The Song of a Nation

Song of a Nation, The (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Warner character actor Donald Woods stars in this Technicolor short and has him playing Francis Scott Key, the man who would write The Star-Spangled Banner. In the film we see his early views of the war and how he would eventually be inspired to write the song. I'm really not sure how historically accurate this thing is but fans of the Golden Age will certainly want to give this one a shot as the Technicolor is pretty impressive and makes this worth seeing. Fans of Woods will also like seeing him here in a pretty good role that has him turning in a fine performance. The ending has the actor "thinking" out the words to the song as he writes them and I thought Woods did a pretty good job here even if it was handled a bit tacky by the director. If you know the events surrounding how the song was written then you're not going to learn too much here. The Technicolor is what really sticks out even if the print shown by TCM was in pretty rough shape at certain spots.