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I have no doubt that John Frankenheimer made the movie he intended to make and it received some measure of acclaim. But, I believe, he missed the opportunity to tell a really moving, exciting, and redeeming story in such a way that would leave viewers riveted to their TVs.
"George Wallace", while hitting all the key points of George Wallace's life, missed the true drama. The drama of the movie was more like a cartoon.
I believe that the key event of George Wallace's life was the day he was struck down by the five bullets from Arthur Bremer's gun. He would never live another day without being in extreme pain and while "George Wallace" shows Wallace in a wheelchair, it doesn't come close to reflecting the fatal damaging of Wallace's life: of his body, of his spirit, of his marriage. Nothing would ever be really good for him again. "George Wallace" glosses over that emasculation.
To get the true picture, one only need to go to Cornelia's book. By the time time I was halfway through, even though I had never been an admirer of George Wallace, I despised Arthur Bremer and wished that someone had put a bullet in his spine, not enough to kill him but just enough so that he would have to suffer in the same way as George Wallace. I was totally dismayed to learn that he was released from prison on November 9, 2007 in contrast to George Wallace was "imprisoned" in pain for the rest of his life. Though George Wallace forgave him in 1995, I doubt if I ever will. That is a tribute to the power of Cornelia's book, a book which never demonizes Bremer but rather lays out the terrible results of his action.
When I watched "George Wallace", even knowing how bad things really were for him, there was nothing in the movie that aroused any emotion concerning his life after the shooting. There was nothing that would cause me to reflect on the life of George Wallace. I could only give it three stars.
But the story of the intertwining of the Folsoms and the Wallaces is a mini-series blockbuster waiting to happen. Such a mini-series would have to be at least 12 hours long and would give equal weight to the larger-than-life antics of Big Jim Folsom, the fatally flawed former governor of Alabama, who somehow recognized the worth of the black people of Alabama. For entertainment value, it would also give a major role to Big Jim's sister, Ruby, the mother of Cornelia. Her personality was just as big as Jim's and the losing battle that both of them had with alcohol would certainly have viewers dismayed over the loss of two such dynamic people.
And, of course, it would show the true nature of Cornelia. Cornelia wasn't some empty-headed, sex-crazed, manipulative, jealous woman with a stereotypical loud, slow southern drawl, using George to further her ambitions. She would be, as I've said elsewhere, very close to the Susan Meyer character in "Desperate Housewives": kind, able to see her own faults, a loving mother, deeply desiring to do the right thing,
This would be the mini-series to watch; we would rage at injustices, laugh at the sometimes outrageous behavior, despair at the blind stubbornness, cry at the tragic losses that every one of the main characters suffered and how their lives, quite unfairly, all ended in sorrow and pain.
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