Glory (1989) on Netflix
Robert Gould Shaw takes command of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the Union Army's first black regiments. His volunteers face hostility from their own side and a Confederate threat.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Wounded at Antietam, Captain Robert Gould Shaw goes back to Boston on medical leave. There he accepts a promotion to Colonel and command of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the Union Army's first black regiments. His friend Cabot Forbes signs on as his second in command. Among the volunteers are Thomas Searles, a bookish free African American man, John Rawlins, Jupiter Sharts and Trip. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the men are warned that the Confederacy will put captured black soldiers and their white officers to death. Offered an honorable discharge, the recruits turn it down and drill under Sergeant-Major Mulcahy. The Federal government pays them less than white soldiers, so Trip calls on the men to refuse their pay, and Shaw tears up his own voucher.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Glory (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On February 16, 1989, the body of a middle-aged man was discovered on the film's set in Savannah, about a day after his death. Described as having a Middle Eastern appearance, with no apparent signs of suffering a violent death, he was never positively identified.
- Kirstein showed the script to producer James Ivory of Merchant Ivory Productions, who liked it but wanted Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to give it a rewrite. Kirstein got up, shook Ivory's hand warmly, thanked him for coming down and ushered him out the front door.
- The film portrays Shaw as accepting the commission to command the 54th quickly, when in reality he initially rejected the Governor's commission, not wanting to leave his regiment and questioning whether the position would advance his career in the army.
- In real life the regiment was composed mostly of freedmen already living in the North, although some came from Canada and the West Indies. Many were from prominent families, including two sons of Frederick Douglass, one of whom, Lewis, became the Sergeant Major.
SPOILER
The film's postscript states that Fort Wagner never fell to Union troops, but that is inaccurate: Confederate troops abandoned the fort after bombardment and shelling from the Union Navy in September 1863.SPOILER
Cabot Forbes, portrayed as Shaw's best friend and second-in-command, is fictional; the real second-in-command was Edward Hallowell, who became commander of the 54th after Shaw's death.- Charles Garrison Harker is a major general in the film, but in reality he never attained that rank and was not involved in the campaigns around Charleston, and he was only 25 in 1863 rather than in his early 40s as portrayed.
- In the movie a soldier is whipped, but whipping was not permitted in the Union army and no such event ever occurred involving the United States Colored Troops.
