PROVO, Utah — While 20th Century movie portrayals of Brigham Young are not historically accurate, they do have much to teach about how the prophet has been and is perceived by society generally, said James V. D'Arc, curator of the arts and communications archive at the BYU Harold B. Lee Library.
His presentation at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute symposium March 20 preceded a rare, big-screen-from-film showing of the 1940 Twentieth Century-Fox movie "Brigham Young."
The movie is very important, he said, because it was an extreme departure from the manner in which President Young had been portrayed in movies previously — either vilified or lampooned.
President Heber J. Grant wisely decided to cooperate fully with studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck in the production of the film.
Notwithstanding, it drew criticism from some Church members who took offense at literary license assumed in the film, which depicted President Young having doubts about his own prophetic calling.
President Grant, at the October general conference of that year, addressed those criticisms, as heard in an actual recording played for the symposium audience by Brother D'Arc: "I am thankful beyond expression for the very wonderful and splendid moving picture that has been made of Brigham Young. I have heard some little criticism of it, but we cannot expect the people who do not know that Brigham Young was in very deed the representative of God upon this earth, who do not know his wonderful character, to tell the story as we would tell it."
By shifting the previously negative image of Mormons to that of an unjustly persecuted people, the film benefited Latter-day Saints of 1940 and beyond, Brother D'Arc said. "Popular motion pictures centering on the Church have been virtually non-existent from that day to this, with the exception, perhaps, of a handful of TV programs and movie snippets."
