oscaralbert Review of Prophet Without Honor

Prophet Without Honor (1939)

Just as famed director Leni Riefenstahl made many "wonderful" films . . .

[6/10 · 7 February 2015]

. . . for the Third Reich, Hollywood's racist GONE WITH THE WIND crowd (the intellectual ancestors of this winter's SELMA-Snubbers) was tossing out Oscars and Oscar nominations to anyone capable of spewing fairy tale propaganda about "the War Between the States" during the run-up to WWII. This 1939 Oscar-nominated live-action short, PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR, is a case in point. The title is MEANT to be ironic, but it's actually the spot on Truth. As a poet once wrote, "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide . . . for the Good or Evil side." In 1860, America's primary villain--Robert E. Lee--had to choose between helping to free the South's Black slaves, or getting a half a million Americans slaughtered before his fellow Virginian-written Declaration of Independence could have any meaning at all. Lee chose the latter option. Naturally, he'd try to get a post-war pardon for his globe-trotting Confederate ambassador henchman, Matthew Maury, the alleged "prophet" in the title of this piece. But NO ONE CARES how many "great discoveries" Maury made. If Hitler himself had cured cancer, invented the internet, and walked on the moon, his WWII sins would have been more than enough to wipe out any "good" he'd accomplished. Therefore, Matthew Maury MUST be kicked out of the official U.S. Hall of Fame immediately--NOT lauded with such racist hogwash as PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR!