My Country 'Tis of Thee

I just saw this short on the "Horatio Hornblower" DVD. I have to say this is a great short history lesson about the United States.

They should show this to school children today. I must see to fuel your love of country.

I would hate to see how todays Hollywood would take this short and make it into a "see how bad we are and were" video.

Please clean this gem up. You can see the film pop and skip. A good cleaning would make this look fantastic.

The disclaimer at the start is crazy. Why make apologies for the way they lived or thought at that time. Nothing is this short is in anyway offensive unless the viewer wants to hate America.

Even given that this was produced in 1950 during the Cold War, this short film is egregious propaganda. It relates our history in terms that invite a comparison with Nazi spin. One would think that the citizens of the USA were some master race. The Indians "moved westward" after their conflicts with the white settlers. The quick look at the Civil War does not even mention slavery. What we're given here is a version of American History that has no relation to reality. Scary stuff. I can heartily recommend this to students of history who want to research the McCarthy era, with its Communist paranoia -- perhaps this is an attempt by Hollywood to fend off the witch hunt and the subsequent blacklisting of many writers and directors.

Just watched this little short on TMC. It certainly IS a little piece of propaganda and it looks just silly now. Since I was born in 1947, I grew up in the post WWII era in which this idea of patriotism was heavily promoted -- U.S. is greatest country in the history of the world and does no wrong. Any film has to be viewed in the context of its own time. We had just been the victors of the greatest war in the history of the world and most everyone had a son, father, brother, uncle who went to war, many sacrifices were also made at home & veterans had returned home. We were proud and united. The "Red Scare" was swinging into full gear and, of course, the atom bomb hung like a menacing storm cloud in the background of daily living. I agree with most other reviewers -- this makes little attempt to give an accurate historical account and, of course, that wasn't the objective. It's just a little slice of Americana. Rated a 3 not 0 for giving insight into that era.

There's nothing terribly original in My Country Tis Of Thee, it's a compilation of newsreel footage and footage from previous Warner Brothers productions and it tells the story of America that a member of today's Tea Party would find admirable. The film was done in the time of the Cold War and something like this could never be produced today. Frankly it's quite mediocre.

But what floored me was that this film got a nomination for Best Short Subject. That says a lot about the times of the Cold War and what was the start of the blacklisting era. My guess is that they were afraid not to nominate this thing. The competition was Beaver Valley a Walt Disney True Life nature film and a documentary of super senior citizen painter Grandma Moses. The Beavers took home the Oscar gold.

I've not seen either of the other films but I'm betting they're far more worthy of Oscar consideration than this was.

My Country 'Tis of Thee (1950)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated Technicolor short from Warner takes a look at various historical events in America's history including all the wars fought up to 1950, the landing of the Pilgrams, the Indians moving out West, the Star Spangle Banner being written and various other things. MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE isn't a complete winner but I think history buffs should get a few kicks out of it. I'd also add that this here would probably be a great short to show young kids because you get a pretty quick look at the various historical things for America but I'm sure this being in color would help hold their interests as well. I thought for the most part this was entertaining, although I'm sure history buffs might object to a few of the things including how "kindly" the Indians moving was when in fact they were treated quite unfair. I'm sure many people would laugh over the reasonings behind the Civil War here. Obviously certain things have been toned down but overall the short is still worth viewing.