If James Stewart had done Shenandoah twenty years earlier he would have had the role that Glenn Corbett has of the son challenging the Anderson family neutrality policy at the dinner table. The Anderson patriarch would have been played by Lionel Barrymore.
Charley Anderson is a man raising a family with six sons and a daughter all on one family farm. He owns no slaves as did many in the South back in those Civil War days. Some of his sons want to get into the Civil War as a matter of regional pride. He doesn't think that's reason enough or a real good idea in any event.
But when youngest son Philip Alford is taken by the Union soldiers because he was wearing a lost Confederate hat he found, Stewart sets out to get his son back. The journey is filled with the heartbreak and tragedy visited on a man who never wanted to get involved in a war he considered none of his business.
There sure were easier places you could be neutral in the Civil WAr. In New England you had little danger of invasion and Florida saw no great land battles of the Civil War. But the Shenandoah Valley was one of the major theaters of war back in the day. Viewers of Shenandoah know that and when the film is over we know that the Anderson family and the rest of the people living there will have more to deal with.
Shenandoah became a long running Broadway musical in the Seventies starring John Cullom. But I think more people identify with it as a James Stewart project.
Saddest moment in the film, the deaths of Patrick Wayne and Katherine Ross. Very poignant indeed.
Funniest moment is easily when Doug McClure is looking for the hand of Rosemary Forsyth from James Stewart. Funny, but also wise in terms of what makes a long term relationship possible.
Shenandoah still holds up very well forty years later as grand family entertainment.
Charley Anderson is a man raising a family with six sons and a daughter all on one family farm. He owns no slaves as did many in the South back in those Civil War days. Some of his sons want to get into the Civil War as a matter of regional pride. He doesn't think that's reason enough or a real good idea in any event.
But when youngest son Philip Alford is taken by the Union soldiers because he was wearing a lost Confederate hat he found, Stewart sets out to get his son back. The journey is filled with the heartbreak and tragedy visited on a man who never wanted to get involved in a war he considered none of his business.
There sure were easier places you could be neutral in the Civil WAr. In New England you had little danger of invasion and Florida saw no great land battles of the Civil War. But the Shenandoah Valley was one of the major theaters of war back in the day. Viewers of Shenandoah know that and when the film is over we know that the Anderson family and the rest of the people living there will have more to deal with.
Shenandoah became a long running Broadway musical in the Seventies starring John Cullom. But I think more people identify with it as a James Stewart project.
Saddest moment in the film, the deaths of Patrick Wayne and Katherine Ross. Very poignant indeed.
Funniest moment is easily when Doug McClure is looking for the hand of Rosemary Forsyth from James Stewart. Funny, but also wise in terms of what makes a long term relationship possible.
Shenandoah still holds up very well forty years later as grand family entertainment.