George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire

When Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace on May 15, 1972 during a presidential rally in Laurel, MD--paralyzing both the man and any future bid for the Oval Office--many felt that, as Wallace himself was fond of saying, the chickens had finally come home to roost. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler's George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire, while in no way exonerating the late four-time governor of Alabama, paints a much more complex portrait of the politician whose 1963 cry of "segregation forever" and constant railing against the "instigatin', scalawagin', carpetbaggin' [liberal] liars" endeared him to white voters in the Deep South. Ironically, George Corley Wallace, born to a middle class family in 1919, rose to mild fame as a progressive liberal judge in the '50s (black lawyer J. L. Chestnut recalls that Wallace was the first white man in a courtroom to refer to him as "Mr." and insist that opposing counsel do the same). The turning point came in 1958, when Wallace lost a bid for the governor's seat to a virulent racist named James Patterson. After the defeat, a bitter Wallace vowed that he would never be "outniggered" in an election again and henceforth made his particular pact with the devil: playing the race card directly or indirectly whenever it suited his overarching political ambition in local and national campaigns. Combining powerful archival footage with contemporary interviews with family members, scholars, and journalists (including Rick Bragg), this absorbing entry in The American Experience series, narrated by Randy Quaid, traces Wallace's rise to national prominence during the civil rights battles of the mid-'60s (Wallace's highly publicized fight for states rights regarding so-called civil matters would eventually help accelerate the passage of long overdue civil rights legislation); examines his bid for the presidency in 1968 (with loose cannon running mate Curtis LeMay--whose pro-nuke stance earned the duo the nickname the "Bombsy Twins"); and asks whether a much humbled Wallace, who won the governorship for the last time in 1982--winning with a majority of the black vote--was sincere in his rebirth as a man of (all) the people or simply putting on a new political face to suit the changed times. A consistently engaging film about an often despicable figure, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)