The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory

The best film on the battle of San Antonio, Texas in March 1836, was John Wayne's 1960 epic THE ALAMO. In a one shot job as director producer, that temporarily financially strapped him, Wayne demonstrated that he was talented in movie making outside of his icon-like acting ability personifying the West.

I have commented on that film in a review the other night, and I pointed out that Wayne and James Edward Grant (the screenwriter) tackled some points that were barely mentioned in earlier films about the battle. They did bring in the issue of slavery. They also finally discussed the contribution of local Mexican land owner Juan Seguin as an important leader in the War for Independence on par with Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Austin, and Houston.

But there was one weakness (though well hidden) in the film. Wayne worked hard to cast it properly, thinking of many people for lead roles in it. But, he did not properly handle the leader of the enemy forces, General Antonio De Santa Anna. The role was played by an obscure actor, Ruben Padilla (on this board, his thread shows only three credits listed). Padilla did not have any spoken dialog (even in Spanish). And while he does have one of the last shots in the film, he just is shown as a silent tyrant, observing the burning of the bodies of the Americans and their allies.

Despite several poor choices in the casting of this television movie (THE ALAMO: THIRTEEN DAYS TO CLORY), it is the best film in showing the man who was (from 1836 to 1854) a leading bogeyman to American policy makers. Raul Julia was a wonderful stage actor. I was fortunate to see him in a production (in the late 1980s) of ARMS AND THE MAN in Manhattan, as Sergius. He was never boring, and usually first rate in his acting.

Here we see the egotistical monster at his worst. Nothing is acceptable that does not fit Santa Anna's wishes or activities. It can be the failure of an orderly in the army to bring some item he requested fast enough, or it can be the temerity of these "foreign brigands" (as he saw the Americans) in not knuckling down to himself, "the Napoleon of the West".

Santa Anna was President of Mexico five or six times between 1830 and 1855. He claimed that he first got involved in overthrowing a President because that President did not live up to the country's constitution, but it was the power that kept him going year after year. It is a sad commentary that he was the leading Mexican historical figure in those two decades. No political figure or military figure would rise to override him until Benito Juarez did in the late 1850s. Initially he claimed great liberal ideals, but he once admitted that the people of Mexico were children who needed guidance for one hundred years before they could rule themselves (and thus he sounds like Gilbert Roland in CRISIS talking about the people he has helped lead against Jose Ferrer). The amazing thing about him was he managed to keep coming back. His policies were disasters. While we know about his attack on Texas (to put down a revolt there), he also tried to expand into Guatamala (and probably saw himself controlling much of Central America). He did win at the Alamo, but at great cost of lives. His massacre of Col. Fannin's men at Goliad was inexcusable (one might make a case for the destruction of the defenders of the Alamo who were fighting to the last, but Fannin had surrendered). Then came the disaster of San Jacinto, where his army was wiped out (he failed to take adequate precautions to watch for the American troops). He was captured, and humiliated, and forced to sign a surrender of Texas. Houston was kind to him: the troops wanted to string him up.

Except for losing a leg in a battle against the French in 1838, he managed not to get wounded in most of his wars. He repudiated the forced surrender of Texas, but could not militarily undue it. Instead, he would lead Mexico into defeat in the war of 1846 - 48 against the Americans, leading to the Mexican Session. The U.S. was "decent" enough to pay Mexico $15,000,000 for the Southwest, but Mexico lost half of it's territory. He would be President for the last time in 1853, in time to give Franklin Pierce's horrendously bad administration it's one moment of glory - Santa Anna sold the border of Arizona and New Mexico (the "Gadsden Purchase") to the U.S. No other Mexican President (not even Porfirio Diaz) ever cost his country so much (Diaz did sell out to foreign business interests, but he built up Mexico's economic muscles doing so). He was exiled in 1855, and settled in Staten Island. There he managed to do his most creative work: he introduced chicle to the U.S., and it became chewing gum. Some achievement!

Julia's Santa Anna is younger than the practiced cynic and schemer who became America's best land purchase agent. He is not going to stand for opposition and he jumps into furious tantrums at a moment's notice. Most of the time his chief aide, Col. Black (David Ogden Stiers, here a British born officer) holds his tongue - he does not wish to be in front of a firing squad as he could be. But Stiers is secretly less than enchanted by his boss. At the end, when alone with the newly widowed wives of the dead Alamo defenders, Stiers suggests that they tell the world what Santa Anna is really like. And they did!

I was very surprised as to how disappointed I was with this film because of all the big name actors it had. I'm not really sure why it didn't seem to work for me because at least a half-dozen actors in this I've enjoyed in other things. Perhaps it boils down to inter chemistry, that being, that the actors' mix simply didn't provide the boom. Listening to Baldwin in this, part of it may be the attempted accents they tried to use which especially in Baldwin's case did not work at all and only served to make him seem like a clown. And this may be it as so often I would rather the actor just deliver their lines and not try and force an accent they can't deliver on.

heres a fun fact, I was the baby in the movie, the one in the crib. :) I am 19 years old now. my parents took me to try out for the part, we lived in Texas at the time.I think I only made like 80 bucks for it, but i wasn't in it very long. My parents said i would cry when i was supposed to be happy and would be happy when i was supposed to cry. I was all mixed up. Strange and funny fact i suppose.. and no I am not a child actress. I am livin' in San Antonio, workin' at a walgreens. I graduated here in Texas but I lived in Maryland most my life. This Movie is a great movie, though, good concept. I have seen it several times in my short 19 years.

The problem with all movies about the Alamo is when you have a battle where one side is essentially wiped out, you will never know what happened to the detail shown in all the movies and this one is no exception. But there are somethings we do know. For example, the final assault on the morning of March 6 occurred before dawn and the battle was over as the sun was rising. This movie shows the final assault in broad daylight. Also, there were three assaults that morning (not two as shown in this version), the first two repulsed, the third made it over the walls.

But there is one mystery regarding the actors. Kathleen York played Mrs. Susanna Dickinson. IMDB shows her as being born in 1975, which means she would have been 12 in 1987 when she played Mrs. Dickinson! Something is not right on IMDB!

When John Wayne filmed his Alamo story he had built a complete Alamo set in the town of Brackettsville, Texas which is still there and quite the tourist attraction. As long as that stands, we will have a set for future Alamo interpretations for the screen. One such with Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton was done in this century.

But I would say The Alamo: Thirteen Days To Glory is the best Alamo story filmed I've seen. John Wayne's film is a good one if over-hyped, but it's a John Wayne film with the story redone to fill parameters of screen character of John Wayne. Brian Keith plays Davy Crockett here and gives a fine interpretation of the rollicking frontier character he was.

It's a lot closer to Professor Lon Tinkle's book on The Alamo than the Wayne film was and having read the book years ago I can attest to that. Tinkle's book is listed as the source in both films, but Tinkle who was alive back then when the Wayne film was done and he was not pleased with the result.

Alec Baldwin was around the right age for young William Barrett Travis, the idealistic freedom fighter who incidentally was a slave owner. Back in the day no one saw the ironic contradiction in that. One thing that was not explored and hasn't been was Travis's hyperactive sex drive. He was the Casanova of the Southwest, he even kept a salacious diary of his libidinal conquests.

But the man who always gets the whitewash is Jim Bowie, played here by James Arness. He was a hero at the Alamo to be sure, but his career before the Alamo was that of a scoundrel. He was a smuggler, a slave trader, an all around con man selling land he had questionable title to. But his heroic death certainly redeemed him. No hint of that is in Arness's portrayal nor any others I've seen of Bowie on the screen. And of course he did design the Bowie knife, done to his specifications. That man needed such a weapon.

However the main asset that The Alamo: Thirteen Days To Glory has is a full blown portrayal of Antonio De Lopez De Santa Anna, the president of Mexico who comes up personally to put down the rebellion stirred up by the North Americans who've come to settle in Texas at Mexican invitation. Unfortunately those Americans came with some pre-conceived notions about liberty that just hadn't made it that far south, at least liberty for white people. Raul Julia plays Santa Anna who remains an even more controversial figure in Mexican history. He was also quite the scoundrel, but he was the best Mexico produced until a genuine reformer named Benito Juarez came along.

This film was the farewell performance of Lorne Greene who appears briefly as General Sam Houston. Greene's not quite my conception of Houston, he really was way too old for the part, Houston was in his early forties in 1836, he was not yet the patriarch of Texas. But within the limits imposed on him, Greene does a fine job.

For a romantic telling of The Alamo tale by all means see John Wayne's version, but for historical content I recommend this film highly.