Alexander Hamilton confesses to scandalous affair to protect the first Government Bailout Bill "The Assumption Bill". After a brief prologue with Washington and Hamilton at the end of the Revolutionary War, where Hamilton expounds on his nationalist views, the action fast forwards to the early 1790s and the first Washington term as president. Arliss is trying to push his financial plan for the federal government to assume all state debts to put the new United States of America on a sound financial basis. Love and his supporters which include a completely fictional character, a Senator Timothy Roberts played by Duddley Digges,see the idea as a power grab. They want the capital relocated to somewhere in the southern states.
Senator Roberts wants more than that. He offers to swing votes Hamilton's way in order to get a plum ambassadorship to Paris, in the midst of its own revolutionary problems. Arliss is mortified by the offer and flat turns him down. Senator Roberts vows revenge.
The revenge comes in petticoats in the person of Maria Reynolds. Her husband, encourages the affair with Hamilton and then seeks to blackmail him. Of course Hamilton is vulnerable in this way because his dear wife Elizabeth has had to visit her sister Angelica in London.
The only thing this travesty got right was Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton's total devotion to her man. Hamilton however never missed an opportunity for a long affair or quick roll in the hay in his life. Including that unseen sister Angelica who also at a different time was involved with Thomas Jefferson.
The worst thing about Alexander Hamilton however was the casting. Arliss was a co-author of the play this movie is based on and I'll bet it was a role he did on stage many times. The key here is that Hamilton had an active libido, but it was a young man's libido and that Washington was a father figure for him. Hamilton was of illegitimate birth and rose from poverty, a fact he never forgot.
Hamilton was at times, brilliant, loyal, arrogant all in the same person. In real life Hamilton was 49 when he died years later in that duel with Aaron Burr.
Description: IMDB.COM
George Arliss was way too old to play Hamilton, who was only in his 30s as Treasury Secretary. And Hamilton was a lot better looking.
cvh1755 1 year ago 4