Give Me Liberty

John Litel stars as Patrick Henry in this Warner Brothers Technicolor Short. It's a stodgy affair, with snippets of Henry's inflammatory speeches scattered here and there as folks in 18th-Century costumes spend most of their time posing, waiting for Litel to break loose and announce "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

The Warner Technicolor shorts were intended as prestige pieces, meant to show off the expensive three-strip process in an edifying manner. One of the strengths of the Technicolor process was its flexibility, and the entire film seems to have been given a beige wash, suggesting parchment, or old, oxidized paper. The print that plays on Turner Classic Movies is a little fuzzy, but quite watchable.

This is WB doing a Vitaphone Technicolor short on Patrick Henry. The highlight is his bombastic inspirational speech inside the Virginia legislature as he argues for arming the militia and abandoning any more negotiations.

With Europe in turmoil, it's easy to see the subtext in this freedom-loving historical short. It's pumping up the patriotism. It feels like a poor version of Masterpiece Theater until we get to the big speech. There is no doubt that the speech is a big crowd pleaser and I'm sure that the audience of its day loved it. This did win the Oscar for color short. The Technicolor probably helped a lot.

A Vitaphone Technicolor Short Subject.

John Henry's passionate `GIVE ME LIBERTY' speech in 1775 rouses the Virginia legislators into joining the American Revolution.

This fine little film focuses in on Patrick Henry (1736-1799) and what finally led him to declare his beliefs regarding political separation from Great Britain. Actor John Litel does a magnificent job in performing the great speech which was delivered by Henry at St. John's Church in Richmond.

The film errs in putting too much of a romantic twist into the plot, with Henry missing his wife so much that he can't get motivated to make his declaration until he sees her enter the church balcony unexpectedly. The real story is more interesting. Henry's first wife, Sarah Shelton, whom he married in 1754, had gone completely insane. Mental illness was not understood in the 18th Century and was considered somewhat shameful. It is indeed ironic that Patrick Henry, that great champion of human liberty & freedom, kept his mad wife confined in the cellar. It was not until after her death that he wed Dorothea Dandridge.

GIVE ME LIBERTY won the Academy Award for Best Color Short Subject for 1936.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

It's surprising to see how perfected three-strip Technicolor was, as early as 1936, when GIVE ME LIBERTY was filmed, an historical short subject starring JOHN LITEL as Patrick Henry giving his famous "Give Me Liberty!" speech in Virginia during the American Revolution.

This short appears on the Errol Flynn Signature Collection for CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, and is evidence that the handsomely mounted Technicolor short was the Warner way of testing its color equipment in preparation for the full-length features to come.

It's the sort of film we used to see in the school auditorium when I was a kid, educational and usually not very well acted or produced. This is fairly well done, although I have to admit that--much as I like John Litel as a character actor in the Warner stock company--his flamboyant method of delivering the speech is more than a little over the top for dramatic effect.

Again, the most impressive thing about the feature is the Technicolor photography which makes the costumes and sets glow with vivid shades of color that are pleasing to the eye.

Give Me Liberty was the first of three short subjects in which character actor John Litel played the fiery Virginia bred founding father. This one is a competently made film which gives the essence of the real Patrick Henry.

One of the other reviewers mentioned that he thought Litel was old fashionedly flamboyant as Henry. But in point of fact that's what he was in real life. He was indeed the kind of spell binding orator whose words did move men. Henry was one of the leaders of the Virginia bar as well as a Delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, his summations to the jury were legendary.

That aroused a lot of jealousy among his contemporaries. Thomas Jefferson whose forte was writing not speaking, trained as a lawyer as a young man. I recall reading Dumas Malone's multi-volume Jefferson biography where Jefferson wrote in his diary about how hard he worked on researching precedents and that all Patrick Henry did was bamboozle juries with bull. Nothing's changed in over 230 years as far as lawyers in this country. Jefferson gave up law practice and it was Patrick Henry's stock in trade.

He was a mercurial man Henry, you never knew which side of an issue he'd wind up on. He was at various stages after the Revolution, a Federalist and an anti-Federalist whatever the mood struck him.

Don't look for consistency with Henry, but this film will give you a good idea what he was like in his glory days of the Revolutionary War.