TALL TALES & LEGENDS: JOHN HENRY - DVD review

John Henry was a little baby
Sittin' on his papa's knee
He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel
Said, "Hammer's gonna be the death of me, Lord, Lord!
Hammer's gonna be the death of me."

The Captain said to John Henry
"Gonna bring that steam drill 'round
Gonna bring that steam drill out on the job
Gonna whop that steel on down, Lord, Lord!
Whop that steel on down."

So begins "The Ballad of John Henry," a folktale and folksong based on the life of a real African-American laborer who toiled as a steel driver on construction crews for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. In West Virginia, between 1870-72, C&O crews were working on the Big Bend Tunnel, using sledge hammers to drive steel drills into the mountain so that the explosives men could insert sticks of dynamite. According to the ballad, a man showed up one day at the worksite with a brand-new steam drill he claimed could do the work of 20 men. And it fell to John Henry, the strongest of the bunch, to accept the challenge on behalf of laborers everywhere. At the end of the day, as two of the last stanzas proclaim,

The man that invented the steam drill
Thought he was mighty fine
But John Henry made fifteen feet
The steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord!
The steam drill only made nine.

John Henry hammered in the mountain
His hammer was strikin' fire
But he worked so hard, he broke his poor heart
He laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord!
He laid down his hammer and he died.

The real John Henry was a worker's martyr, celebrated by laborers of all races who feared losing their jobs to machines during the age of assembly lines and rapidly expanding industrialization. But there's no martyrdom in "Shelly Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends: John Henry." This one is for the kids, and the schools— which is probably why they were able to snag Danny Glover to swing the lethal weapon in this 54-minute film and Tom Hulce ("Amadeus") to play the Irish immigrant who, for the purposes of this version, grew up with the legendary strong man and tells his story.

Glover treats this like a million-dollar role, turning in a wonderfully soulful and exuberant performance. We're reminded that in Tennessee, where John Henry and his Irish pal came from, slaves were free in 1867, and John Henry strikes out on his own to find his fortune. Quinn (Hulce) has to stay behind until he can pay off his indenture contract, but eventually he turns up in the same railroad construction camp as Big John. Set mostly outdoors—or rather, what appears to be an indoor set made to look like the outdoors—the story begins with John Henry's challenge of the best steel driver so that he can obtain a job. The strong dandy he challenges, Spike (James Louis Watkins), struts like a rooster and apparently spends plenty of time around the henhouse. It's curious, given the apparent elementary-school target audience, that he has a woman on each arm and brags how he's "too much man for one woman." But apparently executive producer Shelley Duvall didn't think the young ones would catch the innuendo.

After besting Spike, John Henry turns his attention to the next challenge: winning the love of Pollie Ann (Lynn Whitfield), who works for the railroad as a cook. Again, given the young audience, a surprising amount of time is spent on the love angle and on developing action prior to the actual contest immortalized in verse. But Samm-Art Williams, who wrote the teleplay, producer Bridget Terry, and director Ray Danton chose to play "John Henry" more as a legend than a tall tale. John Henry is humanized by his pursuit of Pollie Ann and repeated insistence that he's just a "natural man"—which is fun, considering that one of the characters, Jim, is played by singer Lou "Like a Natural Man" Rawls. Barry Corbin (who played Maurice on "Northern Exposure") hits the right note as Mr. Jenkins, the railroad boss. It's all very stagey, and Hulce acts a bit too much like a leprechaun at times. But overall, the actors do a nice job of bringing their characters—and the John Henry legend—to life.

"John Henry" is the seventh film in the "Tall Tales & Legends" series which aired on television between 1985-88 and earned an Emmy nomination for executive producer Shelley Duvall for Outstanding Children's Programming. It's one of the stronger shows in the series, which also includes: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1985, starring Ed Begley), "Pecos Bill" (1986, starring Steve Guttenberg and Rebecca De Mornay), "Casey at the Bat" (1986, starring Elliott Gould and Carol Kane), "Darlin' Clementine" (1986, starring Duvall and Ed Asner), "Johnny Appleseed" (1986, starring Martin Short), "Ponce de Leon" (1986, starring Michael York and Sally Kellerman), "Davy Crockett" (1986, starring Mac Davis), and "Annie Oakley" (1987, starring Jamie Lee Curtis). "Johnny Appleseed" is perhaps the best of the series, and "Davy Crockett" the worst. But the bulk of them are a solid and literate retelling of the tales, just as Duvall's popular "Faerie Tale Theatre" cranked out solid tale after tale before this series.

Video:
Since it was made for television during the Eighties, "John Henry" is presented in 1.33:1 ratio, color, with that slightly grainy look so common to TV shows from the Seventies and Eighties. On brightly colored solids the graininess shows up, but it's mostly hidden in the busyness of backgrounds and patterns. Schools will certainly welcome the chance to upgrade from their old VHS copies.

Audio:
Predictably, the soundtrack is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, with only center and main speaker action. Interestingly, the music includes vocals arranged and conducted by Gospel legend Andrae Crouch, with the title song performed by Thelma Houston.

Extras:
There are no extras.

Bottom Line:
Younger children might find "Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends: John Henry" a bit serious and slow going, wishing, perhaps, for a more fantastical treatment. But older elementary-school children should appreciate the realism that the filmmakers were attempting in order to emphasize the process by which a "natural born man" becomes the subject of a tall tale. More than the other versions of the John Henry legend, this production illustrates how a multi-pronged tall tale can evolve from a single great deed.