Watching April Morning with Experts

Since it’s Patriots’ Day season, I’m looking for appropriate content to share.

Just in time, this year brings us a video analysis of the 1988 television movie April Morning from Penn State Altoona history professor Jared Frederick and Minute Man National Historical Park ranger Jarrad Fuoss.

Howard Fast published April Morning in 1961, one of several novels set in the Revolution that he wrote over his long career. At the time Fast was coming out of the shadow of the H.U.A.C. blacklist, still leftist but having broken with Soviet Communism. Ideas of human rights show up a lot in the novel, though there’s some blur between eighteenth-century community rights and more modern ideas of individual rights.

The American Revolution is often presented as a national coming of age, and many novels about it are coming-of-age stories, April Morning among them. Structurally it’s interesting in that it takes place over about a day and a half, all in Lexington on 18–19 April 1775. Because of the young hero, straightforward narrative and writing style, and all-American backdrop, the novel has often been assigned in high school.

In 1988 the book was adapted for the Hallmark Hall of Fame series. Chad Lowe, then one of many handsome young actors vying for stardom, played the lead. Tommy Lee Jones provided weight as the hero’s father. Jones had won an Emmy for playing Gary Gilmore in 1983; he would make Lonesome Dove the next year and become a movie star with The Fugitive four years later. The supporting cast included Robert Urich and Rip Torn. (Trivia: Earlier in the decade Lowe had starred in a sitcom called Spencer while Urich starred in the detective show Spenser.)

Reel History is a YouTube channel that seeks to elevate the “reaction video” genre by adding informed historical commentary to movies set in the past. Or, as the creators’ website explains:

Jared often joined friends Andrew and Tracey Collins at their household for movie nights. Inevitably, historian Jared would initiate impromptu color commentary on historical films. One evening, Andrew declared, "Why don't we put a camera in front of you and start a YouTube channel?"

This discussion about April Morning is the first of a series within the series called “Reel History with a Ranger.” As a National Park Service veteran, Frederick is inviting people from the agency to analyze movies relevant to their sites. Fuoss brings both a lot of knowledge about the Battle of Lexington and Concord and a lot of experience explaining that history clearly to the public.

The resulting video is about an hour long, and only a little of that is the actual movie. Those scraps serve as pegs for Fuoss’s detailed description and analysis of the real battle, which is the real treat. You can watch the movie later if you still need to.

(Incidentally, this video could make American viewers feel their age. The commentators are named Jared and Jarrad. I can’t remember any classmate named Jared when I grew up, and indeed Social Security records show that it was rare for boys born in the same decade as me. But it was the 58th most popular male name in both the 1980s and 1990s before sharply declining in bell curve fashion. Thus, being in a room with two people named Jared is an experience familiar to one age cohort but not anyone older or younger.)