Behind The Camera

The university’s American Heritage Center collections have helped filmmakers and historians resurrect stories of the past.

by Tamara Linse

Mark Zwonitzer sat up, rolled his shoulders, and took off his glasses. Dust from crumbling newsprint tickled his nose. He had sifted through these Union Pacific papers for hours and was getting nowhere. As producer and director of historical documentaries with Hidden Hill Productions, Zwonitzer was researching the archives of the UW American Heritage Center (AHC) for “Transcontinental Railroad,” part of PBS’ American Experience series.

For documentaries, you have to cast as wide a net as possible before the real story emerges, Zwonitzer mused, and then you have to boil it down to a mere two hours of film. In contrast, writer David Bain, who wrote Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, had more than 700 pages in which to tell his story. While sifting through years of research, a documentary filmmaker has to find a handful of vignettes, small stories that reveal something bigger. Zwonitzer was still looking for those stories. Then he remembered that Bain had mentioned the AHC’s Casement papers. Maybe they were worth investigating.

The Casement papers contain the 1865-69 letters between General John “Jack” Casement and his wife, Frances “Frank” Jennings Casement. Jack and his brother Daniel were hired as contractors in charge of laying track for the Union Pacific Railroad. The collection consisted of only a few boxes. How could such a small amount of material contain the essence of what he was looking for? Zwonitzer pulled out a sheaf of papers and began reading.

Jack’s early letters, marked “end of tracks,” show his excitement and ambition, and Frank’s letters from Painesville, Ohio, show her loneliness for her husband and despair over the death of their only son. The letters reveal the architecture of a real marriage, with emotions ranging from friendship and longing to jealousy and anger.

“I expect the reason you are not able to write me once in a while is that you are bending all your energies to out-do everyone else and do the biggest thing that ever was heard of,” wrote Frank after not receiving a letter from Jack for a month. “There are a few things that pay in this world, and I hope that is one of them.”

Jack rarely journeyed back to Ohio, but he did so enough to father two sons by 1869. With the track laid, both Jack and Frank were ready for the job to end.

Zwonitzer sat back in his chair. He realized that the letters were the perfect solution to his problem. Using the correspondence, viewers could “eavesdrop” on the Casements’ conversations. There was his story!

Researchers like Zwonitzer come to the AHC from across the nation and the world to do primary research in the center’s extensive archives. Although known for Wyoming and western history, the AHC also contains wide-ranging collections in the mining and petroleum industries, U.S. politics and world affairs, environment and natural resources, journalism, transportation, the history of books, and 20th-century entertainment such as popular music, radio, television, and film.

“The University of Wyoming draws visitors from around the globe—consistently from as far away as Israel, Nigeria, and Japan—to take advantage of the renowned primary sources at the AHC. These include scholars working on books and documentary filmmakers, among others,” says AHC Director Mark Greene.

While some stories can be confirmed and enhanced through use of AHC documents, others can be debunked. For example, the movie Hidalgo, written by John Fusco and starring Viggo Mortensen, was a perfect opportunity for historical research. Based on the “autobiographical” story of long-distance rider Frank Hopkins, the movie begins with Hopkins as a dispatch rider during the massacre at Wounded Knee and a cowboy performer for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The climax of the film portrays Hopkins in Saudi Arabia winning the Oceans of Fire long-distance horse race on his mustang Hidalgo.

CuChullaine and Basha O’Reilly wanted to believe that the Hidalgo story was true. Both are members of the Long Riders’ Guild, an international association of men and women who have ridden more than 1,000 continuous miles in a single journey. They used the AHC’s Robert O. Easton papers to investigate Hopkins’ story. Easton, who wrote biographies of writers of westerns, corresponded with Hopkins’ widow. The Easton papers show that Hopkins was fascinated with the myth of the West and voraciously collected newspaper clippings and historic accounts. But the correspondence fails to show any proof of the film’s account. The more research the O’Reillys did, the more they learned that the story was a tall tale concocted by Hopkins himself. The only thing that was historically accurate was Frank Hopkins working as a rider and stable hand for a western show in Ringling Brothers Circus.

“It is clear that the screenwriter failed to adequately evaluate the sources he reviewed,” says AHC Associate Director Rick Ewig, who helped the O’Reillys with their research and later was interviewed in a History Channel documentary about Hidalgo.

There are movies, however, that try to get it right. One was TNT’s production of The Virginian. While adapting Owen Wister’s novel, the filmmakers researched and incorporated information in Wister’s diary, which is in the AHC collections. Initially they wanted to film in the actual setting of the novel, Medicine Bow, Wyo. David Roberts, a former UW journalism instructor and editor and publisher of the Medicine Bow newspaper, joined producer and star Bill Pullman, other filmmakers, and the Wyoming Film Commission to scout Medicine Bow and the surrounding area. The filmmakers discovered that Medicine Bow in the late 20th century had too many house additions, electrical power lines, and improved roads to maintain the historical feel. And conversely, there weren’t enough hotels, restaurants, and telecommunications facilities in Medicine Bow to host the film crew.

Consequently, the movie was filmed in Canada. Roberts says, however, that unlike other movie adaptations of The Virginian, Pullman’s adaptation kept the “wide-open, windblown” feel of Medicine Bow. Pullman also asked Roberts to review the final script.

“Pullman’s version is the best and was the most historically accurate,” Roberts says. “It is pretty faithful to the novel.”

Documentary filmmakers also have taken advantage of AHC’s Wyoming collections. In 1991 Japanese television producers researched AHC archives in preparation for a documentary on Pearl Harbor. More recently, two documentaries, Wyoming Voices and Washakie, were produced by Wyoming Public Television.

Wyoming Voices is a three-part series that traces Wyoming history largely through oral accounts. Using the AHC’s collections on Wyoming stock growers, early Laramie and university history, and prominent political figures, the series shows Wyoming’s past through the lives of everyday people.

“From the original conception of our project, our goal was to show Wyoming history in as personal a way as possible,” says film producer Deborah Hammons. “We often felt as if we were on a massive scavenger hunt.” Hammons says the photographs and other resources from the AHC provided essential images for the series.

In the documentary Washakie, writer and producer Geoff O’Gara used material from the AHC’s extensive collection of photos of Eastern Shoshone Chief Washakie. He also researched the Dmitri Shimpkin collection, which contains Shoshone anthropological material. O’Gara says the Washakie documentary filled a gap in historical literature.

“In the print and filmic literature on American Indians, the Shoshones in general and Chief Washakie in particular are not much remembered,” he says. Many people viewed Native Americans as Euroamerican adversaries. But because the Eastern Shoshone were a small and vulnerable band, O’Gara says, Chief Washakie was a “great compromiser” and tried to ally with the whites.

“Rarely do you see American Indians [portrayed] as crafty strategists and survivors,” he says.

For Transcontinental Railroad, Zwonitzer spent thousands of hours gathering images and words to bring the past to life. He drove the full route of the transcontinental railroad at least four times and walked through all the tunnels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Zwonitzer corresponded with the AHC and other archives and museums for more than a year, choosing photos and extensively researching materials in person.

“Mark really did his homework,” says AHC Associate Archivist Carol Bowers.

Excellence in research is not confined to the sciences. The humanities at their best also strive to model the world in all its complexity, and these models must be based on hard data collected from primary research.

“Astronomers measure the distance to a star by taking as many measurements as possible and then they see where they cluster,” Zwonitzer says. “That’s how I do my documentaries.”

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