Reliving the American Revolution: USA250 Anniversary Program Part 4

Reliving the American Revolution: USA250 Anniversary Program returns to the Salt Lake City Public Library on Tuesday, November 10, for its fourth installment. This one is a screening of Man Without a Country, a 1937 Warner Bros. short that earned an Academy Award nomination. It's part of a larger film-and-lecture series that pairs shorts from Hollywood's golden age with introductions by historians, so you're getting more than just the movie.

Man Without a Country is a bit of an outlier in the series. While much of the program looks at the founding of the country, this short focuses on a man who betrayed it. The organizers point out that in an era of nation-building, it's as important to have villains as heroes—especially when loyalties were suspect. It's a shorter film, so it fits easily into a single evening without feeling like a marathon.

The introduction comes from Dr. James V. D'Arc, a retired BYU film historian. The program also draws on the work of Eric Hinderaker, a Distinguished Professor of History and department chair at the University of Utah, who has taught early American history there for 35 years and wrote Boston's Massacre (Harvard, 2017). Between D'Arc's cinematic perspective and Hinderaker's historical grounding, the film gets a good amount of context before it even starts.

It all happens at the library's Nancy Tessman Auditorium, 210 East 400 South, from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. Parking at the library is free with validation, so you can just pull in and head inside. If you've been following the USA250 series, this is the fourth part of the program.