December 3 was the birthday of Barbara Fritchie (1766-1862).
I don’t expect that you will know the name off the bat but I hope you at least possess a vague sense that you have encountered it before. At one point she was considered a legendary and inspirational figure from U.S. history, regarded in the same way we think of Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, Molly Pitcher, Nathan Hale, and others, and for the same reason: poetry and folklore. Shortly after her death, the Abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized her in verse under a title with the slightly altered spelling “Barbara Frietchie”. Published in The Atlantic Monthly in the fall of 1863, it arrived at a time when morale in the North with regard to the Civil War was particularly low. Set in the town of Frederick, Maryland, it tells the tale of a brave old woman who snatches up an American flag just as it is about the be defiled by the invading Confederate army and declares “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/But spare your country’s flag.” You may read the poem in its entirety here.
The actual Barbara Fritchie was a 96 year old Pennsylvania Dutch woman, recently deceased at the time of the poem’s composition. As in all works of literature, the character in the poem was likely an amalgam of several women. Some people harp on that. I’m a critic, not a historian, so frankly I don’t care a pin who the actual woman was, nor expect poems to deliver facts. That’s not remotely what poetry or songs or novels or plays or movies are for, but there seems to be no shortage of literal-minded pinheads who bring to art that expectation.
At any rate, for a good 60 years or more, the story of Barbara Fritchie was considered important enough that it was presented to audiences dramatically, and that’s what this post is about.
Barbara Frietchie, The Frederick Girl (1899)
Clyde Fitch adapted the poem for the stage as a play in four acts, weaving in a romantic subplot based on his own grandparents. Julia Marlowe played the title character in the original Broadway production. Another actress who took on the role a few years later was named Joan Stanwyck. Young Ruby Stevens, seeing that production, cobbled togther the name of the heroine and the actress in order to create her own stage name: Barbara Stanwyck. In this roundabout way you could say that Stanwyck kept Fritchie’s name alive as recently as 1990, though probably not one person in a thousand knew it.
Barbara Fritchie: The Story of a Patriotic American Woman (1908)
J. Stuart Blackton directed the first silent film version for Vitagraph, with Julia Arthur in the title role.
Barbara Frietchie (1911)
Little is known about this production by the Champion Film Company (later absorbed by Universal) except that it was one of a long series of films with patriotic and historical themes the studio made that year.
Barbara Frietchie (1915)
Herbert Blaché directed the first feature length (50 minute) version of the tale, with “The Screen’s Oldest Actress” Mrs. Thomas Whiffen in the title role. Observant readers will note the name of Mary Miles Minter in the poster above. She plays the historical character’s granddaughter, who has the same name, to give the thing a bit of sex appeal.
Barbara Frietchie (1924)
Believe it or not, this one, which just turned a century old, is the most recent screen telling of the tale. It’s recent enough though that the cast features several names movie buffs will recognize, with Florence Vidor as the title character, and Edmund Lowe, Charles Delaney, and others rounding out the cast. Why no talkies? My knee-jerk guess is that by the ’30s, Fitch’s play was considered a creaky, corny old-fashioned melodrama. But the stage gave it one more go…
My Maryland (1927)
Dorothy Donnelly (who’d also written the famous W.C. Fields vehicle Poppy) converted Fitch’s play into a musical, with tunes by her frequent collaborator Sig Romberg. It ran on Broadway for nearly a year. This was pretty much its last gasp.
In a way, this house too was a work of imagination. It had to be, right? It was built over 60 years after Fritchie died! The explanation is that it is a replica, constructed after the original house collapsed in a flood. It remains a tourist attaction in Frederick Maryland, although one can only visit the outside.
Barbara Fritchie (1908-1989)
Though there were no talkie versions of Barbara Frietchie, a screen actress named after her appeared in a half dozen films between 1934 and 1935. I want to know more about her. She was the female lead in three westerns: The Last Round-Up (1934) opposite Randolph Scott (she was billed as Barbara Adams), Thunder Mountain (1935) with George O’Brien, and Wild Mustang (1935) opposite Harry Carey. She also had smaller roles in Murder at the Vanities (1934), Murder on the Blackboard (1934), and The Gay Deception (1935).
in 1940, James Thurber included an illustrated version of Whittier’s poem in the book Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. It had been published in The New Yorker alongside his illustration the previous year. If you know Thurber’s work, he was essentially a humorist and cartoonist, giving an overlay of sophisticated irony to the interpretation. Most subsequent references to the poem, as on Stan Freberg’s radio show or on Rocky and Bullwinkle were comical parodies. Sometime after that (the 1960s) the poem had become so forgotten that no one even made fun of it even more.
But I ask you this. What about the example of one brave person standing their ground to defend America against an army of people bearing Confederate flags is irrelevant to the PRESENT cultural moment? Perhaps the sneering spirit contributed to us getting into this pickle in the first place.