The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 355
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
All of the Alamo films are in a sense records of failure. One is marred by a bad
script (The Alamo); one by an inadequate budget ( The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glo-
ry); one by miscasting (The Last Command); one by length (Alamo ... The Price of
Freedom--too short); and so on. And all of them, despite many claims to the con-
trary, contain startling historical inaccuracies. We look to the Alamo films,
Thompson maintains, not to remember the Alamo, but to see "how we remem-
ber the Alamo."
In additional short chapters Thompson includes information on the Alamo
on television, lost Alamo films, aborted Alamo films, and cameos and documen-
taries. The documentation for this book, incidentally, ranges from spotty to ab-
sent. Missing, for example, is any reference to my own Cowboys and Cadillacs: How
Hollywood Looks at Texas (1983), which contains a chapter on a number of the
films discussed in this book.
Nonetheless, Thompson's book is a readable and factually reliable guide to
what is known and not known about the Alamo in film.
University of Texas at Austin DON GRAHAM
Cartooning Texas: One Hundred Years of Cartoon Art zn the Lone Star State. By Maury
Forman and Robert A. Calvert. (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1993. Pp. xii+193. Acknowledgments, introduction. ISBN o-89096-
560-9. $16.95, paper.)
Cartooning for Suffrage. By Alice Sheppard. Introduction by Elizabeth Israels Per-
ry. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Pp. xxviii+276. Il-
lustrations, preface, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN o-
82631-458-9. $37.50.)
These two books vary widely in scope and content but serve the common pur-
pose of sampling and analyzing cartoons, an art form that came into its own at
the turn of the century. Introduced by the authors as "history in the raw," Car-
tooning Texas has fewer scholarly trappings than Cartooning for Suffrage, but it is
no less informative, is highly entertaining, and, given the subject matter, will
have broader appeal. Happily merging their considerable talents, Maury Forman
selected approximately 170 cartoons of political personalities and issues in
Texas since 1890; Robert A. Calvert wrote a journalistic sidebar for each cartoon
in which he cogently describes the context in which it belongs; and Texas A&M
University Press presented the material in an informal and uncluttered format.
As might be expected, most of the cartoons first appeared in the state's big-city
daily newspapers, but a pleasing number of them were published in smaller pa-
pers and journals as diverse as the Southern Mercury, Texas Sandwich, Texas Farmer,
and Rolling Stone in the 189os; the Texas ioo Per Cent American, Free Lance, Texas
Outlook, W. Lee O'Daniel News, and Texas Spectator of the 1920-1950 era; and the
Houston Informer, Texas Observer, Pzne Log, and City Life since 1950. Proving that a
picture is indeed worth a thousand words, the book provides an enjoyable way
for scholars and general readers alike to brush up on twentieth-century Texas
history.1994
355
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995, periodical, 1995; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101216/m1/393/?rotate=90: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.