The mystery of the missing American Revolution film

Good morning, it’s Thursday, July 1. You can expect a picture-perfect day, with sunny skies and temps in the high 70s.

As the country’s 250th anniversary approaches, one of Hollywood's minor mysteries has resurfaced: Why have so few major movies been made about the American Revolution?

Michael D. Hattem, a scholar of the colonial period and the author of "The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History," suggested recently that one reason may be a century-old jinx laid across the land after what happened to the filmmaker Robert Goldstein, who made Hollywood's first film about the Revolution. The film has since been lost — possibly forever. 

"Cheekily, I wonder sometimes if some kind of curse was put on [depicting] the Revolution on film because of the way that Goldstein was treated," Hattem said.

Goldstein, who was born into a Jewish German immigrant family in San Francisco in 1883, moved to L.A. in 1912 to open a branch of his family’s costume firm. It was the golden era of silent film and he became an investor in D.W. Griffith's very racist but commercially successful Civil War film "The Birth of a Nation." After that movie, released in 1915, made an estimated $18 million in its first few years — the equivalent of $1.8 billion today — Goldstein set out to make a movie that would do for the Revolutionary War what Griffith had done for the Civil War. He secured $250,000 (the equivalent of more than $7 million today) for “The Spirit of '76," then wrote, directed, and produced the film himself. Elaborate sets and costumes were designed to depict events like Paul Revere's midnight ride and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The film’s script was “quite strange,” Hattem said, adding that one plotline was about how King George “has a Native American mistress who's scheming to become queen of America.”

One month before the premiere, which was slated for May 1917 in Chicago, the U.S. entered World War I.  

The British — who were the enemy in the Revolution and therefore in the film — were now U.S. allies in the war against the Central Powers. A censor with the unforgettable name of Metellus Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser blocked the film from being shown in Chicago until Goldstein cut offending scenes, including one in which a British soldier spears his bayonet through a baby's crib.

But Goldstein couldn’t bear to have his work messed with. He added back the deleted scenes for the L.A. premiere a few months later ("kind of like the first director's cut," Hattem said). Immediately after the screening, Goldstein was arrested and the film reels were confiscated. Goldstein was found guilty of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

"If he had made that film a few years earlier, a few years later, things would have turned out totally different for him," Hattem said. One of the first American film fan magazines, Photoplay, called Goldstein "a bumptious ignoramus … more fool than villain."

Once the war ended, Goldstein was released from prison after only three years. But his film remained locked up. Today, the location of the film's reels is unknown.

BANG-JAMIN FRANKLIN: Most of the fireworks shows you can see in L.A. are unofficial and unsanctioned. But the L.A. Times looks into why more and more official Fourth of July events around California are replacing fireworks shows with quieter, less smoky drone celebrations.

BURRITO-MAS JEFFERSON: L.A. Taco eulogizes Burrito King, an Echo Park stalwart that closed this week after 58 years, both for the food and for the stand’s other unique offerings: “The propensity to have a weird, unscripted, only-in-L.A. sort of experience multiplied significantly if you found yourself somewhere like Burrito King after 10 p.m.”

JOHN FAN-BLOCK: LAist has a writeup and photo slideshow of some of the packed, jubilant World Cup watch parties that gathered across L.A. on Tuesday in support of Mexico’s national team, which beat Ecuador 2-0 for its first win in the knockout round in 40 years.

JOHN BAD-TUMS: The LA Local reports that residents of a two-block area of Koreatown were issued a notice to boil their water on Wednesday, after a routine water sample test picked up traces of E. coli bacteria.

JEFF GOLD-BOOM: The L.A. Times has a full inventory of 52 different Fourth of July festivities across L.A. County. Just about all of the sky shows, whether fireworks or drones, will start at 9 p.m. or later.

WHALE SMITH: Make it a Fourth of July to remember by seeing Jaws at four different movie theaters! Start at the Vista at 10 a.m., then head to Vidiots for the 1 p.m. show. After Jaws eats his second victim, leave and drive across town for the 2:30 p.m. screening at the Academy Museum. Head out after the opening credits and you’ll catch most of the 3 p.m. at the Aero.

BILL PULL-MANGA: Today marks the opening day of Anime Expo, one of the largest annual gatherings at the L.A. Convention Center. The event runs through the weekend, and there’s a Cosplay Repair Center on site, so please leave your glue gun at home.

BOWL-AND EMMERICH: Major League Cricket, an American six-team league founded in 2023, is hosting seven matches this weekend at the Knight Riders Cricket Ground in the Pomona Fairplex — a new home field for our hometown MLC squad, the LA Knight Riders, who played their first match there yesterday.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, @Walker finds a Porsche flaunting a real L.A. status symbol in the #vanityplates channel.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Kneeling” by R.S. Thomas.

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