that would become because it wasn’t even published in his lifetime. Although Beethoven composed the piece in 1810, a man named Ludwig Nohl discovered the manuscript that he composed it on in 1867, 40 years after Beethoven died. Ludwig Nohl said the manuscript he found had the dedication of the piece as being “For Elise on April 27 in Memory by L. V. Bthvn.”

That’s why it’s called Für Elise. There have been a few suggestions as to who Elise might be, but because this was all done after Beethoven’s death, no one really knows for sure.

March 31^st, 1931. Kansas City, Kansas.

Our next movie is black and white. An airplane is flying in the sky. While I’m no aircraft expert, by the looks of it, this seems to be a Fokker F-10, a civilian passenger plane powered by three propeller engines. After flying for a few seconds, the movie fades to inside a building. Text on the screen tells us this is Kansas City, and we can see two men standing at a desk. One of the men writes something down on a pad of paper that he’s handing to a third man behind the desk. The sign behind the desk reads “Western Union”, leading me to believe the pad of paper is a message to be transmitted via telegraph.

The man says he’ll send it right away, and it’ll get there within half an hour.

The two men on the other side of the desk are both wearing hats. Since this is a black and white movie, it’s hard to know the color, but the one writing on the notepad is in a light hat while the other is in a dark hat.

Dark hat man tells the other a storm might be coming. Why don’t you wait for the next plane?

Nah, he can’t wait, says the light hat man. He has to be back in Florida by Monday. Then he laughs, besides, this is my vacation.

From behind them, an announcement is made: “Passengers for Los Angeles. Plane on field, ready for loading!”

The two men grab their bags and head toward the plane. They walk out onto the runway where the plane is ready for them to get in. At the back of the plane, the man with the light hat gets in. Behind him, the dark hat man wishes a happy trip. “Soft landing, Rock,” he says. The light hat man, who we can identify now as Pat O’Brien’s character, Knute Rockne, turns around to his friend. “You mean happy landing, don’t you?” says Rockne. He shakes the man’s hand.

That man, by the way, is simply cast as “Doc – Knute’s Friend at Kansas City Airport.” He’s played by the actor Edgar Dearing.

Knute and Doc shake hands, then Knute gets on the plane as Doc backs away to let the attendant close the plane’s door. As the plane taxis away, we can see this is the plane we saw flying earlier. Crowds of people wave goodbye to the passengers as the plane takes off to begin its journey.

On the plane, Knute Rockne looks out of the window at the land below. The movie cuts to a scene of a woman and four children opening a message. She mentions it’s from daddy, so I’m assuming this is the message Knute Rockne sent from Western Union a moment ago. Reading it must be his wife, Bonnie Rockne, as well as their children. She reads the message which says he’s practically there and he’ll wire again from Los Angeles. Love to all.

One of the boys says, if he’s practically there, why did he write? Bonnie replies happily, saying, because he knew we’d be worried, darling! Then, she turns and looks off camera. She shivers slightly, saying it seems to have gotten cold all of a sudden.

Back on the airplane, we can see the propellers turning as the plane continues its flight.

That scene fades away quickly and changes to a man plowing an empty field being pulled by two horses. The plane flies on, and the farmer looks up as we hear its engines roar over the field. Just then, as he’s looking up…we can hear what sounds like an explosion. He pulls on the reigns of his horses, causing them to stop as he watches in disbelief. His eye line goes from in the air where the plane used to be flying overhead to ground level as we hear a loud crash.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Knute Rockne: All American

That portrayal comes from the classic 1940 film called Knute Rockne: All American. The event it’s portraying is when Knute Rockne’s plane crashed, which happened this week in history on March 31^st, 1931.

While the movie’s depiction is heavily dramatized, as movies from the 1940s often are, it does get some key plot points correct.

For example, it is true that Knute Rockne was flying from Kansas City to Los Angeles on a Fokker F-10 aircraft owned by TWA. While we don’t see the crash itself in the movie, perhaps one of the reasons for that is because we don’t know for sure exactly what happened to it. By the time investigators got to the crash site, many people had taken pieces of the plane as souvenirs.

The movie’s mention of a storm is a possibility, and that really is one of the proposed causes of the crash. But, there’s no record of a storm in the area that day. The most likely scenario is that, over time, water got into the wing. Over an unknown period of time, that moisture had softened the glue that bonded the wing to the structure. The turbulence of the flight, then, just happened to be enough to cause a wing spar to fail and the wing separated from the aircraft while it was in the air.

All six passengers and two crew on board were killed.

The most popular of these was, as the movie shows, Knute Rockne. At the time of his death, Rockne was just 43 years old, but he had already secured a name for himself as one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. He was the head coach at Notre Dame from 1918 until 1930 where he coached players such as George Gipp, Red Grange, and Jim Thorpe. In those years, Notre Dame racked up a record of 105 wins, 12 losses, five ties, and three national championships: 1924, 1929, and 1930, respectively. Both the 1929 and 1930 teams were undefeated in their successful quest for the championship, which only added to Rockne’s popularity when he died the following year.

That popularity was a big reason why there were a number of new additions to aircraft security to ensure it didn’t happen again. In fact, it was partly because of that crash that the Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America decided to discontinue the F-10—the American public simply didn’t trust the airplane anymore, and understandably so.

If you want to watch how the movie portrays this event, check out the 1940 film called Knute Rockne: All American. The crash event happens about an hour and 29 minutes into the movie.

February 28th, 1993. Waco, Texas.

A line of vehicles are driving quickly down a dirt road.

In the lead we can see two pickup trucks. One of them is red and white, while the other is blue and white. Both pickups are pulling covered trailers. Behind the two pickups are three large, black SUVs—they look like Chevy Suburbans, although it’s hard to verify that’s what they are from the camera angle at a distance. Overhead, a Huey helicopter passes the line of vehicles and heads toward a compound with a large building.

The camera cuts to inside the building with two women. One of the women is holding a screaming baby while behind her a young boy sits on one of the two bunk beds in the room. The other woman, not the one holding the baby, hears a noise outside and looks out the window. She’s surprised to see the helicopter fly overhead.

Downstairs, three men approach the front door. They peer outside to see another flyby with the helicopter.

Taylor Kitsch’s character, David Koresh, turns around from the front door and says all the women and children need to go upstairs right now. One of the women nods in approval as everyone heads upstairs. There are quite a few women and children, too many to count all at once.

As they get the children into rooms, downstairs we can see some of the men handing out guns—assault rifles, maybe a machine gun, it was hard to tell.

Koresh tells the men not to do anything stupid, he’s going to go outside and talk to them. Other men scatter, at least one of them going upstairs, while Andy Umberger’s character, Perry Jones, looks at Koresh and lets out a big breath of air.

Then, Koresh turns around and with one hand already up he opens the front door and steps outside. As soon as he gets outside, his other hand is up. Both arms raised just outside the front door he is rushed by the uniformed men outside. They’re all wearing ATF vests and most of them are carrying heavy weapons.

Koresh yells out for them to calm down, to please stop!

The officers yell back at him to get on the ground. Koresh says there are women and children inside.

Then, some of the pet dogs they have on the compound start barking and growling at the armed ATF agents on the other side of the wooden fence. One of the agents puts his gun over the fence and shoots the dogs.

Hearing that, another agent yells “Shots fired!” and all hell breaks loose.

Koresh is hit as he runs back inside. Jones is hit as a shot goes through the front door just after it’s closed.

Neither are killed, but they’re bleeding badly. From inside the building, one of the men fires back and we can see an ATF agent get hit and go down. One of the women near a window gets shot in the hand, the baby she was holding falling as she hits the ground as well.

Both sides start firing back and forth creating a hail of bullets that rip through the walls, doors, and glass windows of the building.

Inside, as he ducks for cover from the gunfire, Demore Barnes’ version of Wayne Martin calls 911. He screams into the phone that there are 75 ATF agents around our building and they’re shooting at us!

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV miniseries Waco

This depiction comes from the 2018 miniseries called Waco and it shows us an event that happened this week in history: The gunfight that started a 51-day siege between the U.S. government and the Branch Davidians. That event took place on February 28th, 1993.

The series was correct to show that 77 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—or just the ATF—went to the Branch Davidians compound 13 miles outside of Waco on the morning of February 28th.

The official reason they were there was to execute search warrants on the compound for weapons as well as a warrant for the arrest of David Koresh. They believed the Branch Davidians had about 250 weapons on the compound. There were 126 Branch Davidians on the compound, 46 of whom were children.

From there, the true story is shrouded in a little more mystery than what we see in the series simply because there’s a lot of “he said/she said” type of finger-pointing.

For example, in the series we see dogs barking at the ATF agents from behind a fence. That’s what causes the agent to shoot the dog, which triggers another agent to think they’re being fired upon so from there everyone opens up.

This is what the official ATF website has to say about how it started:

The Davidians were alerted to the impending raid by a local postman, who was also a cult member. The heavily armed, cult members were waiting in ambush as the agents unloaded from their vehicles. Koresh was outside on the porch, as the agents approached telling him they had a search warrant and instructing him to “get down,” he retreated inside the house. Gunfire burst through the door, as the agents approached, one agent was wounded.

So, that certainly sounds like the Branch Davidians shot first as the agents approached. But, according to Branch Davidian survivors, they deny shooting first. We’ll probably never know the true story for certain.

Another thing the series got right was that 911 call from Wayne Martin. This is an excerpt from the real 911 call:

911, what’s your emergency?

>> There are 75 men around our building and they’re shooting at us in Mount Carmel.

Tell them there are children and women in here and to call it off.

They didn’t call it off.

The ensuing gunfight lasted two and a half hours. Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were killed in the opening gunfight. After that, the FBI took over and for the next 51-days the Branch Davidians were held under siege by, according to some reports, up to 900 federal agents.

The siege ended on April 19th, 199,3 and in the end those four ATF agents died while 82 Branch Davidians lost their lives.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 2018 miniseries called Waco. The ATF agents arrive at the compound at the very beginning of the third episode.

February 29th, 1692. Salem, Massachusetts.

At least a dozen young girls are sitting in a row. They’re each wearing very modest and dull-colored dresses with white bonnets. A few of them also have white aprons. A man seems to be scolding them. He says someone had to have led them to dance around the fire. Save yourselves and tell me who it was.

We can see the man now, it’s Rob Campbell’s character, Reverend Hale. He asks more questions of the girls, none of whom have said a single world.

Did someone drink from the kettle that was over the fire? Were there spells being cast?

Looking at one of the girls right in front of him now, he yells at her.

“Was there!?”

Obviously afraid, she shakily points a finger at Winona Ryder’s character, Abigail Williams, who immediately denies it. She insists it wasn’t her, but the Reverend wants a name. Who was it? Then, Williams gives a name: Tituba.

In the next shot, we can see another Reverend, Bruce Davidson’s version of Reverend Parris, alongside Jeffrey Jones’ Thomas Putnam with Abigail Williams and Charlayne Woodard’s character of Tituba. Williams continues to accuse Tituba, but Tituba insists she didn’t do anything bad. Parris and Putnam throw Tituba to the ground with force while Williams’ claims get even more extreme, saying Tituba made them drink blood.

At this, Reverend Hale is even more outraged. You drank blood!? Then, another claim from Frances Conroy’s version of Ann Putnam, saying it was her baby’s blood—you murdered my babies, Tituba!

Reverend Hale asks Tituba when she compacted with the devil, but Tituba says she doesn’t. To this, Reverend Putnam whips Tituba, saying he’ll beat her to death unless she admits to compacting with the devil. Finally, as the whipping continues, Tituba says she doesn’t desire to work for him.

The “Him” she mentions referring to the devil.

The whipping stops, but Reverend Hale isn’t done with her yet. He’s going to rid her of the devil!

He takes her up into a room and asks her when the devil comes, does he bring other people? Ann Putnam is there, she asks Tituba if Sarah Goode is one of the others working with the devil.

Tituba stutters, she says it was dark, she couldn’t see anyone else.

Reverend Hale tells Tituba that the devil can never overcome a minister, so he will protect her. You are here to help us cleanse this village. Now, who came with the devil?

Ann Putnam again blurts out, asking if it was either Sarah Goode or Osborne. The Reverend insists Tituba give them their names—the names of others in league with the devil!

Then, Tituba, a Black woman from Barbados, tells a story about how the devil tells her that he has white people who belong to him. And she saw Sarah Goode and Osborne!

Others in the room gasp while Anna Putnam says she knew it!

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

This depiction comes from the 1992 movie called The Crucible. The event it’s depicting is when Tituba, Sarah Goode, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft, which happened this week in history on February 29th, 1692.

Now, the movie is only loosely based on a true story. It’s really an adaptation of a play by Arthur Miller so it’s one more step removed from history, but it is true that those three women were accused of witchcraft this week in history at the beginning of what would become known as the Salem witch trials.

We don’t know a lot about the real Tituba, but we do know that Reverend Samuel Parris brought three enslaved people with him when he arrived in Massachusetts from the Caribbean. It’s likely she was one of them.

We also don’t know if Tituba tried to practice any sort of magic with the young girls in Salem like the movie suggests.

The true story is that Reverend Parris’ 9-year-old daughter, Betty, started exhibiting what they thought was strange behavior. She and the 11-year-old Abigail Williams, who was Reverend Parris’ niece, and the 12-year-old Ann Putnam, Jr. started having fits. They were contorting violently and seemingly uncontrollable bursts of screaming. The town doctor and Reverend Hale, a neighboring minister, came to get to the bottom of these afflictions. The diagnosis was that the girls were bewitched. So, they tried to get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, other young girls in the town started to act up in the same manner. They were “afflicted” as well.

Trying to get to the bottom of the bewitchment, the young girls blamed Tituba who, in turn, was beaten as they tried to get a confession out of her. She claimed to see visions of the devil and witches. Two other women, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne were also named.

And so it was that, on February 29, 1692, the first arrest warrants were officially issued for Tituba, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne. It was the start of what we now know as the Salem witch trials when, between February of 1692 and May of 1693, about 200 people were charged and 19 “witches” were executed.

In 1976, Science magazine published a study that suggested the cause was fungus ergot found in rye, wheat and other cereals that can cause delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 1992 movie The Crucible. The first accusations start around the 29-minute mark. And if you want to dive deeper into the true story, we covered The Crucible back on episode #143 of Based on a True Story.

March 2nd, 1940. Arcadia, California.

An announcer holds the mic as he waves at the throngs of people behind him. He says it’s the largest crowd ever at Santa Anita with 55,000 in the stands and 20,000 in the infield and it’s only 12 o’clock!

The camera cuts to a man strapping his boot on tight. The camera pans up to show us Jeff Bridges’ character, Charles Howard, and Elizabeth Banks’ character, Marcela Howard. They’re standing along with Chris Cooper’s character, Tom Smith.

Now we can see the man who was pulling on his boots: Tobey Maguire’s character, Red Pollard. Marcela Howard hands Pollard a St. Christopher necklace for luck. And with that, Red says it’s time to go win a race.

In the next shot, we can see Red Pollard being helped onto a horse by Tom Smith. Wearing the number 9, Smith gives Pollard a few last-minute tips. They look nervous, but Pollard reassures them it’ll be fine. Charles Howard takes his seat to watch the race as we see all the horses take their places in the starting gate.

The bell sounds and we can hear the thunder of hooves as the horses race down the track.

We’re in the thick of the race now. At first, Pollard is in the middle of the pack, but as the race continues he falls behind—far behind. Pollard urges his horse on until he catches up to another jockey, Georgie. They chat with each other for a brief moment and let the two horses see each other.

That seems to be all he needs as Pollard urges his horse on ahead.

Before long, he catches up to the rest of the pack. Then he passes one horse. Two. Three. Taking the outside track, they keep passing the other horses almost as if he’s not even trying. As they come around the stretch, the movie switches into slow motion as we see Red Pollard riding Seabiscuit way ahead of the rest of the pack. The crowd is cheering as Seabiscuit takes the victory!

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

This depiction comes from the 2003 movie named after the horse called Seabiscuit. The event it’s depicting is when the real Seabiscuit ran his last race, which happened this week in history on March 2nd, 1940 at the Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.

And just like in the movie, he won that race…but it didn’t happen quite like we see in the movie.

The true story is that Seabiscuit didn’t fall that far behind only to race ahead of everyone else so easily.

You can find footage of the race itself on YouTube and there’s no indication of Red Pollard chatting with another jockey named George Woolf in the middle of the race, either. George is played by Gary Stevens in the movie, and he was based on a real person who raced in the 1940 Big ‘Cap, as the Handicap is called.

In the true story, George was riding Heelfly and came in sixth place.

So, while the race itself wasn’t quite as dramatic as the movie shows it to be, it is true that Seabiscuit came in first place and cemented his name in the history books.

If you want to see this week’s event in history depicted on screen, check out the 2003 movie Seabiscuit. The final race starts at about two hours and four minutes into the film. If you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that movie back on episode #131 of Based on a True Story.