"THIS IS EITHER GOING TO BE THE GREATEST ASSIGNMENT OF

my life," says John Lee Hancock, director of The Alamo, theDisney film that opens this Christmas Day, "or my last. Or atleast the last film I'll ever make in Texas. Texans, you know,take the Alamo very seriously." As Hancock well knows. Hegrew up in Texas City, on the ship channel near Houston; hisfather was from San Antonio. "One of my earliest memories,"he says, "is visiting the chapel in San Antonio and suddenly be­ing overwhelmed by this sensation. I could almost hear buglesand smell gunpowder." Many Texans have never stopped hear­ing bugles. As Walter Lord noted in his compact 1961 classic,A Time to Stand, the epic of the Alamo caught America's imag­ination almost from the day the stronghold fell, "and the endis not yet in sight."

On March 6, 1836, following a siege of nearly two weeks,about 1,800 men from the 5,000-man army of Gen. Antonio

50 AMERICAN HERITAGE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003

Lopez de Santa Anna assaulted and captured a decaying adobefort on the outskirts of the town of San Antonio de Bexar.

After a vicious struggle that lasted perhaps 20 minutes, all ofthe defenders, between 200 and 250 of them, mostly Anglosand a few Tejanos (people of Mexican blood living in Texas),lay dead. And as many as a third of Santa Anna's attackerseither died on the spot or would eventually perish from theirwounds.

From a purely military standpoint, the Alamo had little sig­nificance. In fact, the commander of the Texian army (Texianswere Americans who had migrated to Texas), Sam Houston,had originally ordered the Alamo, which was used more or lessas a storage dump by the Mexican army, to be destroyed be­fore Santa Anna's forces arrived. If the Mexican commander

had been chivalrous enough to allow a handful of the woundeddefenders to survive, the siege and battle of the Alamo might

never have taken its place in American folklore. Instead "Remem­ber the Alamo!" became the rallying cry that united Texansand a great many continental Americans in the cause for Texasindependence.

In his film on modern Texas, Lone Star, the writer-directorJohn Sayles (parts of whose early script for the current Alamofilm have survived into the final production) has a charac­ter suggest that it might be time for everyone to "start fromscratch .... Forget the Alamo." Not likely. In the Sandra Bullockcomedy Miss Congeniality, a beauty pageant is held in front ofthe Alamo chapel (presumably a last bastion of such Americantraditions). In Saving Private Ryan, when Tom Hanks, MattDamon, and company fall back on their breastworks, one ofthe GIs calls out, "It's Alamo time!" And when Pee-wee Her­man is knocked unconscious while riding his bicycle throughSan Antonio in Pee-wee's Big Adventure and a local asks, "Do

you remember anything?," Pee-wee replies, "I remember ... theAlamo!" to the cheers of bystanders.

Simply to say the words the Alamo brings instant recogni­tion from almost any American audience. Even schoolkidswho couldn't tell you who was fighting there or why recog­nize the silhouette of the little Spanish chapel with the bell­curved peak on the front facade. Everyone knows that DavyCrockett, adorned with his signature coonskin hat and swing­irig his long rifle, Old Betsy, died fighting there. Everyoneknows that the fort's commander, Co!. William Barret Travis,drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked the defenders

who wanted to stay and fight with him to cross it. Everyoneknows there were no survivors; most know that the heroic standbought time for Sam Houston to prepare the army that eventu­ally won Texas's freedom.

And virtually everything that everyone knows about the Alamo

NOVEMBER/OECEMBER 2003 AMERICAN HERITAGE 51

THERE WON'T BE ANY LINE IN THE SAND OR DAVY CROCKET1

is wrong. Or at least so says Jeff Long, whose 1990 book, Duelof Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo, standsas the most iconoclastic view of the battle and its participants."Make a list of the half-dozen most popularly accepted factsabout the Alamo," says Long, "and you'll find serious histori­ans who support each claim and equally serious historians whoreject each point as utter nonsense. Did Jim Bowie fight in thebattle and go down fighting or did he slip over the walls in afinal attempt at escape? Did Crockett surrender? Was the siegeand battle of the Alamo important to the success of the TexasRevolution, or did later patriots simply rationalize a militaryblunder into a moral victory? And while we're on the subject,what about that bell shape on the front wall of the chapel?" Itappears that it was added during a restoration years later.

If you're looking for a good scrap, walk into nearly any barin Texas-whether primarily English- or Spanish-speaking­and take either side of any of these propositions and see whathappens. "More people have died arguing those questions," saysGary Zaboly, who illustrated Blood of Noble Men: The AlamoSiege & Battle, "than died in the original fight."

The current generation of Tejanos is angered less by contro­versies of this sort than by the fact that the world's conception

52 AMERICAN HERITAGE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003

of what happened at the Alamo and in the rest of the TexasWar for Independence was shaped primarily by Walt Disneyand by John Wayne. (Wayne's version in his 1960 movie waspolitically overt, preceded by a publicity campaign orchestratedby the Texas-born press agent Russell Birdwell. The P.R. fea­tured a famous two-page spread in Life magazine which pro­claimed that the film should be seen by all Americans who had"a bellyful of payola, influence peddling, quiz show rigging,the ghost-writing of political speeches-symptoms of a pallidpublic morality-and yearned for a return to the days when thenoblest utterances of man came unrehearsed.")

"I remember asking my parents to take me to see the JohnWayne movie when I was a kid," says Carlos Guerra, a colum­nist for the San Antonio Express-News. "Both my parents gaveme this look as if to say, 'Do you really want to see this thing?'What I remember best about it was cringing as I watched it.That's still my feeling now. I mean, I know that Santa Annawas a ruthless, unprincipled dictator, but all the Alamo moviesI've seen dehumanize the Mexicans, as if they weren't men will­ing to die for their country. And it was their country."

There is a third perspective on the Alamo and the TexasWar for Independence. As the outspoken Wes Studi, an ac-

INGING HIS RIFLE ON A PARAPET.

The defenders make

their stand in Henry A.

McArdle's 1905 painting

(opposite) and in the

film; bottom, Hancock

on the set (pointing).

tor of Cherokee descent who has a role in the new Alamo

film, puts it, "If you're Indian, you might look on the wholething as rwo big gangs fighting to see who's going to take overyour land."

"I really don't think it's possible," says Dr. Ricardo Romo,president of the University of Texas at San Antonio, "to make ahistorically accurate Alamo movie. There are rwo primary rea­sons. One is all the things that we don't know about what hap­pened. The other is the things that we do know. There are toomany people pulling and tugging at the facts, trying to makepolitical issues out of them."

Hancock and the screenwriter Les Bohem, however, are try­ing. At the very least, the newest Alamo movie will set newstandards for authenticity in terms of language and perioddetail, and as Bohem puts it, "We won't be making anythingup. Everything in here is going to have some strong basis infact." Although no one will be specific about details, this atleast means that in the new version there won't be any line inthe sand or Davy Crockett swinging his rifle on a parapet whileMexican soldiers fall around him.

Moreover, the new Alamo film aims at establishing the factthat there was a Mexican side to the story. Bohem "started with

a schoolboy interest in the Alamo that was fired by WaltDisney's Davy Crockett and, later, John Wayne's version. ButI always knew that the reality had to be more complex thanwhat I was seeing on the screen. I started digging for morefacts. It didn't take me long to realize that the Alamo was amajor source of historical contention and that the debate isas heated today as it was 150 years ago. What drives you nutsis not that everyone seems to disagree but that you can oftenfind conflicting accounts taken from the same sources.

"The Texians who fought at the Alamo were a diverse bunchof men. There were patriots, who saw themselves as the heirsto the American Revolution, some of whom hated the idea ofslavery; Davy Crockett, for all his faults, had a strong ideal­istic streak on the subject of fair treatment for other races. Somewere scoundrels and pirates and slave traders; Jim Bowie traf-

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003 AMERICAN HERITAGE 53

IT WILL BE THE FIRST FILM TO DEPICT THE FINAL ASSAULT I

nlh

ficked in slaves. Not all these men were even there for the same

political reasons. Some wanted Mexico to live up to its originalconstitutional promises, some wanted Texas to become part ofthe United States, and still others wanted Texas to become aseparate country.

"To further complicate the problem of historical interpre­tation, the Mexicans had divided loyalties too. A great manyof the peasants had no love for Santa Anna, and some of theofficers, who had the heritage of Spanish gentlemen, thoughthe was vulgar and resented his brutality. There were probablymore than a few who weren't so sure that it was a good idea forMexico even to try to hold on to Texas. And, of course, therewere the Tejanos, the Mexicans like Juan Seguin, who sided withthe Texan rebels.

"There's no way that any movie can reconcile so many con­flicting opinions, but what we can do is show something that Ithink previous movies on the Alamo have not shown-namely,that there were conflicting points of view and several sides tothe story."

John Lee Hancock suggests there is one other thing thatthe movie can definitely do. "We can convey the terror and themisery of the men on both sides of the conflict. One thing thatyou get from all the diaries and letters and accounts of the fightis how miserable the soldiers were. The Texans were crampedinside an uncomfortable crumbling patched-up fort with badfood and no comforts. It may have been even worse for theMexicans who were besieging the Alamo. There were freezingwinds and inadequate clothing, and often the only safe placethat could be found to sleep was a muddy ditch. It was a lousycampaign for both sides."

Hancock insists that the film won't rely on the views of onesingle historian. "The script is an amalgam of different per-I

54 AMERICAN HERITAGE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2003

spectives and facts taken from what we be­lieve to be the most reliable sources. I can't

say that anyone will regard the movie as100 percent historically accurate, particular­ly when you factor in what is not known.Who's to say that in coming to San AntonioDavy Crockett was acting more out of patri­otism than opportunism or what the propermixture of both was? But I can promise thatwhere a factual claim is made, there is a verygood source to back it up."

When the project was initiated, says LesBohem, there was pressure to add fictionalcharacters. "A producer said to me, 'Can'twe have a romance where the girl leaves andthe guy stays?' I just looked at him for a mo­ment and asked, 'When does the iceberg hitthe Alamo?'"

Hancock's film, which stars Billy Bob Thorn­ton as Crockett, Jason Patric as Bowie, Pat­rick Wilson as Travis, Dennis Quaid as SamHouston, Emilio Echevarria as Santa Anna,and Jordi Molla as Juan Seguin-will be the

first one to depict the final assault on the Alamo as it actu­ally happened, in the dark. "Santa Anna attacked just beforedawn," says Bohem, "so you can imagine what the scene musthave been like. It had to be pitch-black with the only lightcoming from a couple of fires on the inside of the fort, lit forwarmth. Suddenly the men in the Alamo hear the trumpetsblaring deguello [a phrase from a medieval Spanish song dat­ing back to Spain's war with the Moors; it means, literally,"cutthroat"]. Then cannon and musket fire erupt from severaldifferent areas outside the fort. The men on the inside can see

the flashes of the gun barrels. Then there are the sounds of hun­dreds of men rushing toward the walls. In the dark, the differentcolored uniforms of the various Mexican regiments are almostindistinguishable.

"Then there is the answering fire from the men on the walls.Some of the cannon were firing canister; they were like giantshotguns. One Mexican soldier later said that almost his entirecompany, which included many of the men he had grown upwith in his village, were wiped out by a single burst from a can­non. You can imagine the confusion and horror of both theattackers and defenders. The entire parade ground inside theAlamo walls must have been illuminated by fires started byMexican cannon fire."

To simulate the most accurate account of the assault ever

put on film required what might be the largest freestanding setever constructed, one that included not only the Alamo com­pound but a church and several houses in the re-creation ofSan Antonio, all done in authentic period detail. The productiondesigner, Michael Corenblith, also a Texan, says, "We checkedout locales in 18 states and even looked hard at Canada," be­

fore settling on a location near Austin. "Texans probably wouldhave disowned the film if we'd made it anywhere else."

I ACTUALLY HAPPENED, IN THE DARK.

The area around San Antonio has become much more arid

than it was in 1836, so the set was constructed in the fertileTexas hill country, about half an hour from Austin. It took upover 50 acres with more than 70 structures, including a re­creation of San Fernando Church and the Veramendi family'shouse, reputed to be among the finest in San Antonio. Coren­blith was such a stickler for detail that he was horrified when

someone brought him a model for the Alamo chapel that fea­tured the famous peak. "'God, no!' I said. 'There's not going tobe any Taco Bell on my chapel!'''

But Corenblith does concede one important change that isbound to annoy some purists. The Alamo chapel itself wasmoved up approximately 60 feet closer to the fort's paradeground, which strikes outsiders as minor but which Alamobuffs will quickly notice. The reason, says the designer, isthat "we found we needed to use the chapel as a focal point foreverything that happens. You have to be able to spot it imme­diately to get your bearings. If we had left the chapel in itsoriginal location, there would simply be too many shots inwhich we couldn't see it."

A quick walk up the re-creation of the north wall whereTravis died validates Corenblith. From the spot where the as­sault began one can see virtually every corner of the amazingset, from the front gate to the south to the chapel itself. Thestructures look so authentic that it's almost impossible to be-

lieve the entire compound is made of wood and plaster insteadof adobe. (Located on private property, the set may be left stand­ing-as, indeed, has the set for Wayne's epic-for visitors tolive out their own Alamo fantasies.)

With everyone from the Daughters of the Republic of Texasto Mexican-American activists waiting in line to have a say onthe new film, the shape of the chapel facade might be the leastof the filmmakers' problems. When the project was first an­nounced in winter of 2002 (with Ron Howard as the intendeddirector), Michael Eisner, chairman and CEO of the Walt Dis­ney Company, proclaimed that the film intended to "capturethe post-September 11 surge in patriotism." Following a surgeof negative reaction from Hispanic-Americans who feared thatDisney was out to remake Walt Disney's "Davy Crockett at theAlamo," the producer Brian Glazer announced that the film'sintention was to avoid "anything controversial."

A movie about the Alamo with no controversy? Not likely.Controversy about the Alamo will end when America's memoryof the Alamo ends, and early in the twenty-first century, fourdecades after Walter Lord wrote his account of the siege, theend is still not in sight. *Allen Barra, who writes the "Screenings" column for "HistoryNow" in American Heritage is the author of Inventing WyattEarp: His Life and Many Legends.