Historic Maryland (1941) User Reviews

Annapolis And Baltimore

[boblipton · 5/10 · 10 October 2020]

With the Second World War raging overseas, James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras and William Steiner to direct the operators to distant and romantic(?) Maryland, where the university teaches Greek, and George Washington resigned his commission as general. Fitzpatrick also recites the first verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" since no one can sing it.

The copy of this Traveltalks travelogue that plays on Turner Classic Movies is in pretty good shape, although the blues look greenish, as if it had been shot in two-strip Technicolor.

No one ever said that the third verse is like the first . . .

[pixrox1 · 6/10 · 10 October 2020]

. . . when it comes to the benighted Confederate traitors' hate-song version of an virtually impossible-to-sing English drinking ditty. Yet the blow-hard bozo narrating HISTORIC MARYLAND seems totally clueless as to the origins, political chicanery and grotesque double-speak baked into the racist pale-face supremacist screed from which he so blithely quotes here. "No refuge could save the hireling and slave\\From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave," the original doggerel third verse penned by an unrepentant scion of Race-based Slavery plantation wealth smugly asserts. To translate this line from its archaic 18th Century lingo into Modern 21st Century words, Frank Key is promising a Race-based Civil War, which will wipe People of Color off the Face of America. "Or thus be it ever when Freemen shall stand," Key rants on in a final fourth verse, "between their loved home and the War's desolation," envisioning a Tara-in-ruins scenario within which a tiny remnant of pale face survivors cower and hunker down as God's Avenging Angels inevitably "free" ACTUAL slaves. Even the first verse quoted by the Fuhrer's apologist here is full of double talk, as "The Land of the Free" refers to a racist Utopia in which the injustices on a High Court packed with throw-back anachronistic tools will mandate the re-enslavement of L. James, Oprah, Barack, Michele, Jordan, Magic, S. O'Neal, M. Carey, K. Harris, K. West and so forth.

TravelTalks

[Michael_Elliott · 16 October 2010]

Historic Maryland (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Nice entry in MGM's TravelTalks series takes us to Maryland where we spend most of our time at the Annapolis, the capital and home of the U.S. Naval Academy. Here we learn the various rules of what it takes to get in and how one might be selected to get in. We also take a peek at St. John's college and learn it's one of the few places where Greek culture is taught. We also see Carvel Hall, see where the Sons of Liberty met and see the burial ground of John Paul Jones. If you're a fan of the series then you know what to expect. There are quite a few good visuals here, all in Technicolor of course, and we also get some pretty good stories. I guess it should come as no shock that we'd spend the majority of time in Annapolis considering what was going on in the world during 1941.