Amazing and true story of young US Navy officer in 1825 after injury caused him to become desk bound discovered and charted wind and ocean currents, also planned Panama canal, and father of modern weather map. His work was largely forgotten because he chose to support the South during Civil War and was branded a traitor.
7 Reviews
Pathfinder of the Sea...
Doylenf19 February 2009
The story of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a young man who became a Naval officer at 25 in 1831, but due to an accident had to give up his shipboard service and assume desk work. He worked on Naval charts and soon became an expert on natural laws governing ocean behavior. When authorities were unable to locate a vessel missing at sea, he figured out a way to find the missing ship using his knowledge of winds and currents and their behavior.
Because he supported the South during the Civil War, he was shunned by his fellow Southerners when he returned to Virginia. He became an expatriate in Paris but returned to the United States when he was forgiven by General Robert E. Lee and became an instructor at Virginia Military Institute.
His extraordinary story is told in crisp fashion in this informative short subject on his life.
An uncredited Tom Neal plays Maury.
Because he supported the South during the Civil War, he was shunned by his fellow Southerners when he returned to Virginia. He became an expatriate in Paris but returned to the United States when he was forgiven by General Robert E. Lee and became an instructor at Virginia Military Institute.
His extraordinary story is told in crisp fashion in this informative short subject on his life.
An uncredited Tom Neal plays Maury.
The Way Of The Wind And Water
boblipton2 March 2023
Despite being a native of New York City, I had never heard of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans before I saw this short. Turns out it's in the Bronx, which goes a way towards explaining that gap. Designed by Stanford White. Sounds it might be worth a trip north of Central Park to see his handiwork.
Anyway, this MGM short is about Matthew Maury, who first charted the winds and currents. He was acclaimed in his day until the Civil War. He was a Virginian. He resigned his commissions and went to work for the Confederacy.
Despite Carey Wilson's overwrought narration, it's an interesting bit of history.
Anyway, this MGM short is about Matthew Maury, who first charted the winds and currents. He was acclaimed in his day until the Civil War. He was a Virginian. He resigned his commissions and went to work for the Confederacy.
Despite Carey Wilson's overwrought narration, it's an interesting bit of history.
Nice Short
Michael_Elliott6 March 2009
Prophet Without Honor (1939)
*** (out of 4)
Carey Wilson short tells the story of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Naval officer who is credited with developing the first maps charting ocean winds and currents. Original left crippled due to an accident, Maury would become the most decorated Naval man in American history before being kicked out of the country at the outbreak of the Civil War. This short film runs only eleven-minutes but it tells a very interesting story and gives us all sorts of information on the man. I must admit that I got really caught up in the film and was really shocked at how poorly Maury was looked at for a time. The documentary does a great job at telling his story and it really gives us, what appears to be, a honest look at him. Tom Neal does a very good job in the role of Maury but a lot of the credit has to go to Wilson for his beautiful narration. This turns up on Turner Classic Movies and is certainly worth watching.
*** (out of 4)
Carey Wilson short tells the story of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Naval officer who is credited with developing the first maps charting ocean winds and currents. Original left crippled due to an accident, Maury would become the most decorated Naval man in American history before being kicked out of the country at the outbreak of the Civil War. This short film runs only eleven-minutes but it tells a very interesting story and gives us all sorts of information on the man. I must admit that I got really caught up in the film and was really shocked at how poorly Maury was looked at for a time. The documentary does a great job at telling his story and it really gives us, what appears to be, a honest look at him. Tom Neal does a very good job in the role of Maury but a lot of the credit has to go to Wilson for his beautiful narration. This turns up on Turner Classic Movies and is certainly worth watching.
Just as famed director Leni Riefenstahl made many "wonderful" films . . .
oscaralbert7 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
. . . for the Third Reich, Hollywood's racist GONE WITH THE WIND crowd (the intellectual ancestors of this winter's SELMA-Snubbers) was tossing out Oscars and Oscar nominations to anyone capable of spewing fairy tale propaganda about "the War Between the States" during the run-up to WWII. This 1939 Oscar-nominated live-action short, PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR, is a case in point. The title is MEANT to be ironic, but it's actually the spot on Truth. As a poet once wrote, "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide . . . for the Good or Evil side." In 1860, America's primary villain--Robert E. Lee--had to choose between helping to free the South's Black slaves, or getting a half a million Americans slaughtered before his fellow Virginian-written Declaration of Independence could have any meaning at all. Lee chose the latter option. Naturally, he'd try to get a post-war pardon for his globe-trotting Confederate ambassador henchman, Matthew Maury, the alleged "prophet" in the title of this piece. But NO ONE CARES how many "great discoveries" Maury made. If Hitler himself had cured cancer, invented the internet, and walked on the moon, his WWII sins would have been more than enough to wipe out any "good" he'd accomplished. Therefore, Matthew Maury MUST be kicked out of the official U.S. Hall of Fame immediately--NOT lauded with such racist hogwash as PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR!
Prophet Without Honor
CinemaSerf8 February 2024
Yikes, talk about adulatory! Carey Wilson does go slightly over the top with this appreciation of Matthew Fontaine Maury. This (Tom Neal) is a naval officer whose injury in a stagecoach accident condemns him to a frustrating desk-bound career amidst the maps and charts. Initially despondent, he soon discovers he has an aptitude for following the tides, currents and winds and for learning how to predict how they could impact on shipping. He manages to overcome the scepticism of his peers but is forced to Europe during the civil war where he acts on behalf of the Confederacy (he was from Virginia). Not included in the general amnesty after the war, he had to wait for many years before finally being permitted to return home where he took up lecturing. This was a man who was instrumental in quite significantly improving maritime safety and in plotting improved trade and underwater cable routes, but I suspect even he might blush at the effusiveness of the narration here that only just stops short of crediting him with inventing the wind itself.
In the 1930s, America's "Jim Crow" South was stringing up more . . .
cricket3017 February 2019
Warning: Spoilers
. . . hard-working (but poorly paid) People of Color than they were miles of "new-fangled" electrical wire, egged on by one particularly egregious movie studio "winning" Oscar after Oscar for mendacious, false, fake-fact Misinformation deviously devised to devour the USA from the inside out, like a tumorous cancer. Whether it was GWTW (see the book, BREAKING WIND: A MANGY LYIN' FAT CAT F$ARTS IN AMERICA'S FACE) or PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR, the lazy Racist mint julep-sipping Slave "Masters" were always the heroes in such films, especially when they turned traitor, and committed High Treason to preserve their brutal, indolent, barbarous hedonistic life style like the despicable "Matt" here. His voice dripping with malice, PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR's narrator even gloats about Matt making the on-going genocide being waged against this planet's whale folks far more deadly and thorough. "George Bailey" found out that IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE he was living. On the flip side, any right-minded American would look at all the havoc, heartbreak, mayhem, and malingering left in Matt's misbegotten wake, and sum up his sorry sojourn on Earth as IT WAS A HORRIBLE LIFE!
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