20th Century-Fox Dynamo (February 1960)

JOHN BROWN’S BODY Pictured on this page are woodcuts from newspapers of 1859, depicting various events connected with John Brown’s sensation- al, but disastrous raid on a Union arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Above: Brown and a few followers, who constituted his "army” of 22, capture Harpers Ferry. This happened on October 16, 1859. But, the venture, ill-planned, was doomed to failure and collapsed when Washington rushed soldiers to the scene. . .soldiers who, ironically enough, were under the personal command of the man who was to lead the South’s military forces against the North in the war that broke out less than two years later: Gen. Robert E. Lee. Above: Brown is pictured in a firehouse, standing over his two dead sons. Seventeen days, Nov. 2, after his historic, attemp- ted raid, Brown was placed on Federal trial, charged with treason. He was brilliantly, but vainly defended by a young lawyer from Boston, George Hoyt. During the trial, John Brown lay on a cot (above), but, after being con- victed, he rose for a last speech, excoriating slavery. The entire resources of this company, plus the largest investment it has made in a single motion picture are involved in Buddy Adler’s determination to make his per- sonal Todd-AO production, in De Luxe Color, of the tentatively titled “John Brown’s Body”, based on Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem. Mr. Adler’s and screenplaywright-director Joseph Mankiewicz’s objective is to make this the great motion picture of all time. In the story Mr. Mankiewicz is writing there are 28 speaking roles, and all of them will be acted by major box office per- sonalities. While Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem concerned the ill-fated raid by John Brown and his band of 22 of the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry on Oct. 18, 1859, the Todd-AO screenplay not only unfolds a great love story against a wonderful back- ground, but it also will have tremendous action. One particular sequence, the charge on Bull Run, is designed to be the most exciting episode cinematically dramatized. Moreover, producer Adler and director Mankiewicz have taken unparalleled steps to completely eliminate the element of chance in creating a motion picture designed to make box office history. To bring about such a certainty even before Mankiewicz gives his first “Camera!”, Sindlinger & Company, Inc., an organization of analysts well known to the trade and public, was engaged to make a nation-wide survey. Exhibitors and public were asked to give their opinions about the story, the title and other ques- tions pertaining to John Brown, the Harpers Ferry incident, etc., etc. Mankiewicz and a camera crew last Fall filmed actual re-creations of John Brown’s raid at Har- pers Ferry in West Virginia. Filming of this background material took place during that little town’s centennial celebration of the raid of the abolitionist and his little band. Part of the footage Mankiewicz plans using in a sequence dramatizing the defeat of the raid and the arrest of John Brown by a company of United States Marines that, interestingly enough, was under the personal command of the then Col. Robert E. Lee whom Washington sent to the small town at the com- fluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers and who, ironically enough, as general, was to lead the South in the armed conflict with the North. With the subject matter acknowledgedly having greater human depth than “Gone With The Wind”, “John Brown’s Body” is scheduled to go before the cameras this Summer. Its world pre- miere is planned for early 1961, which will mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the war between the States (on April 12, 1861). There is agreement among historians that John Brown and his abolitionists were an inflam- matory influence in the period before armed conflict started. The Todd-AO production will deal not only with that period, but also on developments after the beginning of the Civil War. Brown lived variously in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York State, but failing at such trades as sheep raising, wool trading and farming. In 1854 he went to Kansas to join five of his 20 children, whom he had by two wives, in the war over the question whether Kansas Territory was to be admitted to the Union as a free or slavery State. His first major achievement, history reports, was in that conflict, the Pottawatomie massacre (May 25, 1956) in which he is alleged to have had a hand, along with other anti-slavery fighters, in killing five pro-slavery adherents. This, history records, was to avenge the killing of five Free-Staters. Accounts of John Brown’s activities state he conceived the idea of setting up, somewhere in the mountains of Virginia, an independent State for fugitive slaves, with its own government and its own armed force. A so-called “Secret Six”, respectable northeastern abolitionists, is recorded in history as hav- ing backed and financed Brown and his men in making possible the attack on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. It was a dismal failure, for they were forced to surrender, after two of the would-be raiders were killed, and Brown himself seriously wounded. The raid’s survivors were speedily tried on the charge of treason, found guilty and hanged at Charlestown (now in West Virginia), on Dec. 2, 1859. IN TODD-AO, IT IS DESIGNED TO BE SCREEN’S MOST SPECTACULAR DRAMA Sentenced to be hanged, Brown is pictured above ascending the scaffold. However, before his execution, facing civil and military authorities he prophetically ex- claimed ” slavery will be purged away in blood”. Though his raid failed, Brown’s passionate sacrifice dramatized the struggle that issued in the subsequent Civil war. 82 U. S. MARINES SURPRISE AND CAPTURE “OLD OSAWATOMIC” IN THE ENGINE HOUSE.