A 1960 movie that centers on race relations in America and stars an African-American actor? Yep, that's Sergeant Rutledge. Viewing it is like discovering a grape or a wine area you never knew about. It leaves you feeling good about yourself for having watched it.
Rutledge was one of the first American films to deal straight-on with racism. Ford directed the courtroom drama, with Jeffrey Hunter as the defense lawyer and Woody Strode in the title role. Strode recalls that the studio wanted Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte to play Sgt. Rutledge. Well, who wouldn't? Oh, Ford wouldn't. He didn't think either of them was tough enough for the role, and tapped Strode for it.
Strode, speaking of groundbreaking, was also one of the first Black Americans to play football in the NFL. Even before Dubya Dubya Two, he was playing for the Hollywood Bears, in case you'd like to have a T-shirt made.
I'd like to pair a Woburn Winery wine with Rutledge, but the place closed after John June Lewis, Sr. passed away. He was credited as the first Black American winemaker, since he opened the winery in 1940 in Virginia. But, let's not forget about the wines made on Thomas Jefferson's estate, produced through the labor of slaves working in his vineyards.
We can go with another African-American winemaker, Theopolis Vineyards in the Anderson Valley. The grounds are owned and operated by Ms. Theodora Lee, known in wine circles as Theo-patra, Queen of the Vineyards. Her Cortada Alta Vineyard Pinot Noir sells for $50, but her estate Petite Sirah is calling my name.
The soundtrack of 1959's The Horse Soldiers rides in on the strains of "Dixie" and out to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." You not only get a western, you get a Civil War movie, too. And John Wayne's in both of them.
Heck, you even get Ford directing at no extra charge, and a story that was ripped from the headlines of the Vicksburg Post, circa 1863. A western? In Mississippi? That's right, pilgrim. Mississippi was once The West. The Duke plays the railroad-builder-turned-Yankee-Colonel who is sent into Mississippi on a mission to blow up a railroad. Now that's iron horse irony for you.
Besides Wayne and Ford, you have fantastic character actors like Ken Curtis, Denver Pyle, and Strother Martin. That's the hick trifecta, right there - a dialogue coach's dream, a speech therapist's nightmare.
Wild Horse Winery, just south of Paso Robles, advises us to "Live Naturally, Enjoy Wildly." Their 2006 Cheval Sauvage not only means "wild horse" in French, it's the kind of masculine Pinot Noir John Wayne might share with his brave steed after a tough day of breaking the Confederacy.
Drums Along the Mohawk is the 1939 story of trying to stay alive in the new American nation. It was no easy task in the Mohawk Valley, what with British Loyalists attacking the farm and those pesky Native Americans trying to regain the land that was taken from them. You say you want a revolution? This is how it's done.
Henry Ford is the sodbuster and Claudette Colbert is his perpetually pregnant wife. With the farm in ruins and the proud farmer reduced to sharecropping, one might think about giving up. But giving up doesn't play here. Besides, I think the cavalry's on the way.
The Mohawk River Valley may have the drums, but the Hudson River Valley has the barrels. Benmarl Winery actually had them first. It is the oldest vineyard in New York. The Benmarl Cabernet Franc is estate grown and sells for $40.
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