"Glory"
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1Glory -- Directed by Edwar Zwick (1989)
The 1989 film "Glory" featured a host of famous and now-famous stars: Mathew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. It's as much a story of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Broderick) as it is about the men of the Fifty-Fourth and the failed battle that made them so famous (at the time). While it is not a completely accurate portrayal of the historical events (but what movie ever is) however "most of the details are right. And when they are wrong, there is often a rational explanation that minimizes the distortion" (McPherson, 107). The character of Shaw is the only historical one in the main action of the movie (aside from his parents and an older Frederick Douglass).
According to Jim Cullen, in his The Civil War in Popular Culture, the film Glory was the first account most people have heard of black soldiers in the war. (p.147) Most people were not even aware that there were black regiments in the Civil War, and so especially had never heard of the Fifty-fourth of Massachusetts.
The attack on Fort Wagner was the "most realistic combat footage in any Civil War movie" according to historian James McPherson (McPhereson, 102).
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Hero of Fort Wagner Pheobe Cary