Richard A. Krebes
Member
Let me begin this post by telling a little story, folks.
In 1976, a TV series entitled "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" (later retitled "The Black Sheep Squadron")
flew onto the airwaves and made quite a splash in it's two-year run.
Loosely based on Colonel Gregory "Pappy" Boyington's best-selling autobiography of the same title, the series depicted Boyington as a leader of drunken, Beetle Bailey-esque misfits and cut-ups whom he'd sprung from the brig and put into the cockpits of some Marine F4U Corsairs he'd liberated. Thus forming his squadron.
His boys sure had fun in the series, guzzling copious ammounts of alcohol (in one episode, Boyington, during a briefing out on the airfield before a mission, sharply asks one of his men, who's soused to the gills, if he'd understood what the mission was about and where they were going), catting around with, first, some cute Women's Air Service Pilots, then a gaggle of giddy Navy nurses (whose only nursing duties, it seemed, was providing Pappy's men female companionship between missions), and blasting many Imperial Japanese Navy and Army Air planes out of the sky as well as going on all kinds of adventures (in one episode, Boyington is challenged to a duel with a rival Japanse ace over the Slot, in another, Boyington and two other guys are shot down over an island while flying a swiped transport and save a nun, a priest, and thier orphan flock before an invasion hits).
The them song for the show-to do a take off from a song from a Tintin book-could've gone like this:
"We are Pappy Pappy Pappy's/Jolly Jolly Jolly/
Black Sheep Squadron/Hey there mac/Hey there babe/Hey there mac/Hey there babe."
Now, it just so happened that many of Boyington's real-life squadron members were still very much alive when the series aried, enjoying the pinnacle of their post-war careers...and many were disgusted and angered by how Hollywood-ized their story had become.
"It ammounted to mass character assasination." said one of the series, and it was.
Sadly, many, many viewers believed the Black Sheep really WERE like they were depicted in the series...but such imperfectly informed folk had no idea that, had Pappy's men REALLY acted like that, their Japanese opponents would have scarcely paused for breath before knocking the whole lot of them out of the sky and into the drink.
In reality, Pappy's men were nowhere near like their TV counterparts, but great damage was done by the misleading portrayal's of these men.
One of the Black Sheep, now a successful airline captain, was accosted by yahoos who believed he and his buddies really had acted like the cut-ups played by John Larroquette and James Whitmore Jr.
did in the series. Similar things happened to other of Pappy's men.
Finally, enough was enough, and one of the Black Sheep swooped down and strafed the misconceptions and character assasinations so bedelviling the squadron's memory with some cold hard truth about these valiant men in their Corsair machines.
That man was Frank Walton, the Black Sheep's former intelligence officer, and he poured it on first in a TV Guide article, and then put the indian sign on the misconceptions and assasinations with his marvelous book "Once They Were Eagles: The Men Of The Black Sheep Squadron."
Time would show, though, that the men of the Black Sheep, in the end, had gotten off cheap. A decade after Walton annihilated the ick encrusting the memory of his squadron, one man all but damaged for good the memory of another event from the pages of history: the Royal Mail Steamship Titanic, her story, and her people.
That man was James Cameron, and he did it by creating a travesty so horrible and crass it made "The Black Sheep Squadron" look like "Band Of Brothers" by comparison.
Cameron, in his ruthless quest to exploit the memory of the Titanic for all it was worth as well as churn out the umpteenth "Romeo and Juliet" clone at the same time, assainated the character of practically everyone who had been a part of the real Titanic story, especially the real-life heores and heroines, so that NOTHING would detract from the love story involving his outrageously contrived lovers that were the sole focus of the so-called "drama" he wrote and filmed.
He claimed once that he and historian's Don Lynch and Ken Marshcall went over his script line by line. I hate to say it, but if that is so, then Mr. Lynch and Mr. Marschall are just as respoinsible as he for the birthing of a travesty that gave a bad name to all of the Titanic's real people.
The film twisted them, outrageously cairctured them, and downplaned to the hilt all the heorisim showed by many the night the Titanic went down.
If one were to take Cameron's travesty at face value, nobody but Jack and Rose were brave and fearless that night and the other people were all eithier too panicked, too weak as a person, or whose actions did little to help the situation at all.
BALDERDASH!!!! The heroisim displayed by the likes of Charles Lightoller, Harold Bride, Jack Phillips, and countless others makes all the baloney involving Jack and Rose look like some horribly contrived Disney adventure by comparison, and the attribution of ALL the valor aboard the Titanic that night to J&R in the film was simply disgusting.
Pappy Boyington's men had been given a ticker-tape parade by Hollywood in comparison.
What is more, all of the Titanic's people as a whole are depicted as either jolly immigrants or fluffy high society. All goo-goo eyed Edwardian cardboard cut out carictures. BALONEY!!!! The people of the Titanic, in reality, were a vast, fascinating, diverse group of people who saw many heros emerge in their midst when disaster loomed.
The saddest thing of all? While the cloying misconceptions that coated the memory and legacy of Pappy Boyington and his men have long since been blown off the face of the earth, it still clings to the memory and legacy of the Titanic. Proof of the vast damage done thanks to one mans greedy exploitation of one of history's most beautiful stories of the sea and of history.
In 1976, a TV series entitled "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" (later retitled "The Black Sheep Squadron")
flew onto the airwaves and made quite a splash in it's two-year run.
Loosely based on Colonel Gregory "Pappy" Boyington's best-selling autobiography of the same title, the series depicted Boyington as a leader of drunken, Beetle Bailey-esque misfits and cut-ups whom he'd sprung from the brig and put into the cockpits of some Marine F4U Corsairs he'd liberated. Thus forming his squadron.
His boys sure had fun in the series, guzzling copious ammounts of alcohol (in one episode, Boyington, during a briefing out on the airfield before a mission, sharply asks one of his men, who's soused to the gills, if he'd understood what the mission was about and where they were going), catting around with, first, some cute Women's Air Service Pilots, then a gaggle of giddy Navy nurses (whose only nursing duties, it seemed, was providing Pappy's men female companionship between missions), and blasting many Imperial Japanese Navy and Army Air planes out of the sky as well as going on all kinds of adventures (in one episode, Boyington is challenged to a duel with a rival Japanse ace over the Slot, in another, Boyington and two other guys are shot down over an island while flying a swiped transport and save a nun, a priest, and thier orphan flock before an invasion hits).
The them song for the show-to do a take off from a song from a Tintin book-could've gone like this:
"We are Pappy Pappy Pappy's/Jolly Jolly Jolly/
Black Sheep Squadron/Hey there mac/Hey there babe/Hey there mac/Hey there babe."
Now, it just so happened that many of Boyington's real-life squadron members were still very much alive when the series aried, enjoying the pinnacle of their post-war careers...and many were disgusted and angered by how Hollywood-ized their story had become.
"It ammounted to mass character assasination." said one of the series, and it was.
Sadly, many, many viewers believed the Black Sheep really WERE like they were depicted in the series...but such imperfectly informed folk had no idea that, had Pappy's men REALLY acted like that, their Japanese opponents would have scarcely paused for breath before knocking the whole lot of them out of the sky and into the drink.
In reality, Pappy's men were nowhere near like their TV counterparts, but great damage was done by the misleading portrayal's of these men.
One of the Black Sheep, now a successful airline captain, was accosted by yahoos who believed he and his buddies really had acted like the cut-ups played by John Larroquette and James Whitmore Jr.
did in the series. Similar things happened to other of Pappy's men.
Finally, enough was enough, and one of the Black Sheep swooped down and strafed the misconceptions and character assasinations so bedelviling the squadron's memory with some cold hard truth about these valiant men in their Corsair machines.
That man was Frank Walton, the Black Sheep's former intelligence officer, and he poured it on first in a TV Guide article, and then put the indian sign on the misconceptions and assasinations with his marvelous book "Once They Were Eagles: The Men Of The Black Sheep Squadron."
Time would show, though, that the men of the Black Sheep, in the end, had gotten off cheap. A decade after Walton annihilated the ick encrusting the memory of his squadron, one man all but damaged for good the memory of another event from the pages of history: the Royal Mail Steamship Titanic, her story, and her people.
That man was James Cameron, and he did it by creating a travesty so horrible and crass it made "The Black Sheep Squadron" look like "Band Of Brothers" by comparison.
Cameron, in his ruthless quest to exploit the memory of the Titanic for all it was worth as well as churn out the umpteenth "Romeo and Juliet" clone at the same time, assainated the character of practically everyone who had been a part of the real Titanic story, especially the real-life heores and heroines, so that NOTHING would detract from the love story involving his outrageously contrived lovers that were the sole focus of the so-called "drama" he wrote and filmed.
He claimed once that he and historian's Don Lynch and Ken Marshcall went over his script line by line. I hate to say it, but if that is so, then Mr. Lynch and Mr. Marschall are just as respoinsible as he for the birthing of a travesty that gave a bad name to all of the Titanic's real people.
The film twisted them, outrageously cairctured them, and downplaned to the hilt all the heorisim showed by many the night the Titanic went down.
If one were to take Cameron's travesty at face value, nobody but Jack and Rose were brave and fearless that night and the other people were all eithier too panicked, too weak as a person, or whose actions did little to help the situation at all.
BALDERDASH!!!! The heroisim displayed by the likes of Charles Lightoller, Harold Bride, Jack Phillips, and countless others makes all the baloney involving Jack and Rose look like some horribly contrived Disney adventure by comparison, and the attribution of ALL the valor aboard the Titanic that night to J&R in the film was simply disgusting.
Pappy Boyington's men had been given a ticker-tape parade by Hollywood in comparison.
What is more, all of the Titanic's people as a whole are depicted as either jolly immigrants or fluffy high society. All goo-goo eyed Edwardian cardboard cut out carictures. BALONEY!!!! The people of the Titanic, in reality, were a vast, fascinating, diverse group of people who saw many heros emerge in their midst when disaster loomed.
The saddest thing of all? While the cloying misconceptions that coated the memory and legacy of Pappy Boyington and his men have long since been blown off the face of the earth, it still clings to the memory and legacy of the Titanic. Proof of the vast damage done thanks to one mans greedy exploitation of one of history's most beautiful stories of the sea and of history.
