1776 (musical): Difference between revisions
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Not to be confused with a ''[[300]]'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTcVNuNX8yY parody] made by ''[[Robot Chicken]]''.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Absentee Actor]]: On the original Broadway cast recording, thanks to Howard da Silva's heart attack just before opening night. That's his understudy, Rex Everhart, singing Franklin.
* [[AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle]]: "The Lees of Old Virginia."
* [[Acting for Two]]: Standard practice in the straw hat circuit tours during the 1970s. Livingston and Morris, the delegates from New York, were frequently played by the same actor. And in a production number cut after the initial tryout, most of the cast doubled as (mostly incompetent) soldiers.
* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: The show is filled with odd or bizarre details that are ''true'', discovered because its authors [[Shown Their Work|did an amazing amount of research]]. For instance, Benjamin Franklin is carried into Congress in a sedan chair, but it's not because he's [[Too Important to Walk]]
** It didn't always help. Ill-informed
* [[Altum Videtur]]: Edward Rutledge celebrates the entrance of the bickering Delaware delegation by making a loud proclamation in Latin about their "eternal peace and harmony".
* [[American Accents]]: Ranging from the Deep South to New England, naturally enough.
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** Caesar Rodney riding eighty miles in failing health to show up just in time for the vote (a real event, famous enough that it's on the Delaware quarter).
* [[Big "Never!"]]: Adams does a few of these.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The film ends with the Declaration signed and an independence
* [[Blood on the Debate Floor]]: Adams and Dickinson calmly talking out their differences. With [[Cane Fu|canes]].
* [[Bowdlerise]]: Up until recently, the only version of the movie to reach TV was a severely-edited copy that obscured or completely removed many of the raunchier bits, including the whole "New Brunswick" sequence and the latter half of Franklin's "it's like calling an ox a bull" exchange with Dickinson. Even the version that hit the theatres was badly chopped, among other things excluding lines that made it clear Rutledge's opposition to the slavery clause was not due to mindless evil, but because he saw it as a betrayal of a promise that the independence faction would allow states to govern themselves as they saw fit.
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* [[Chessmaster]]: Franklin. The director's commentary points out that Franklin is often staged in the background of the big debate scenes, observing.
* [[Composite Character]]: The John Adams in this musical is something of an amalgam of the real John Adams and his cousin Samuel Adams.
* [[Cool Horse]]: Lee's horse, especially during "The Lees of Old Virginia". It begins when Lee remarks "may my horses turn to glue..."
* [[Crowd Song]]: No one in Congress likes John Adams, apparently. "''Sit down, John!''"
* [[Cut Song]]:
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* [[The Ghost]]: [[George Washington]].
* [[Good Is Not Nice]]: Adams. So, so much.
* [[Grammar Nazi]]: John Adams. It's "''un''alienable," not "''in''alienable"
* [[Happily Married]]: John and Abigail Adams, Thomas and Martha Jefferson. Both of them, incidentally, are [[Truth in Television]]; the Adamses in particular were quite happily married for ''fifty-four years.'' Sadly, despite how much in love they were, Jefferson and his wife didn't have nearly as much time together, as Martha died tragically young. (The Martha Jefferson listed as Jefferson's First Lady is actually his daughter.)
* [[Hate Sink]]: John Dickinson, who isn't at all evil, but takes point for the anti-Independence side.
* [[Historical Domain Character]]: With the exception of the courier and MacNair's
* [[Hollywood Night]]: Both averted and not. The "Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve" number is clearly shot at night in front of the Independence Hall facade, but the later duet where John and Abigail walk across their farm at "night" is obviously a blue-filtered daytime shot. Then again, it ''is'' an [[Distant Duet|imaginary/dream sequence]], and the filter use may have been an intentional stylistic decision to emphasize that.
* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: "Two [useless men] are called a law firm." John Adams was a
** Adams could have been aiming a bit of self deprecating humor at himself and/or a [[Take That]] at his lazy contemporaries, much like when he decries the congress he's a part of.
* [[I Want My Mommy]]: Done heartbreakingly with "Momma Look Sharp".
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* [[Pungeon Master]]: Lee uses his name in place of "-ly" extensive-Lee.
* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: In the [[DVD Commentary]] recorded many, many years later, the play's writer revealed that he originally intended Adams to note that if they leave in the slavery clause war would break out in about a century, in yet another example of lifting dialogue directly from the founders' writings. He used only the second half of the quote, "posterity will never forgive us," because he was afraid people would think it was him speaking in hindsight, rather than an ''actual historic observation'' by Adams.
** In something of a meta-example (and another use of Adams' own writings), Adams' comment to Franklin about history forgetting him and focusing exclusively on Franklin and Washington (and Washington's horse) is dead-
** [[Roger Ebert]] (and probably others) blasted the film version in [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19721226/REVIEWS/212260301/1023 his review] calling it "an insult to the real men who were Adams Jefferson, Franklin and the rest" for being an unrealistic portrayal, unaware just how much of the conflict was true.
* [[Redheaded Hero]]/[[Heroes Want Redheads]]: Abigail Adams. Her insight and willingness to support her husband when he's at a loss even for words, spur him into action in the Continental Congress.
** And of course, there's also Thomas Jefferson.
* [[Running Gag]]: Several, with different scopes: John Adam's being "obnoxious and disliked" being the most
** Thomson's attempts to read the resolution.
*** Lampshaded with "Oh, for heaven's sake, let me get through it ''once''!"
** The [[Heat Wave]], and whether or not they should open the windows.
** "Saltpeter!"/"Pins!"
** New York
*** This becomes a [[Berserk Button]] for John Hancock.
{{quote|"Mr. Morris... ''What in hell goes on in New York?!''"}}
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* [[The Smurfette Principle]]: Justified; these are, after all, the Founding ''Fathers''.
* [[Southern Gentleman]]: Edward Rutledge is this very much.
* [[Tableau]]: The final moments of the
* [[Take That]]: To the New York Legislature. New York only ever [[Stiff Upper Lip|abstains ("Courteously!")]] when called upon to vote, because the New York Legislature had never bothered to ''give'' the New York delegation any instructions, as "they all talk very loud, and very fast, and nobody listens to anybody else, with the result that nothing ever gets done." This was just as true in 1972 as it was in 1776, and as any New Yorker will tell you, it's ''still'' true today.
** In the show's Broadway debut, this line got the biggest laugh out of all of them.
* [[Toilet Humor]]: "Rhode Island passes"; also the "calling an ox a bull" exchange.
* [[Too Important to Walk]]: Subverted. Benjamin Franklin is carried in a sedan chair right to his seat in
* [[Truth in Television]]: Vast amounts of dialogue and even song lyrics were lifted ''intact'' from the writings of the various Founding Fathers. In particular, "obnoxious and disliked" was ''John Adams' own description'' many decades after the fact of how he felt he was viewed by the Founders and the nation in general (although many historians feel he was an [[Unreliable Narrator]] in this respect), and his duets and discussions with the mental image of his wife Abigail are composed of passages from their letters to each
** Similarly, every motion made on the floor of Congress, and every modification proposed or made to the Declaration (including the briefly heard objection about it not mentioning deep-sea fishing rights!) come directly from either the Congressional minutes or Jefferson's own notes from the revision of the Declaration into its final form.
** And even though the passage of the Declaration did not in actuality work out to a nail-biting final vote the way the movie portrays, Judge Wilson did in fact switch sides at the very last minute, changing Pennsylvania's vote from "nay" to "yea"; his reason for this has been debated by historians for decades.
* [[Victorian Novel Disease]]: Played very straight with Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney, who had skin cancer that was killing him at the time of the Continental Congress, although it's dramatically ''underplayed'' with the small patch covering his
** Not so much [[Truth in Television]]... at least not in regards to his reason for being away from Congress. While Caesar Rodney did die of skin cancer, he was in no ways the "dying man" Colonel McKean describes him as in 1776, and had not returned to Delaware to take to his deathbed; in fact, he lived another eight years after the signing of the Declaration before the cancer killed him. In actuality, he had gone home to make a speaking tour to try to stiffen the spines of his fellow Delawarians, who were wavering on Independence and the Revolution. To be fair, though, he ''did'' still make what then amounted to a two-day-plus trip overnight -- ''through a thunderstorm''
* [[Villain Song]]: "Cool, Considerate Men" fits, "Molasses to Rum" defines.
* [[Volleying Insults]]: "Coward!" "Madman!" [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|"Landlord!"]] [[Berserk Button|"Lawyer!"]]
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