1776 is a 1972 American musical film directed by Peter H. Hunt. The screenplay by Peter Stone was adapted from his libretto for the 1969 stage musical of the same name. Portions of the dialogue and some of the song lyrics were taken directly from the letters and memoirs of the actual participants of the Second Continental Congress. The song score was composed by Sherman Edwards.
Plot
The film focuses on the representatives of the Thirteen original colonies who participated in the Second Continental Congress. 1776 (musical) depicts the three months of deliberation (and, oftentimes, acrimonious debate) that led up to the signing of one of the most important documents in the History of the United States, the Declaration of Independence.
Cast
Production
Many members of the original Broadway cast, including William Daniels, Ken Howard, and Howard Da Silva, reprised their roles for the film. Ralston Hill, Donald Madden, and Charles Rule also repeated their roles from the Broadway production; the film marked the only time they ever appeared in a feature film.
Exteriors were filmed at the old Warner Ranch in Fair Oaks CA [1], in the San Fernando Valley, where they built an entire street of colonial Philadelphia. At the time the location was part of the new Columbia/Warner merger.
The water fountain seen during The Lees of Old Virginia musical number (with Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Richard Henry Lee) is best known to current television viewers as the fountain seen at the beginning of the TV show "Friends". This fountain still exists - directly across the street from the "Bewitched", and "I Dream of Jeannie" houses Most of the other colonial sets were destroyed by a fire in the mid 1970s.
Interiors were shot at the old Columbia studio on Gower Street in Hollywood [2], which is now called the Capital Studios at Sunset Gower [3].
In the director's cut DVD commentary by Peter Hunt he informs us that “1776” was the last film that was 'supposed' to be filmed in this studio. The last shot of the film (where he pulls back to show the entire hall and then fade to a painting) required the camera pull back so far that they ran into the back wall of the building. Since it was scheduled to be demolished, they knocked a hole in the outside wall and pulled the camera back through it to get the shot. Later after “1776” wrapped, they changed their minds about knocking down the building and had to repair the wall.
In its theatrical and original home video releases, the film was rated G but, following the restoration of various bits cut by producer Jack Warner, the DVD was rated PG. The laserdisc version, now out of print, contains additional footage and background music not contained on the DVD release. The current 168-minute version, however, is considered director Peter Hunt's preferred version, hence its "director's cut" moniker. The film was the Christmas attraction at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
"Cool, Cool, Considerate Men" was cut from the film prior to its release and not included on the soundtrack recording. The number was restored for the video, laserdisc, and DVD releases.
Political changes
The song "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men" depicts Revolutionary War era conservatives as power-hungry wheedlers focused on maintaining wealth. According to Jack L. Warner, the film's producer and a friend of U.S. President Richard Nixon, Nixon pressured him to cut the song from the 1972 film version of the show, which Warner did. Nixon apparently saw the song as an insult to the conservatives of his time. Warner also wanted the original negative of the song shredded, but the film's editor secretly kept it intact. It was only decades later that the song was restored to the film.[4]
Critical reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times observed, "The music is resolutely unmemorable. The lyrics sound as if they'd been written by someone high on root beer, and the book is familiar history — compressed here, stretched there — that has been gagged up and paced to Broadway's not inspiring standards. Yet Peter H. Hunt's screen version of 1776 ... insists on being so entertaining and, at times, even moving, that you might as well stop resisting it. This reaction, I suspect, represents a clear triumph of emotional associations over material ... [It] is far from being a landmark of musical cinema, but it is the first film in my memory that comes close to treating seriously a magnificent chapter in the American history." [5]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times declared, "This is an insult to the real men who were Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the rest ... The performances trapped inside these roles, as you might expect, are fairly dreadful. There are good actors in the movie (especially William Daniels as Adams and Donald Madden as John Dickinson), but they're forced to strut and posture so much that you wonder if they ever scratched or spit or anything ... I can hardly bear to remember the songs, much less discuss them. Perhaps I shouldn't. It is just too damn bad this movie didn't take advantage of its right to the pursuit of happiness." [6]
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy but lost to Cabaret. Harry Stradling Jr. was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography but lost to Geoffrey Unsworth for Cabaret.
Songs
- Overture
- "Sit Down, John"
- "Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve"/"Till Then"
- "The Lees of Old Virginia"
- "But, Mr. Adams"
- "Yours, Yours, Yours"
- "He Plays the Violin"
- "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men"
- "Momma Look Sharp"
- "The Egg"
- "Molasses to Rum"
- "Compliments"
- "Is Anybody There?"
- Finale
References
External links
