L'Odyssée des Mormons

I just saw the movie Brigham Young (1940) at a screening at Brigham Young University. I found the movie to be entertaining and worthwhile as a film, although the historicity is basically a skeleton on which Hollywood drapes their story--which is what Hollywood did all the time anyway. At least it is a positive portrayal.

It may interest readers to know what Heber J. Grant, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1918 to 1945 had to say about the movie. This is taken from the LDS Conference Report, Sunday October 6, 1940, page 96.

"I am thankful beyond expression for the very wonderful and splendid moving picture that has been made of Brigham Young. I have heard some little criticism of it, but we cannot expect the people who do not know that Brigham Young was in very deed the representative of God upon this earth, who do not know his wonderful character, to tell the story as we would tell it. We know that he was a prophet of the living God and the representative of the Lord here upon the earth. There is nothing in the picture that reflects in any way against our people. It is a very marvelous and wonderful thing, considering how people generally have treated us and what they have thought of us. Of course there are many things in the picture that are not strictly correct, and that is announced in the picture itself. It is of course a picture and we could not hope that they would make a picture at their expense, running into a couple of million dollars, to be just as we would like it. We know that Brigham Young was a powerful and wonderful man, the greatest man of his day, and one of the great things about Brigham Young was that he always gave credit to Joseph Smith for everything that he did. He claimed that he was simply building upon the foundation laid by the prophet of God, who had seen God and conversed with Jesus Christ. He never doubted for one minute the final triumph of the people here in Utah. He was a man of God, and the people thought the world and all of him."

I noticed that a few of the comments above mentioned that Vincent Price was a strange pick, or "over the top," or whatever, as Joseph Smith.

Before seeing the film, I also thought that seeing Vincent Price as Joseph Smith was a bit odd, but as others have said, this is because of the many *later* horror/thriller films he appeared in.

"Brigham Young," by IMDb's count, was only Price's *seventh* film, and at the time, I'm confident that he had not yet cemented his "creepy" persona.

Generally, though, I echo what has been written-- not completely accurate (what historical film is?) but characters are portrayed fairly and the film was entertaining.

As another LDS viewer, I also like the film and find its hollywoodization of facts far less disturbing than say those of Stone's JFK. That said, I feel inclined to re-correct three facts that another LDS viewer pointed out. 1) While Joseph Smith was falsely imprisoned many times during his life, at the time of his murder he was under arrest, pending trial, for an offense he DID commit -- namely his ordering the destruction of the press of an opposition newspaper in Nauvoo. 2) While the slender 2/3rds majority of Nauvoo mormons did side with Brigham after Joseph's murder, roughly a third did not and scattered to the winds. And the issue of succession was by no means decided upon Joseph's death. It was nip and tuck, with several contenders vying for the crown, until Brigham's legendary 'immaculate impersonation' speech at conference. 3) I thought Vincent Price's portrayal of Joseph Smith was pretty good -- charismatic and visionary, somewhat other-worldly, but what do you expect.

It must have been a difficult thing to make a movie in 1940 about the Mormons in the 19th century with polygamy being practiced by them at that time, but Daryl F. Zanuck gave it a try, even managing to get it past the production code and the censors of the time. He is definitely trying to parallel the trek of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land headed by Moses with the Mormons traveling from Nauvoo to Salt Lake headed by Brigham Young. There are some colorful characters thrown in such as John Caradine's Porter Rockwell, a rather wild scout, who pulls his guns on a prosecutor during a trial so that Brigham Young (Dean Jagger) can have a chance to speak in Joseph Smith's defense, and the judge lets him get away with that?? Then there is also a romance thrown in with Mormon Jonathan Kent (Tyrone Power) and non-Mormon Zina Webb (Linda Darnell) slowly falling for each other as they travel across the continent with the Mormons. When Jonathan proposes marriage, Zina has reservations - first off, she is not a Mormon, and more importantly, she doesn't want to be the first of many Mrs.Kents. Her reservations were probably justified.

There is even a bad guy in the (fictional) person of Angus Duncan (Brian Donlevy) who claims that Joseph Smith told him that he was to head the church in case of his death, and then causes trouble for Brigham Young every step of the way, including trying to get the Mormons to follow him to California rather than stop at Salt Lake. And yes, Angus is just like Edward G. Robinson's trouble making character in "The Ten Commandments", but remember, this film was made sixteen years before "Ten Commandments".

The whole time, as Brigham makes decisions that effect the lives of all of the Mormons, he confides in wife Mary Ann that he is not sure that he is being led by God to make all of these decisions, so that he carries a burden of feeling that he could be misleading the others when he tells them to do this or that, but all the while his heart is in the right place. The film brings up some valid points to anybody that believes in God - How do you really know when He is speaking to you? How do you know a true prophet from a false one? I'm no expert on LDS history, in fact I'm not LDS at all, but if you want a rousing Western adventure that is a little different you might give this one a try.

This film must have been somewhat convincing to non-Mormons as a realistic portrayal of what happened, because I distinctly remember this film being shown in elementary school back in history class when I was growing up in Texas! Do note that Dallas, Texas was probably lacking in large numbers of people who were neither a Baptist nor a Methodist back in 1967. Catch this one if you can. The performances are excellent even if the history may be a little off.

Hollywood cannot do justice to History, but this was not a bad attempt. As a Mormon, I found it tastefully done and essentially accurate. The cast was great. Of course, many details were missing or changed, but that is the nature of history and this movie did a good job of portraying the emotions that bring history alive.