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Friday, March 03, 2023

Shadows and Light: "The Blue and the Gray" (1982)

Some stories I first experienced at a young age feel as if they’ve always been a part of me. The 1982 miniseries The Blue and the Gray is one such tale. I can’t remember the first time my parents rented it on VHS. Nor the first time I made friends with the characters who inhabit it. It’s as if I’ve always known the Geyser family, their history, and how it’s bound up with our country’s struggle to truly become “the land of the free.” 


The Blue and the Gray follows a young man named John Geyser (John Hammond). Born and raised on a Virginia farm but employed by a Northern newspaper as a sketch artist, his loyalties and affections are tugged this way and that as the nation staggers toward open conflict. When a free Black friend of John’s gets lynched for harboring fugitive slaves, John becomes a staunch abolitionist in one night, storming away from his family and vowing he’ll have nothing more to do with them. 

John makes friends with a Union officer named Jonas Steele (Stacy Keach), who is my favorite character. Jonas is a secretive, mysterious man who is part spy, part Secret Service agent. Things in his past haunt him, though he won’t speak much of them. He takes a liking to John Geyser, recognizing his artistic talent, and their paths cross often. Jonas sometimes gets John a little closer to an important event or other, and John eventually invites Jonas back to his uncle’s home. There, Jonas falls in love with John’s cousin Mary (Julia Duffy). 

Between them, John and Jonas seem to be present at just about every important occurrence during the American Civil War. They meet at John Brown’s trial and hanging. John meets his future wife at the First Battle of Bull Run. Jonas introduces John to President Lincoln (Gregory Peck) so John can sketch his portrait. John stumbles about the aftermath of the Vicksburg siege in search of his sister. And weaving all around them are John’s siblings and cousins, some fighting for the North, others for the South. 


John learns over the course of the story that life is more complicated than the black and white drawings the newspapers print. Life is like his original drawings, shaded with many variations of gray. Shadows and light intermingle on the paper and in the real world. He must come to terms with his own human frailty and fierceness and the mixture of good and evil around him. For a time, it seems as if the horrors of war he witnesses will overwhelm John’s sensitive nature. Tragedy strikes his family again and again, just like every family involved in the war. But good comes out of it too. John and his family members tentatively begin healing, just as the country begins to do, when the war finally ends. 

It’s hard for me to think of many Civil War battles and other events without thinking of this miniseries, especially now that I live in Virginia. I’m not far from Manassas, site of the first and second Battles of Bull Run. John loses one of his brothers in the horrible inferno that consumed much of the Battle of the Wilderness; I live less than an hour from where that battle occurred. In fact, I have to drive through the Wilderness Battlefield State Park when I visit friends. It is always unsettling and eerie, for bits of this series flit through my memory and make me shudder. Of all battles in that war, I think the Wilderness scares me the most, and that’s largely due to how it’s portrayed in The Blue and the Gray. Sometimes, film and fiction can be almost too real to me. 

On the other hand, I’ll always imagine that President Lincoln sounded like Gregory Peck. That’s a wonderful voice to hear in your head when you read the Gettysburg Address. This miniseries also introduced me to the music of Bruce Broughton, whose scores have delighted me ever since. More than all of that, this story instilled in me early on the conviction that freeing slaves was a just and righteous reason to fight a war, but there were good and decent people on both sides of the conflict. Neither side was all good or all bad, but had people of both light and shadow. 

Above all, The Blue and the Gray impressed on me the awful toll that war takes on people. War tears families apart, injures people’s minds and their bodies, and affects every aspect of the lives of those involved. That’s a lesson I’ve held onto all my life, and it informs my own storytelling to this day.


(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on November 2, 2020.)

6 comments:

  1. Rachel, I really enjoyed your top-notch write-up of THE BLUE AND THE GRAY(filmed 1981, released 1982). I first viewed this CBS Network miniseries on CBS-TV in 1982. This miniseries was first shown over three nights in November. Part I, three hours on Sunday November 14; Part II, two hours on Tuesday November 16; and Part III, three hours on Wednesday November 17. The eight-hour(six hours and twenty-one minutes without commercials) was a big ratings winner. According to the A.C. Nielsen Company ratings, over twenty million households tuned in each night. For the ratings week ending on November 14, Part 1 ranked number two and for the ratings week ending on November 21, Part II ranked number 3 and Part III ranked number 6. A whole lot of people watched THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. I viewed it on CBS affiliate Channel 10 Springfield, Missouri. Everyone that I knew, at that time, watched this miniseries and liked it.

    I don't want to give too much away, but I really liked that the story wasn't about wealthy plantation owners, because most Southerners didn't own plantations. Also, the movie makers didn't play footloose and fancy free with Historical accuracy. They did a good job here, a lot better than most. The production people did a good job, and the miniseries looked and felt authentic. The miniseries was filmed entirely on location in Northwest Arkansas during the Autumn of 1981. I lived about 130-160 miles from where the filming took place. I've actually rode the train that was used.

    I think THE BLUE AND THE GRAY is well worth watching and here is an interview of Director Andrew V. McLaglen and actor Stacy Keach conducted by Leta Powell Drake program director of CBS affiliate KOLN Channel 10 Lincoln, Nebraska in 1982.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MvkI-hrb38

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    1. Walter, first off, thank you so much for linking to that wonderful interview! I thoroughly enjoyed that. Wow, if I needed another reason to like Stacy Keach, the fact that he loves riding and owned his own horses would really do it for me.

      I was two years old when TBATG first aired, and my parents didn't own a TV, so we didn't discover it until I was probably six or seven, when our small town got a video store, and the video store got this miniseries :-)

      I heartily agree that this series is so strong because it focuses on ordinary folks. And it takes such a fair stance toward both the North and the South -- it never demonizes either side, but shows that there were real people with real beliefs and ideals and dreams and hopes and troubles on each side. It truly ignited my interest in Civil War history -- I can remember visiting Gettysburg with my parents and grandparents when I was ten or eleven and hearing Gregory Peck's voice in my head, reciting his address there... but also thinking about the people fighting there.

      I now live in Virginia, surrounded by Civil War historical sites. I have to drive through part of the Wilderness Battlefield once in a while, and it is always very eerie to pass through there, for me, because I associate it so strongly with the scenes of fire and death from this series. They feel so real, and have been part of my memory and imagination for so long, that... I always feel haunted driving through there. Now THAT is some powerful storytelling.

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    2. Rachel, you're welcome. The VHS copy of THE BLUE AND THE GRAY, that came out, was missing about eighty minutes from the original television showing. My Columbia Tristar DVD has all 381 minutes. I think I'll view it again, because it has been a while since I last saw it.

      Yes, THE BLUE AND THE GRAY does take a fair stance toward both North and South. Many of us, out here, have ancestors who fought on both sides during the war. Fact is that my great-great grandfather fought for both the Confederacy and the Union. Yes, he served in both armies, but not at the same time. Stacy Keach(Jonas Steele) in real life has both blue and gray roots. He was born in Savanah, Georgia, because his father was teaching there at Armstrong Junior College. His father was a northerner from Chicago Illinois, Stacy's mother was a southerner from Denton, Texas. Her family was from Mississippi. In an interview, Stacy said that, "When I was a kid playing war, I could be in either army."

      Concerning focusing on ordinary folks, Stacy, in an interview, described his character Jonas Steele as, "He's a ubiquitous character and he's a spokesman for the common man." Also, Andrew V. McLaglen, the director, referred to Jonas Steele as. "The Lone Ranger of the Civil War."

      I can understand your personal feelings when you are on the site of one of the battlefields, because I get similar feelings.

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    3. Walter, yes, when I got the DVD version, I was excited to discover a bit of "extra" material.

      My ancestors all came to the US from Germany and Holland in the 1880s, so we missed the Civil War. But I have lived on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line and have many friends whose forebears were involved in the war, some on one side and some on the other.

      Oh man, Jonas Steele as "the Lone Ranger of the Civil War" is just the perfect description! Particularly since the Lone Ranger was one of my very early heroes too, dating to about the same time as I first saw this.

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  2. I have always been a big Stacy Keach fan. But unfortunately, I don't believe I ever saw this miniseries. Gregory Peck would indeed have been an outstanding Lincoln, I'm sure.

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    1. Debra, if you can find this miniseries, do yourself a favor and watch it! Not only is Stacy Keach magnificent in it, but the cast is entirely wonderful.

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