From the Historian

gkeith_1

I have a history degree. My favorite period is the Gilded Age/Progressive Era, and these men fell into that category. Too bad there are no women.

Slams: just a small part of the backlash against these "great"

men is shown. There were strikes and depressions. Some of those have been covered. These super rich men "ate cake" (named after a famous woman) while their employees starved or were forced to work ungodly schedules in the man-killing factories.

The Johnstown flood show depicted a lot of devastation and human heartbreak. Meanwhile, the biggies just went on partying.

I wondered why the Andrew Carnegie name on lots of our libraries. Turns out he was trying to assuage all his cruelty against society, e.g. his "robber-baron-ness".

I do think the actor who played Andrew is very handsome, and the one who portrayed JP Morgan is fairly good looking also. Vanderbilt looked kind of gross. Frick was the incarnate monster. I am glad the guy beat him up. Too bad Frick did not meet his maker.

Morgan Sr. was an old scrooge, but posthumously proved to be correct in his financial predictions. He said Pierpoint was pretty dumb to back electric light.

Westinghouse was depicted as a moron. Edison IRL was known for some shady deals, one of which was trying to get credit for the invention of the telephone away from Alexander Graham Bell.

Edison was also friends with Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford. Will that be covered her? Just saw a GE commercial on TV last night, remembering in this show how Morgan got Edison to give up his name in favor of General Electric Company.

This series is more about the financiers than the famous inventors. It takes money to fund people's imaginings and wildest dreams. Sometimes the dream financing is a true bust, but without dreamers where would we be today? Too bad the dreamers and financiers were not always the same person.

Turns out the Gilded Age means a layer of fake gold on the outside, masking nothingness on the inside. Supposedly these great men came from nowhere, determined to make it in the great nation of capitalism and post-Civil War optimism. Were they educated? When the money was pulled out from under them, they tended to collapse.

score 10/10

gkeith_1 26 November 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2710743/