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Worthy
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Son of the Morning Star was a two-part television drama and an early 90s expedition into the field of Custerology. Every generation, or even half-generation, has to do a Custer movie and have its say, usually repeating the old clichés and errors but occasionally trying to say something new, or at least give us the old story in a new way.
With a total runtime of 187 minutes, the film had the scope to explore the myth/fact in some detail. Sadly, however, much of this time was not used for that purpose and the pace of the film is sluggish at best. It got low ratings.
It was directed by Mike Robe, the Return to Lonesome Dove chap, and was his first Western (of four).
It is said to be a dramatization of Evan S Connell’s 1984 non-fiction work Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn, “and other accounts”. The film is narrated by two women, Custer’s wife Libby (Rosanna Arquette, too coquettish, I think) and a Native American known as Kate Big Head (Buffy Sainte-Marie).
George Armstrong Custer is played by Gary Cole (V-P Bob Russell in The West Wing) in his only Western. He isn’t bad and they do try to get the look right. Kevin Costner was to have been Custer but he danced with wolves instead and got his Sioux fix that way.
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Cole as Custer
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Custer as Custer
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The story starts in Montana in June 1876 and key moments of Custer’s life (his life on the Plains; the Civil War is not dealt with) are done in flashback, often through the eyes of Libby or Kate. Apparently Son of the morning star who attacks at dawn is a name the Crow gave to Custer, though why Kate, a Southern Cheyenne, should be so keen on it is hard to say.
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Arquette as Libby
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Libby as Libby
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Various key moments are illustrated: Crazy Horse at 14 having a vision, the so-called Fetterman Massacre, the Washita in 1868.
Custer has a child with a Cheyenne woman. Maybe he did. He (correctly) has a brace of British Webley pistols.
Visually the film is attractive, especially on my new W I D E TV screen, though what the Tetons are doing in Montana isn’t easy to say. In the (absurdly long) list of credits (where they tell who supplied hamburgers to the driver of the hairdresser’s assistant) you find that Amsterdammer Kees Van Oostrum was the DP. This was his first Western. Later he also did a good job on Return to Lonesome Dove.
Part 2 opens in the Dakota Territory in the winter of 1875. We see Sherman, Sheridan and Grant in DC. Sherman calls Grant ‘Ulysses’ (a name he disliked). Little Bighorn approaches. We see Custer leaving Fort Lincoln, flashy in white buckskins and still with long hair (though not as long as the startlingly blond Captain Benteen’s). Libby has a premonition and there are many other slightly New Wavy portents. Tom counsels caution, reminding brother Autie that containment is the aim, not battle, and adding, “You don’t have to go after them on your own.”
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Strathairn as Benteen
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Benteen. Looks a bit like Karl Malden.
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David Strathairn plays Benteen and manages to be really quite sinister. Michael Medeiros grossly overdoes the panic of Major Reno, to an extent that he appears (unintentionally) comic. he’s as bad as Jospeh Cotten’s dreadful Reno in The Great Sioux Massacre. Well, OK, maybe not that bad.
The actor who did Crazy Horse as an adult is the excellent Rodney A Grant, and one of the plus points of the movie is the quite sensitive way Crazy Horse is portrayed. Floyd Red Crow Westerman’s Sitting Bull was also convincing, and I liked the way Bull was not shown as a Napoleonic commanding general, as he is often depicted, positioning ‘his’ troops here and there. In fact, unlike most Custer films, in this one the Indians are shown as separate tribes and real people, not just whooping extras to be shot down.
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Rodney A Grant is a very good Crazy Horse
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And Floyd Red Crow Westerman is an interesting Sitting Bull
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After the battle there is a quick recap of the deaths of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and a mention of Wounded Knee. It all seems terribly rushed after 187 minutes of screen time, as if they thought, oh, we’d better put in something about what happened afterwards, I suppose.
This is a worthy effort, and closer to the facts than many film treatments. Perhaps it would have been good with Costner in it, though had he directed it the film would have probably been even longer.
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9 Responses
I agree that this is a reasonably good depiction of the 7th cavalry at and before the Little Big Horn battle. Production values are strong. I have visited the battlefield and walked the ground and am a member of the Custer Battlefield Museum and Historical Association and have read historical association. Late afternoon as visitors depart, it’s a spooky place.
Yes, I like this film too and wish it would get a good Blu ray release (it wasn’t even put out on DVD I believe). Interestingly its TV ratings failure put ABC out of producing ‘Gettysburg’ and Turner picked it up later. Evocative places like Little Big Horn are special. I would really like to go there. Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Andersonville are places that have deeply affected me as the ground is haunted truly.
Little Big Horn is surely a special and haunted place. Horse riding is probably the best way to appreciate it (No need to be a good rider).
Here is one among many articles about Custer, Little Big Horn and movies about both written by Jeff :
https://jeffarnoldswest.com/2021/10/custerology/
Thanks. Custer and his story has always fascinated.
In spite of its omnipresent ponderous melodramatic music and its “made for TV” style (and budget restraints even if it was probably quite important for a TV film), it has many qualities.
Hats off to the huge efforts made on the historical reenactment, the accuracy of costumes, sets, weapons and props from the period (I have some doubts about the dance)
(Costuming and make-up were awarded 2 Emmys. Hairstlyling nominee only, some beards or (William Cooke) whiskers seeming too false maybe ?…
The story itself seems to follow the most commonly accepted real history with accuracy.
Contrary to the Fetterman Massacre rapidly introduced but wrongly executed (and rarely shown in movies), the battle of LBH and its key moments are the piece de resistance lasting roughly 30 minutes, close to the probable duration of the real event.
It was obviously impossible to show everything especially of the battle (Myles Keogh or James Calhoun ends for ex). This is not a documentary indeed even if the original book is called “non fiction” and the production had to be selective, sometimes at the expense of some situations’ understanding.
But the location, topography, the parrallel chronology of the fight’s flow, the confusion, the dust, the famous breech jamming of the Springfield carbine, the italian dispatch-rider, the indian warfare, the hand to hand fights, the panic (Reno did panic according to testimonies, giving contradictory orders, so I do not agree with Jeff on the way the actor plays), the global mess, tumult and violence that engulfed the men etc. are pretty well choregraphed to give a deep impression of authenticity and historicity.
Even if the reality was much more sinister and gruesome at the end for the soldiers and their butchered bodies…
But it takes a very long time to reach this fateful june 25th, 1876.
Custer conflicts with his hierarchy, his relationship with Libby and his fellow officers, his court-martial and suspension, although very (too) quick and elusive (we do not see that he was very much involved in politics and good in PR with the medias) are dragging on, as well as his friendship with his indian scouts.
We never completely understand if he loved them or was making fun of them.
Hard to tell if he was a racist since he says “I could be an Indian”… (we know for sure he was not fond of the Civil rights for the black people).
The whole is slow and lumbering, and a little too academic until the beginning of the fateful campaign. Robe is far from Peckinpah or Eastwood indeed.
There are so many controversies about these men and their story. Many mysteries remain and unanswered questions stirring imagination have been the subjects of passionate debates and disputes.
The Grant-Sherman-Sheridan triumvirate works well, the 3 actors being thick as thieves to appear like the 3 Fates sending Custer to his destiny.
Talking of actors and high ranking officers, Terry O’Quinn is also excellent as Terry.
The casting of the main actors is much more disputable.
At the beginning, I could hardly stand Gary Cole (who had roughly Custer’s age at the time of filming which is good, Costner as well if he could have made it – if only).
He is better toward the end but I cannot help wondering who could or should have played instead. Custer was a rock or Hollywood star of his time. Cole is too tedious.
It is not his only western since he plays in an episode of Dead Man’s Gun, a Western anthology television series (1997-1999) I have never watched.
It needs an addition in the Jeff’s Western TV trilogy…
David Strathairn, although not looking at all like Benteen, is an excellent actor but he is rather stiff here, and we only see his yellow hair! We do not very well understand his hate for Custer (by the way what a poor management by the US Army to let Custer go with his two of his most intimate ennemies…!)
Rosanna Arquette is too wise, far from Libby Custer who had a magnetic effect on men. Not her fault but the script. Her romance (and alliance) with Custer is hardly at all developed when their marriage was famously passionate.
Nothing is told of her commitment to defend her husband’s memory at the end.
The film, because of its efforts to be close to the true or more commonly accepted, story, and the outstanding job of the production, its attention to detail as good as any big Hollywood studio, is a pretty convincing piece to add to Celluloid Custerology.
But it is unfortunate that the main cast does not rise to the occasion.
And the epilogue was needless since it is not a movie telling the whole story of the Great Sioux War. They should have thought of one or two more episodes instead of this hacky end.
Probably the book is more detailed.
Custer, the Plains Indians and Little Big Horn are still waiting for the great film (or series) they all deserve.
Not to be missed when visiting the Montana / Wyoming / Dakotas region, the National Monument is indeed very evocative and even haunted as said earlier and it is a shame that the current government wants to erase parts of its indian history in spite of the complaints of the local tribes, in spite of history.
Excellent, excellent points. I think time is wasted too on the fictional Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan scenes. They really don’t illuminate much. To be honest it would have done better to adapt Van de Water’s ‘Glory Hunter’ on Custer. It had a stronger point of view.
Excellent critique. Agree that the buildup to LBH is somewhat tedious, but the battle itself is well handled. I’ve not been to Little Big Horn, but did visit the Fetterman Battlefield Monument in Wyoming. I found it interesting if a little underwhelming.
You were not so far… !
Fort Phil Kearny site, 20 miles south of Sheridan (Wy) is not so far from LBH, 70 miles north of Sheridan.
I think many battle sites (moreover in open country) need some imagination as most of the time, there is nothing or very few left, just a few information boards here and there, some steles (and sometimes cemeteries…).
The Fetterman fight was a much smaller confrontation when LBH is much more spread out.
Riding LBH on horseback is a unique and thrilling experience…
In Northern Montana, Big Hole and Bear Paw, the final stop of the Nez-Perces, or Lava Beds in Northern California, the site of the Modoc War with Canby’s Cross erected to commemorate General Canby’s murder by Captain Jack are some very moving places as well as Sand Creek in Colorado (to me).
It is very different with the Civil War sites. Especially the big ones such as Gettysburg and Vicksburg with their statues, plates, memorials, monuments, cannons etc. And of course the WWI and WWII ones.
Yeah I know. I stayed in Sheridan too, but at the time I was in a hurry to get to Seattle.