Rather than open another thread devoted to the interminable
Bowdlerizing Brigham series, permit me to post on this thread.
Recently I watched episode 29 of the series, titled "
Inside the Lion's House: Brigham Young and Women." The episode features Professor Peterson, who plays the role of a witty, avuncular resident scholar; Camry Bagley Fox, who played Emma Smith in
Witnesses (2021) and
Six Days in August (2024) and who plays the role of a mildly skeptical TBM in this series; and a guest star, Jenessa Sheffield, who played Vilate Kimball in
Six Days.
After the opening sequences, Fox, standing on a sidewalk with arms folded, explains to Peterson that she "decided to replace Johnny [Wilson] with Jenessa Sheffield." For some reason, Fox raises her eyebrows and smiles when she says "Jenessa Sheffield." Here's the ensuing exchange:
Sheffield (walking up): "Helllooo."
Peterson (responding to Fox): "I think that's wise. It had to be done."
Peterson: "Welcome, welcome. Glad you could come."
Sheffield (shrugging her shoulders): "Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. I'll do my best to fill in as [shrugs shoulders] ...
Johnny."
Peterson: "You'll do just fine."
Fox (interrupting Peterson): "You'll be great."
Sheffield and Fox laugh.
Rather awkwardly, Fox says: "Yeah, it's been really fascinating. I didn't know all that much about Brigham Young when I got brought onto this project, and it's been so interesting to understand more of all he was, right? It's been really enlightening and it's been . . . puzzling. It's ..."
Sheffield, smiling, interrupts: "Puzzling?"
Fox, with a nervous laugh, responds: "Yeah, kind of all of it. Brigham's not a [she makes a cutting motion with her hand] clean-cut [she makes another cutting motion], easy-to-dissect character, you know? He's very forceful in some aspects, and very kind and gentle in others. And so it's been just really, really interesting to get to know the whole of who he was."
Sheffield: "Yeah."
Peterson interjects: "That's one of the reasons we brought you here. The Daughters of Utah Pioneers is an old organization. It's been around [cue quiet music] since 1901. The building itself is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, so. But they've been collecting materials, artifacts, documents, diaries, journals, all those sorts of things about the early pioneer period . . . ."
[Camera shows a smiling Sheffield]
Peterson: "This will help to flesh out the story--what happened after those events in 1844."
Sheffield, smiling with shrugged shoulders: "Well, it sounds like an adventure."
Peterson: "I think it will be."
The three walk up the stairs of the museum.
We then watch about 18 seconds of footage, accompanied by quiet music, showing the two women looking around the museum and talking. Peterson is not shown. The scene seems to be conveying the message that the museum is familiar ground for Peterson. He does not need to tour the rooms or read exhibit labels.
Sheffield and Fox are then shown approaching Peterson, who's standing in the room like a docent. Sheffield, holding her hands open, poses a canned question: "So what are we hoping to find here?" Peterson replies, "I mean, you look around this room alone. It's a treasure trove of artifacts. There's just an amazing amount of information that's kept here. And Brigham Young was president of the church for thirty years. He had a long period and a lot of his letters and documents relating to his presidency, his governorship of Utah, are preserved and ... preserved here. So, we're hoping you're going to find some really interesting things."
Fox (turning to Sheffield): "Speaking of interesting things, a few weeks ago, I did an interview with Lisa Olsen Tait and Brittany Chapman Nash, who are church historians, and we had such a fascinating conversation about Brigham Young and his view on women. I would love to share that with you guys."
There's a very abrupt cut here, and Peterson says: "Especially in the 1860s, after plural marriage began to be well known in the east and Europe and so on, Salt Lake City became a really popular destination for journalists, writers of all kinds, uh ..."
Fox, interrupting: "A little, a little sideshow to check out the polygamists..."
Peterson, nodding: "It had a certain circus element, I think. By the standards of the nineteenth century, polygamy and this something you expected from the harems of the Middle East, but not not something you'd see within the confines more or less within the United States. So they I think they found it kind of exciting in a in a sort of almost illicit way, but not quite. So people wanted to come out here and meet Brigham Young, the head of this weird operation out in Utah. After they met him, usually they'd go away with a positive impression, which I don't think they necessarily came expecting to get.
I have a couple of examples here [Peterson is shown looking at a phone]. Uh, here are some quotations from someone who'd met him. 'He could 'philosophize with authority, if not polish, on Voltaire,' and 'then make suggestions as to road conditions, provisions to carry on a journey, ... how to deal with Indians.' I mean, it was this wide-ranging, very obviously very bright person who was not well-educated but had read and but also knew practical details about life on the American West."
Peterson does not bother to identify who made the observations or his source.
Peterson continues: "Then I love this one from Artemus Ward, who visited Utah and met Brigham in his sixties and described him in this way. He noted his sandy hair, the clear, sharp eyes, the hard, firmly set lips; the robust health, pleasant face, and jolly manner."
Fox and Sheffield are shown smiling.
Peterson: "The prophet is more industrious than graceful as a dancer, he wrote. He exhibits, however, a spryness of legs, quite remarkable in a man at his time of life [Peterson chuckles]."
Peterson again does not identify his source. I will note, however, that all the language above is found in
chapter 18 of Leonard Arrington's biography of Brigham Young,
Brigham Young: American Moses.
Fox: "I think it's interesting in in all the things you just read about Brigham Young, it seems like they are back and forth."
Peterson: "Yeah."
Fox: "They're like 'firm set lips' but 'jolly manner.' He's very much two different sides of the same person all the time."
Peterson: "And that's what we're trying to understand."
Sheffield: "But seeing Brigham Young in his sixties dancing, I would have loved to have seen it."
Sheffield and Fox laugh.
Peterson: "Don't we wish we had some video of that? But in the meantime, have at it."
Fox: "Okayyyy. I'm excited."
Sheffield: "Yes."
Fox and Sheffield walk away.
The scene cuts to a different room. Fox is shown pulling something out of a file drawer. A voice is heard: "Oh, come check this out." Fox turns to the voice. Sheffield is shown sitting at a table holding a book. She begins reading: "'I do not wish to complain of you without a cause ...'"
Sheffield continues reading an excerpt from a letter from Brigham Young to his family, essentially reprimanding them for not being sufficiently attentive to the business of family prayer time and "counsel[ing]" them to "be home by six-thirty each evening so as to be ready to bow down before the Lord to make ... acknowledgements to Him for his kindness and mercy and long-suffering towards us." The excerpt ends as follows: "Your strict attendance to my wishes in this respect will give joy to the heart of your Husband and Father." It's evident that Sheffield is reading from chapter 18 of Arrington's Brigham Young biography. Is Arrington's biography normally sitting on a table in the museum? I cannot say.
Recall that Peterson has invited Fox and Sheffield (and viewers) to tour a museum that collects, to use Peterson's words, "materials, artifacts, documents, diaries, journals, all those sorts of things about the early pioneer period." It's odd that viewers are treated, instead, to excerpts from a chapter in a faith-promoting biography of Young published in 1985. Fox's interview with Brittany Chapman Nash and Lisa Olsen Tait regarding Young's viewpoints on and interactions with women--shown during the second half of the episode--is better. My recommendation to the filmmakers would have been to cut the footage of the performative museum field trip and to show longer excerpts from Fox's interview with the two historians.
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Here is an excerpt from Arrington's discussion of visitors to Salt Lake City in the nineteenth century:
Remy and Brenchley, who spent a month in Utah in 1855, had at least four contacts with Brigham. They found in him a "Mormon pope" of "superior intellect," "unusual strength of mind," "remarkable talent and profound ability in combining the heterogeneous elements of which his people are made up." He was acutely observant of men, events, and surroundings; he could "philosophize with authority, if not polish, on Voltaire," they wrote, then make suggestions as to road conditions, provisions to carry on a journey, and how to deal with Indians. He was reserved yet affable, cautious of strangers but courteous, quick thinking yet deliberate in response and judgment. This, Remy and Brenchley concluded, was not an ordinary man but one who fully belonged to "the rank of great men who appear at distant intervals, now to confer upon nations a benefit, now to serve as a scourge."
Brigham Young: American Moses, 323-24.
The quotations generally seem consistent with Remy and Brenchley's words. I was unable, however, to find the exact line "philosophize with authority, if not polish, on Voltaire." Young
is quoted by Remy and Brenchley as mentioning Voltaire in response to a question about whether Mormon missionaries were successful in France:
"The French are less accessible than other people to religious impressions; too much imbued with the philosophy of Voltaire, they are indifferent to the truths of religion, and only cultivate the sciences, which they do not in the least understand, because they do not acknowledge that they proceed from God. When their minds are sufficiently opened to know anything about science, they will discover that the truth is only to be found in the Book of Mormon, and that sooner or later our doctrine regenerate society."
A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City,
vol. I:212.
A few pages later, Arrington discusses the observations of Artemus Ward, a pen name used by Charles Farrar Browne:
In 1864 Artemus Ward came to Salt Lake City to give one lecture, but stayed a month because of an attack of fever.26 ... In spite of their jocular tone, from Ward's and his manager E. P. Hingston's writings one can obtain a lifelike report of Brigham Young in the 1860s.28 Ward noted the sandy hair, the clear, sharp eyes, and the hard, firmly set lips; the robust health, pleasant face, and jolly manner.29 During the convalescence from his illness, he saw Brigham at a ball in the social hall. "The Prophet is more industrious than graceful as a dancer," he wrote. "He exhibits, however, a spryness of legs quite remarkable in a man at his time of life."30 Another evening he saw the president at the theater:
Brigham Young usually sits in the middle of the parquette, in a rocking-chair, and with his hat on.... When the play drags he either falls into a tranquil sleep or walks out. He wears in winter time a green wrapper, and his hat is the style introduced into this country by Kossuth.31
Brigham Young: American Moses, 326. Footnote 28 cites Hingston's
The Genial Showman: Being Reminiscences of the Life of Artemus Ward. Footnote 29 cites Hingston, ed.,
Artemus Ward: His Travels Among the Mormons, pp. 78, 52.
I find nothing relevant on
page 78 of the second book. There seems to be a citation error.
Page 52 is more relevant, but it says nothing about Young's appearance.
Page 51, however, states the following: "Brigham Young is 62 years old, of medium height, and with sandy hair and whiskers. An active, iron man, with a clear sharp eye." Nothing is said about Young's lips, health, face, or jolly manner.
Checking
The Genial Showman is more fruitful. Hingston writes:
I saw a robust, jolly, pleasant-faced gentleman, with a ruddy complexion, hair of the colour of sand, light eyes, the lines of the face curving upwards instead of downward, his chest broad, his hands large, his age apparently about sixty; his appearance that of a well-to-do farmer, and his manner cheerful and agreeable as became a man who had forty of his children around him, and I know not how many of his wives.
A Genial Showman,
p. 469.
Hingston subsequently writes:
Brigham can be gracious, bland, and soft-spoken; but the impression he produces is not that of his being a man of large heart and strong sympathy. Volition, not feeling; persistency of purpose, not conciliative suavity, intense self-respect, but little or no benignity, are the characteristics which declare themselves in those cold light-grey eyes, and those hard, firmly set lips.
A Genial Showman,
p. 486.
