but to show the South as the good guys in the Civil War is kind of off-putting. Sure the soldiers were misled by the political leaders, that their way of life (includiing slave ownership) was in jeopardy, so worth fighting and dying for, but didn't the filmmakers including Roy Rogers have any sense how this would come off?
"Did you make coffee...? Make it!"--Cheyenne.
There are lots of Westerns that feature the war from a Southern perspective, but I disagree that this film or most others could be characterised as pro-Confederacy. Perhaps your moral certitude on the side the Union blinds you to the difference. I don't know how sensitive an issue the war remained by the 1930s/40s, but I'd have thought on commercial grounds alone, it'd have made sense for the studios to avoid alienating large swathes of the public.
shareThanks for your thoughtful reply (I'm not being sarcastic). Gone With the Wind is sometimes attacked for being too pro-Confederacy and pro-slavery, but I don't find it so. It shows the world there, somewhat romanticized, sure, but this film overdid it, IMO.
"Did you make coffee...? Make it!"--Cheyenne.
I caution you against watching The Littlest Rebel in which America's darling, Shirley Temple, fights the good fight for the Confederacy.
Where Hollywood can be legitimately accused of idealising or romanticising the Civil War period is in its near deification of Abraham Lincoln as freer of the slaves and Father of the Nation.