The Bill of Rights

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.

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.

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.

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.

I knew something was off right from the start, as this film opens in 1774 and portrays James Madison as a member of the Virginia Assembly. Uh, that is incorrect. Madison was never a member of the House of Burgesses before it was dissolved. This would be only the first of a tidal wave of inaccuracies, misleading anecdotes and half-truths that populate this 20 minute mess of a short. It's kind of remarkable how much they got wrong in so brief a time.

Here are more lowlights:

• The Virginians are shown rallying to the support of Boston after it was learned the British closed the port there and suspended some civil liberties. This is true enough, but it's portrayed as if the British did this solely because they are evil and despotic. No mention is made of the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in December 1773, and which was the reason why the British took those punitive actions. To watch this, the British did it because they hate Americans and that's all.

• British troops are shown trashing property and printing presses in Boston. Nothing is mentioned, however, of the Sons of Liberty "tarring and feathering" Loyalists, or of their destruction of several houses of government officials. The Sons of Liberty mob "destroyed Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson's furniture, wrecked the garden, tore out the windows, walls, wainscoting, tiles and even tore down the cupola on the roof" of his house. But eh, let's not talk about that lol.

• The "Fairfax Resolves" of 1774 and the "Virginia Declaration of Rights" of 1776 are represented here as being one document. Not so fast guys.

• The film shows Governor Dunmore dissolving the House of Burgesses and then stealing the colony's gunpowder virtually on the same day. In reality, the House was dissolved in June 1774 and the gunpowder wasn't seized until April 1775. The film also shows Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech given as a response to the seizing of the gunpowder, but again, wrong. That speech was delivered in March of 1775, a full month before Dunmore ordered the gunpowder seized.

• The flag of the Culpeper Minutemen is shown at this juncture but that militia didn't form until July 1775.

• The pistol 'booby trap' set in the powder magazine by the "evil" British is a complete fabrication.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. This short film is an absolute travesty and little represents 'what actually happened.' Adding to the weirdness, George Washington, who was present for many of these events, was never shown in the film; meanwhile, James Madison, who wasn't, is given a prominent place. I'm awarding it a few stars for the early use of color, the costumes, and what appears to be location filming in Colonial Williamsburg. The rest is just terribly misleading and inaccurate 'history.'

3/10. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Definitely not. And contrary to what another reviewer wrote, our kids should not watch it either, lest they become as uneducated as we.