Glory (1989 film)

• 1. Introduction

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  Glory, the 1989 war drama directed by Edward Zwick, was still filming in Savannah, Georgia, on the 16th of February 1989. That day, a location crew found the body of a middle-aged man who had been dead for about a day. He had a Middle Eastern appearance and no signs of a violent death, and he was never identified. The discovery had nothing to do with the story on screen. Cast and crew were rebuilding the sacrifice of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union Army's earliest African American units raised during the Civil War. Matthew Broderick played the regiment's commanding officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, and Morgan Freeman played fictional soldiers under him. Kevin Jarre wrote the screenplay after a chance introduction from Lincoln Kirstein, a project that nearly became something else entirely before it reached Edward Zwick. Decades later, critics still argued about one choice buried in that script: whose eyes the story asks the audience to see through. That gap, between what happened off camera and what the finished film chose to show, frames everything that follows. A screenplay that traveled further than expected, and a regiment whose true record still diverges from Hollywood's version in ways historians keep pointing out.

• 2. Inside The 54th

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  Captain Robert Gould Shaw was recovering from a wound suffered at the Battle of Antietam when he returned home to Boston on medical leave. He accepted a promotion to Colonel, taking command of the newly formed regiment, and asked his friend Cabot Forbes to serve as second in command. Thomas Searles, a bookish free Black friend of Shaw's, became the first man to volunteer. Other recruits included John Rawlins, Jupiter Sharts, a soldier called Trip, and a mute boy who served as drummer. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the men were warned of a Confederate threat. Any Black soldier captured in Union uniform faced execution, along with the white officers leading them. Offered an honorable discharge in light of that threat, the recruits turned it down and began rigorous training under Sergeant-Major Mulcahy.

  Trip was arrested after going absent without leave, and Shaw had him flogged before learning the reason. Trip had left camp only to replace a pair of worn out shoes. Shaw then confronted the base's quartermaster, a racist officer who had been holding back the regiment's supplies. When the men learned that Black soldiers were paid about three quarters of a white soldier's salary, Trip urged the men to refuse it. Shaw tore up his own pay stub in solidarity with the men. Rawlins, credited with mentoring the younger soldiers and advising Shaw on troop morale, was promoted to Sergeant-Major.

  General Charles Harker then took command of the regiment, and Colonel James Montgomery ordered the 54th to sack and burn the town of Darien, Georgia. Shaw refused at first, only complying after being threatened with removal from his post. Frustrated at seeing his men reduced to manual labor and raids on civilians, Shaw confronted Harker and Montgomery. He warned he would report their profiteering to the war department unless the regiment got a combat assignment. At James Island, South Carolina, the 54th repelled a Confederate attack. Thomas was wounded in that fight but managed to save Trip's life. Shaw then offered Trip the honor of carrying the regimental flag into battle. Trip turned it down, saying he did not believe the war would give former slaves a better life.

  General George Crockett Strong briefed his commanders on a campaign to seize Charleston Harbor. It required a frontal assault on Fort Wagner, whose only landward approach was a narrow strip of open beach. Shaw volunteered the 54th for the attack. The night before, the men held a religious service, giving thanks and asking for God's help. The next morning, they marched out to the cheers of white Union troops who had scorned them earlier. The daytime assault brought heavy losses, and survivors took cover in the dunes until sundown. Shaw was killed trying to rally his stalled men. Trip picked up the fallen flag and led the remaining soldiers toward the fort until he too was mortally wounded. Forbes led a party into the fort's outer defenses, where Charlie Morse was killed and Thomas was wounded. A handful of survivors, including Forbes, Rawlins, Thomas, and Jupiter, came face to face with a Confederate gun as the scene faded to black. The next morning, Confederate soldiers cleared Union bodies from the beach and raised their flag over the fort. They buried the dead in a mass grave, where Shaw's body came to rest beside Trip's. An epilogue notes that although Fort Wagner was never taken, the 54th's courage led the Union Army to accept thousands of Black men for combat. Abraham Lincoln credited that shift with helping turn the tide of the war.

• 3. Chasing The Script

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  The title borrows a word from a wounded sergeant's own account of battle. The Columbus Enquirer's the 28th of July 1863 edition described the 'glory' First-Sergeant Robert John Simmons sought when mortally wounded at Battery Wagner. Simmons had written his own account of the Battle of Grimball's Landing. It ran in the New York Tribune on the 23rd of December 1863. In it, he wrote: 'God has protected me through this, my first fiery, leaden trial, and I do give Him the glory.'

  Lincoln Kirstein first asked Lloyd Fonvielle to write a script about the regiment. Fonvielle felt too much in awe of Kirstein to work with him directly, so he introduced Kirstein to his friend Kevin Jarre, who had worked on Rambo: First Blood Part II. The two men initially planned to write the script together. Fonvielle became tied up in another project, though, leaving Jarre to write it alone.

  Jarre had been a Civil War enthusiast since childhood, and he met with Kirstein to talk through the story of the 54th. As Jarre put it: 'Lincoln's interest was deeper. It related to his whole philosophy about surrendering yourself to something bigger, some larger cause. He'd always wanted to make a movie about the 54th.' Jarre's own inspiration came from the monument to Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry that stands in Boston Common. He drew on several sources for the script. These included Captain Luis F. Emilio's 1891 history Brave Black Regiment, Kirstein's Lay This Laurel from 1973, and Peter Burchard's One Gallant Rush from 1965. Shaw's personal letters rounded out his research. Jarre moved into Room 421 of the Gramercy Park Hotel and wrote the entire script in a few weeks, working on spec.

  Kirstein then showed the finished script to producer James Ivory of Merchant Ivory Productions. Ivory liked it, but wanted writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to rewrite it first. According to Fonvielle, Kirstein stood up, shook Ivory's hand warmly, and pulled him to his feet. He said, 'Jim, thanks so much for coming down,' and showed him out the door.

  The script then went to director Bruce Beresford, who agreed to make the film and brought in producer Freddie Fields. Fields arranged a deal at Columbia Pictures, but pre-production stalled once studio executive David Puttnam left the company. Beresford left the project soon after. Fields took the script to Tri-Star Pictures instead, and the studio agreed to make the film, hiring Edward Zwick to direct. Hired at last, Zwick now had to turn Jarre's pages into battle scenes shot on real ground.

• 4. On Location

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  Filming took place mainly across Massachusetts and Georgia, and the climactic assault on Fort Wagner was shot on the beaches of Jekyll Island, Georgia. The opening scenes portraying the Battle of Antietam used volunteer reenactors filmed at the Gettysburg battlefield instead. Scenes depicting the Battle of Grimball's Landing were shot at Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park. The real 54th Massachusetts later fought at the Battle of Olustee itself, though that battle never appears in the film.

  Zwick did not want Glory to become, in his words, 'a black story with a more commercially convenient white hero.' Morgan Freeman put the balance this way: 'We didn't want this film to fall under that shadow. This is a picture about the 54th Regiment, not Colonel Shaw, but at the same time the two are inseparable.'

  Zwick also hired the writer Shelby Foote as a technical adviser on the production. Foote later became widely known for his role in Ken Burns' nine-episode PBS documentary The Civil War, which aired in 1990.

  James Horner composed and orchestrated the film's score in association with the Boys Choir of Harlem. Jim Henrikson edited the film's music, and Shawn Murphy mixed the final score. Virgin Records released the soundtrack album on the 11th of January 1990. That score, and the battle scenes shot on Jekyll Island's sand, would soon face judgment from critics on both coasts.

• 5. What Critics Said

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  On Rotten Tomatoes, Glory holds a 95 percent approval rating from 60 reviews, with an average score of 8 out of 10. The site's consensus describes the film as 'bolstered by exceptional cinematography, powerful storytelling, and an Oscar-winning performance by Denzel Washington.' It calls Glory 'one of the finest Civil War movies ever made.' Metacritic gives the film a weighted score of 78 out of 100, based on 22 critics, for 'generally favorable' reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave Glory an average grade of A, on a scale that runs from A+ to F.

  Vincent Canby, reviewing for The New York Times, called it Broderick's 'most mature and controlled performance to date.' He described Washington as an actor 'on his way to a major screen career.' Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four. He called it 'a strong and valuable film no matter whose eyes it is seen through.' Ebert also praised Norman Garwood's production design and Freddie Francis's cinematography for their 'enormous attention to period detail.' He raised one persistent question, though. Why does the story unfold mostly through the eyes of the regiment's white commanding officer rather than the soldiers themselves? Why does a white actor receive top billing?

  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was unimpressed with the performances overall, calling Broderick 'catastrophically miscast as Shaw.' Richard Schickel of Time took a different view. He praised 'the movie's often awesome imagery' and James Horner's 'bravely soaring choral score.' He said it granted the film 'the status of necessary myth.' Desson Howe of The Washington Post pointed to flaws too. He described Broderick as 'an amiable non-presence,' leaving the impression the 54th 'earned their stripes despite wimpy leadership.'

  James Berardinelli, writing for ReelViews, called it 'without question, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War.' He noted the film 'has important things to say, yet it does so without becoming pedantic.' Leonard Maltin rated it four stars, describing it as 'grand, moving, breathtakingly filmed... and faultlessly performed,' and 'one of the finest historical dramas ever made.' Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it a thumbs up. He compared it to Driving Miss Daisy, calling it 'another admirable film that turns out to be surprisingly entertaining.' He felt the actors portrayed their characters as 'true individuals,' not 'standard Hollywood blacks.' Historian James M. McPherson said the film 'accomplished a remarkable feat in sensitizing a lot of today's black students to the role their ancestors played.' That same performance from Washington that split critics on Broderick would soon collect hardware of its own.

• 6. Numbers And Trophies

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  Glory opened in limited release on the 14th of December 1989, earning $63,661 across just three theaters. Its wide release followed on the 16th of February 1990, when it opened in eighth place with $2,683,350 across 801 cinemas. Driving Miss Daisy dominated that same weekend, taking first place with $9,834,744. In its second week, Glory's earnings fell 37 percent to $1,682,720, holding at eighth place across 809 theaters. Driving Miss Daisy again led the weekend, grossing $6,107,836. Over a 17-week theatrical run, Glory topped out domestically at $26,828,365, ranking 45th among 1989 releases at the box office. Worldwide, the film grossed about $27 million against an $18 million budget.

  Glory received five Academy Award nominations and won three, including Best Supporting Actor for Denzel Washington. Washington won the same category at the Golden Globes. The film's other Oscar nominations covered art direction, cinematography, film editing, and sound. Cinematographer Freddie Francis also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Cinematography. Glory took home awards from the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, the Political Film Society, and the NAACP Image Awards. Kevin Jarre picked up a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Washington was named a nominee by the New York Film Critics Circle. On the American Film Institute's list, 100 Years, 100 Cheers, Glory ranked 31st. None of that hardware, though, settled the question of how closely the film's version of events matched the historical regiment.

• 7. Myth Versus Record

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  Aside from Shaw, none of the other regiment members shown in the film are real people. The film portrays the 54th as filled with former slaves. In reality, the regiment was made up mostly of freedmen already living in the North, with some recruits from Canada and the West Indies. Many of these freedmen came from prominent families, including two sons of Frederick Douglass. One of them, Lewis, became the regiment's Sergeant Major.

  The film shows Shaw accepting command of the 54th quickly. In reality, he first turned down the Governor's commission, reluctant to leave his own regiment and unsure it would help his army career. Shaw was an abolitionist, yet his letters repeatedly used racial slurs typical of his era's attitudes toward Black people.

  The film depicts the regiment struggling to get proper equipment. In reality, the real 54th was a favored project of the Massachusetts governor and received everything it needed from the start. The movie shows a soldier being whipped. Whipping was banned in the Union Army, and no such flogging of United States Colored Troops ever occurred.

  On the pay dispute, Shaw already knew Black soldiers in South Carolina would receive only $10 a month. He protested to his father and the governor rather than tearing up a pay voucher. The issue stayed unresolved until June 1864. Though the film never shows it, Shaw married Annie Kneeland Haggerty just before the regiment shipped out for South Carolina.

  The soldiers are shown celebrating Christmas in the snow, but the timeline makes that impossible. The 54th began recruiting in February 1863, and Shaw died at Fort Wagner that July. In the film's final assault, the 54th attacks southward with the ocean on their left. The real regiment attacked northward, with the ocean on their right. The postscript claims Fort Wagner never fell to Union troops, but Confederate forces actually abandoned the fort in September 1863 after Union Navy bombardment.

  The fictional Cabot Forbes is portrayed as Shaw's best friend and second in command. The real second in command was Edward Hallowell, who took over the regiment after Shaw's death. General Charles Garrison Harker appears in the film as a major general, but he never reached that rank or served in the Charleston campaigns. He was only 25 in 1863, not in his forties as portrayed. None of these gaps stopped the film from outliving its own opening weekend by decades.

• 8. Life After Release

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  Glory reached VHS on the 22nd of June 1990, months after leaving theaters. A Region 1 DVD followed on the 20th of January 1998. It included interactive menus, both widescreen and full screen versions, and subtitles in English, Italian, Spanish, and French. A Special Edition DVD arrived on the 30th of January 2001, and a two-disc repackaged version followed on the 2nd of January 2007. That 2007 edition added picture-in-picture commentary from Zwick, Freeman, and Broderick, plus a separate director's commentary. It also included a documentary called The True Story of Glory Continues, narrated by Morgan Freeman. A Blu-ray edition followed on the 2nd of June 2009, presented in 1080p widescreen with Dolby TrueHD sound. A UMD version for the Sony PlayStation Portable also came out, on the 1st of July 2008.

  In 2019, on the film's 30th anniversary, Glory returned to more than 600 theaters across the United States. One retrospective called it 'a distinctly American story,' noting it had become part of the common curriculum in U.S. history classes nationwide. In 2025, the Library of Congress selected Glory for preservation in the National Film Registry, judging it 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.' That judgment rests on the same 54th Massachusetts story that once struggled for years to reach a studio deal at all.