Lindbergh. - video recording reviews

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Nov, 1997 by Robert S. Rothenberg

Shanachie Entertainment /60 minutes / $19.95

Seventy years after Charles Lindbergh electrified the world by becoming the first aviator to fly nonstop from New York to Paris, his place in history remains a turbulent one. Was he a great American hero or a traitor? Was he a visionary or an anti-Semitic bigot? Was he persecuted by the press or a tool of fascist dictators? Through family reminiscences, archival films, and historians' analyses, this video reveals that the most accurate answer very well might be "all of the above."

After an indifferent academic record in a number of schools, Lindbergh became a pilot, barnstorming in air shows and flying the mail. In 1927, in the Spint of St. Louis, a plane stripped of all "non-essential" equipment--including a parachute--to conserve weight, he took off from Roosevelt Field on New York's Long Island. When he touched down in Paris 33-1/2 hours later, Lindbergh was mobbed by Frenchmen, dubbed the "Lone Eagle," and returned to the U.S. and a hero's welcome.

Ironically, the fame his feat earned him was anathema to Lindbergh, a private person doomed to spend his life pinned in the spotlight of celebrity. His loathing for the press was compounded in 1932, when his two-year-old son was kidnapped. The media frenzy over the crime, the discovery 72 days later of the child's body, and the arrest, conviction, and execution of Bruno Hauptman was a forerunner of the hyperactive coverage of the O.J. Simpson case and the death of England's Princess Diana.

The public acclaim and sympathy Lindbergh received began to fade as World War II loomed. His obvious admiration for the Nazi regime, combined with his often-expressed views that democracy was dying, caused extensive criticism. Convinced that a German victory in Europe was inevitable, Lindbergh spearheaded the isolationist America First Committee, determined to keep the U.S. out of the war. His speeches--wherein he maintained that Asians, Africans, and Russians were inferior and in which he proclaimed the need to preserve Western superiority--brought forth accusations of racism. An anti-Semitic speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in September, 1941, triggered an uproar that ultimately destroyed Lindbergh's reputation and support.

Refused a commission in the Air Force by FDR when he volunteered two days after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh became a civilian consultant for United Aircraft in the Pacific, where he convinced superiors to let him fly more than 50 combat missions against the Japanese. His heroism again was negated in 1945, when, in touring a defeated Germany and the Nazi concentration camps, he claimed that Jewish victims were no different than the soldiers on all sides who had died during the war.

It took more than a decade for Lindbergh's reputation to be salvaged, with Pres. Dwight Eisenhower's restoration of Lindbergh's Air Force Reserve commission, a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, Spirit of St. Louis, and his work as an environmentalist and conservationist. Nevertheless, Lindbergh remained bitter and, on his instructions, he was buried within three hours of his death from cancer on Maui, Hawaii, in 1974 so reporters could not interfere with his family's grief. The Lone Eagle finally had achieved the privacy he had sought for most of his adult life.

This well-documented video is an insightful examination of one of the most fascinating, controversial figures of the 20th century. As a dissection of the cult of celebrity, its lessons resound today.