The Bill of Rights

Here's another of the Warner Brothers Technicolor short subjects of the 1930s. Most of them, from GOOD MORNING EVE on seems more focused on showing off Technicolor at its most vivid than in telling a good story. A exception was the three or four historical pageants directed by Crane Wilbur, extolling the Bill of Rights, the signing of the Constitution, and so forth. Not that this is less of a color extravaganza, but the lighting and color choices are made to suggest contemporary paintings.

That was one of the advantages of Technicolor: its flexibility. Although the story telling here is rather stiff, it is a delight to look at.

It's 1774 Williamsburg, Virginia. The Governor invites the leading lights of the colonies. He is shocked to find them rebellious. He finds them Americans.

It's a WB costume historical recreation short. It's in Technicolor. With war coming to Europe, this is obviously setting up the fight to come. WB had led the march to resist tyranny and this is probably another part of that mission. It's very simple and very short. It's very sincere. The acting is stoic and serious. It's aimed at the public with a grade school level of understanding. It is patriotic in a rallying the free world sort of way.

Another in the kind of historical shorts the major studios produced during the '30s and '40s, given Grade-A production values and using the studio's stock company of supporting players for the leading roles.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS begins in 1774 in Williamsburg, Virginia with the colonists insisting that while they "respect the motherland", they are demanding a bill of rights for "the home country". What follows is a fervent replay of American history with the Americans vs. the British, with the British considering ways to get the "hot-blooded colonists" to obey their commands.

Patrick Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me death" (overacted by JOHN LITEL) is a part of the proceedings, as are other fragments of history including the Minute Men and ending in 1787 with rebellion among the colonists as they work on an Amendment to preserve "the Bill of Rights".

Sets and costumes are strictly Grade A in presentation but the acting is uniformly stiff and self-conscious. Best in the cast is earnest TED OSBORNE as James Madison, while the rest of the cast indulges in energetic but stilted acting under Crane Wilbur's direction.

A nice docudrama on the adaption of the first ten amendments to the Constitution would highly be in order as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison played a big part in that which occurred in 1789-1790 in the First Congress. But this is not the film for that. In fact only the last couple of minutes deal with that.

What we do see is the beginning of the rebellion as seen from the point of view of Virginia with the House of Burgesses defying the British royal governor Dunsmore as played by Moroni Olsen. The events aren't as dramatic as what was going on in Massachusetts, but the point is made that the fate of Massachusetts and those Puritan types in that colony could be that of the Virginia cavalier plantation owner people whom Jefferson and Madison represent. True then as it is today that Americans come from a variety of life experience.

The Bill Of Rights is a pleasant enough film which expresses the need for those rights to be codified. But not hardly the history of how they came to be in our Constitution.

The world premiere (most shorts never had one) of this Vitaphone Technicolor featurette was held on August 31, 1939 at The National Conference of Christians and Jews at Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

Warner's also arranged for a national radio broadcast of the events over the NBC Blue network, with many of the company's stars (including some big-names who weren't in this short) participating via a hook-up to the Los Angeles NBC studio.

Actually, considering the events going on in Europe at the time, the National Conference of Christians and Jews was exactly the right place to premiere this short. Those with short and/or selective memories and revisionist inclinations may disagree. That's okay. The Bill of Rights gives them that privilege.