332: This Week: Napoleon, Men in Black 3, Barbieheimer

July 15th, 1815. Rochefort, France.

Our first movie this week is 2023’s Napoleon, and the event from this week in history starts at about two hours and 22 minutes in.

Before we hit play, let me take a moment to describe today’s opening scene in the movie.

It’s daytime. Overcast. 

The scene in the movie is focused on a huge wooden ship, although there’s another in the background as well. Both ships are docked along a long, cobblestone area that’s taking up most of the camera’s frame in the foreground. Imagine two ships docked in the harbor of a city in the year 1815, and you’re about there…haha!

Right in the center of the frame, layered on top of the large ship is text from the movie that gives us the date and location…similar to what we just heard at the beginning of the segment, although the movie says we’re in Plymouth in July of 1815, instead of giving us the day of the 15^th. But, that means this isn’t actually France we’re seeing, and I’ll explain that once we start fact-checking this, because the movie give us something else I haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s the name of the ship: HMS Bellerophon.

With a British flag on her stern, Bellerophon is moored in the bay, with sails all put away leaving the stereotypical lines of ropes connected to the three masts on Bellerophon. On the cobblestone in front of the large ship are a handful of British soldiers in red uniforms scattered along the cobblestone area.

As we hit play on the movie, the only movement to be seen is on the left side of the frame when we see beautiful white horses can be seen pulling a white carriage up to a ramp on the ship. Behind the carriage are two more soldiers on brown horses, along with what looks like three men on the carriage and four more sailors looking on from in front of the white horses.

After the establishing shot, the movie cuts to inside the ship, now, as we see a man walking into the ship. He’s taller, so he has to duck to get through the doorway without hitting his head. He’s holding his military hat in his right arm, and he’s wearing a blue cloak with a British uniform underneath.

He enters the ship from the right side of the movie’s frame, greeted immediately by a sailor in the center who is saluting at attention. Then, on the left side, we can see a row of sailors at attention.

Although we can’t see him yet, we can hear Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Napoleon Bonaparte speaking in the background. After a moment, the camera cuts to where Napoleon is at—and he’s having breakfast aboard the ship. As he’s eating, he’s continuing to talk and explain what sounds like some sort of military strategy. Another brief moment, and the movie shows us who he’s talking to. Lined up watching Napoleon eat are nine young British sailors…some of them are very young, and quite honestly, I’d be surprised if they’re teenagers yet. They’re eagerly soaking up the knowledge that Napoleon is sharing with them.

Just then, we can hear the man who just boarded the ship enter the room. As he does, we can see a little easier now that this is Rupert Everett’s character, the Duke of Wellington.

As Wellington enters, the young sailors clear the room to allow him to talk to Napoleon without anyone else there. Now, it’s just the two men: In his French uniform, Napoleon sitting at the small, wooden table with his breakfast on it. Standing in his British uniform is Wellington, who pulls up a chair and sits down across from Napoleon.

For a bit of a visual aid, the room is lit from the wall of windows across the stern of the ship that, since we’re inside, we can see on the right side of the camera frame. The wooden walls of the ship’s interior are a light, teal color, with an off-white ceiling and black and white checkered tiles on the floor.

As Wellington sits, he helps himself to what looks like some tea from the table. The British government won’t let Napoleon stay in England, Wellington tells him. Instead, Wellington informs Napoleon that he’ll be going into exile on an island called Saint Helena. He’ll be under the watchful eye of Governor Hudson Lowe and his family.

Napoleon gets a glass of water as Wellington continues to give him more details about Helena—it’s an island, but there’s not much on it. It’s a thousand miles from the mainland of Africa, so it’s out of the way. You’ll have time to reflect, Wellington continues.

Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Napoleon just looks ahead with a blank stare as he processes the news.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Napoleon

Right away, I’ll be the first to admit that the scene I just described did not happen this week in history—because that scene didn’t happen at all…which is also why our opening date in the segment didn’t have to be entirely on point, but we’re talking about it anyway because that fictional scene I just described was very loosely based on something that did happen this week in history.

We just have to unravel some of the facts from fiction…which is pretty much the case for the entire 2023 Napoleon movie if you’ve listened to the deep dives we’ve done into that film.

But for this week’s event, let’s start with the most glaringly painful issue with that scene: The Duke of Wellington was not on HMS Bellerophon on July 15^th, 1815.

And if you think about it, the Duke of Wellington was in the British Army, not the Navy. And so, it’s probably not too much of a surprise that the real person who was on HMS Bellerophon with Napoleon that day was the captain of Bellerophon, a man named Frederick Lewis Maitland.

That tells why the scene is fictional, since it was someone else completely who was really there—Maitland instead of Wellington. But, then again, the real discussion wasn’t about Saint Helena, either.

And that’s the other major thing I wanted to bring up as being inaccurate with the movie’s scene is the topic of the discussion. It wasn’t about Napoleon being exiled to Saint Helena. He wasn’t informed of the exile until August, though, so not this week in history.

So, what really happened?

The true story also explains why I started the segment in Rochefort, France, while in the movie the text places Wellington and Napoleon on the ship in Plymouth—or Plymouth, England.

The reason for that is something the movie never talks about, they started in France but ended up in England.

So, let’s back up a few days to last week in history, July 10^th, 1815, because that’s when Napoleon’s entourage first arrived at Bellerophon. That’s what we see when the movie shows the carriage pulling up to the ship…although it wasn’t a carriage in the true story, it was another ship.

As the story goes, the British didn’t know about Napoleon’s plans to surrender. He was defeated at Waterloo on June 18^th, so a little under a month earlier. He’d been forced to abdicate the throne, though, so he wasn’t welcome back in France. So, that brings us to July 10^th, when a French ship with a flag of truce approached HMS Bellerophon while she was in the port of Rochefort.

That’s where Captain Maitland welcomed Napoleon aboard Bellerophon. If you want to learn more about that, Maitland actually wrote a book about it afterward called The Surrender of Napoleon, and since it’s hundreds of years old you can find it in the public domain. I’ll link to it in the show notes if you want to read it.

Initially, though, it wasn’t even Napoleon himself who approached Maitland. The first people aboard Bellerophon was a small delegation of two men sent with the announcement of Napoleon’s intention to surrender. One of those was the Comte de Las Cases, or Count of Cases, who wrote a book about the encounter later. That was a common thing, people writing books about their interaction with Napoleon, so of course it happened around the surrender, too.

Over the next few days, negotiations between the French and British continued until, on July 14^th, the Count of Cases came over to Bellerophon with General L’Allarand along with a letter from Napoleon himself indicating his desire to discuss surrender terms. That was in the morning, at about 7 o’clock, which is important to the story, because the Count of Cases returned to Bellerophon at about 12 hours later, at 7 o’clock in the evening with another letter—that one was from another French General, Count Bertrand, and told Maitland that Napoleon was prepared to surrender.

The logbook for HMS Bellerophon offers us the documentation of what happened the next day, July 15^th.

“At 7 a.m. the French frigate L’Epervier, having a flag of truce, anchored near us. At 11 a.m. the Emperor Napoleon came on board to claim the protection of the British flag.”

Of course, that’s the short entry you’d expect from a ship’s log, and not something from a movie—we don’t get the details from dialogue between two people like in the movie. But, as I mentioned before, it seems like everywhere Napoleon went, people wrote about their meeting with him, so as the story goes, Napoleon asked for transportation to North America. He was interested in living out the rest of his life in the United States. Maitland refused, in a move that many suggest might’ve been due to orders from his superiors.

The day after Napoleon surrendered, Maitland sailed Bellerophon with Napoleon on board from Rochefort, France, to Torbay, England. That was on July 16^th.

And that’s where he stayed, basically, until the British government could figure out what to do with him. But, news of Napoleon’s capture spread, so later in July the English moved Bellerophon to Plymouth to avoid the public eye.

The movie is correct to mention the name of Saint Helena. That’s a 47-square-mile-island—one of the most remote in the world, way out in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and 47 square miles converts to about 122 square kilometers.

To give you an idea of how remote, Saint Helena actually just started getting some tourism in 2017 thanks to a new installation: An airport.

Well, technically, the airport construction finished in 2015 and it opened in June of 2016, but the first commercial flights began on October 14^th, 2017.

That’s right, the first flights to and from Saint Helena were just a few years ago…and this is an island that was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502. It only took 515 years later for commercial flights.

As crazy as that sounds, not having an airport for so long makes sense when you know that Saint Helena is over 1,200 miles away from the closest land mass. That’s about 2,000 kilometers, so for a long time the only way you could get there was by ship. Which, of course, is how Napoleon got there, and being that remote is exactly why Saint Helena was chosen for him. After all, the British didn’t want to risk the chance of his escape—remember, Napoleon had escaped exile once before on Elba.

We learned earlier that Napoleon didn’t learn about Saint Helena aboard Bellerophon in July, that really happened in August, which is also when he transferred him from Bellerophon to another ship HMS Northumberland.

Then, along with a smaller escort ship called HMS Myrmidon, the British took their prisoner to Saint Helena. They left Plymouth on August 8^th and arrived in Saint Helena on October 14^th.

That’s all part of a story outside this week in history, though, so if you want to continue this part of the story, first go check out the 2023 Napoleon movie if you haven’t seen it yet. The scene from this week in history starts at about two hours and 22 minutes into the movie.

Or if you don’t mind the spoilers, you can jump right into the true story because I’ve talked to two different historians about the Napoleon movie.

I’d recommend checking out my chat with Alexander Mikaberidze first, because my chat with him was more focused on straight up separating fact from fiction…then for my chat with Louis Sarkozy, I had already talked with Alexander, so I was able to go deeper into different topics.

…and you can find both episodes with Alexander and Louis in one place over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/napoleon

July 16th, 1969. Florida.

Our next movie is that classic film you think of first when you think of ‘based on a true story’ movies: Men in Black 3!

Haha! Okay, so, I kid—well, about the movie being the first one you think of as being a ‘based on a true story’ movie, but I’m not kidding about the fact that Men in Black 3 actually shows us something from history, and we’re actually going to wait on watching that movie together until tomorrow.

This’ll be something new for Based on a True Story, so let me explain.

Apollo 11 hit Range Zero on the countdown timer on July 16^th, 1969, at 13:32:00 GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time.

That means if you’re listening to this episode on the day it’s released: Tomorrow is the 55^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.

Actually, I know I just used GMT, but they took off from Florida in the United States, so just for consistency and also because sometimes my brain has a hard time calculating my local time zone from GMT, I’ll use Eastern Time throughout this story—local time for the launch, so that’s 9:32 AM Eastern Time, 6:32 AM Pacific—and I’ve got a link in the show notes to help you convert to your local time if you want. I’ll also include a link to the show notes for a great e-Book from NASA that has all the time, too, if it’s easier for you.

What that means, though, is the countdown timer was already started on this day, July 15^th, in preparation for the launch tomorrow.

NASA started that yesterday, July 14^th at 5:00 PM Eastern/3 Pacific.

Well, yesterday in 1969, not 2024—you know what I mean, haha!

On July 15^th, they did a planned hold of the GET, or Ground Elapsed Time that NASA used to track the mission, at 12:00 PM Eastern. They planned for an 11-hour hold, and as expected, the countdown resumed 11-hours later at T-9 hours.

As a side note, you know how you hear T minus 9, 8, 7, so on for the countdown? When that hits zero, that means the GET is at Range Zero, or exactly 00:00:00, then from there the timer counts every second of the Apollo mission to keep track of what happened when.

So, let’s pretend we’re in Florida 55-years ago as the excitement around the Apollo 11 mission’s launch is taking hold. Right now, we’re in the midst of the countdown hold. The CBS broadcast that would end up showcasing Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon hasn’t quite started yet; it’s scheduled for 6:00 AM Eastern in the morning for a planned 9:32 AM Eastern launch.

Will the Apollo 11 mission launch on time?

Or will it be delayed by the evil alien named Boris the Animal and his plan to prevent the ArcNet from being deployed, killing anyone who tries!?

Okay, I’m sure you already know the answer to that.

But, I hope you’ll join me tomorrow anyway in a little minisode just to cover the true story of the Apollo 11 launch as it was shown in the movie Men in Black 3.

That episode will publish at exactly 55 years after the Range Zero GET countdown hit 00:00:00.

Or, in other words, since Boris the Animal’s plans are not based in reality and Apollo 11 did launch on the scheduled time: Wednesday, July 16^th, 2024, at 9:32 AM Eastern, 6:32 Pacific.

What goes up must come down, at least it’s supposed to when it comes to Space, and we know from history the GET’s final count for the Apollo 11 mission was 195 hours, 18 minutes, and 35 seconds.

Doing a little math on that: 195 hours into 24 hours per day is eight days with three hours leftover, so then the 18 minutes and 35 seconds. So, that means Apollo 11’s mission comes to a close eight days later, so next Wednesday, on July 24^th, we’ll complete this little minisode miniseries by how 2018’s First Man shows the Apollo 11 mission ending at 12:50 PM Eastern that day.

And we’ve got a couple other episodes between now and then, so maybe we’ll check-in from time to time, as well.

Okay, so that’s what we’re doing around Apollo 11’s launch starting tomorrow! But, that’s just one event from this week in history! Let’s queue up our next movie…it’ll be the animated movie Anastasia, so if you want to watch it along as I describe, queue up about four minutes into the movie, and we’ll hit play after the break!

July 17th, 1918. Yekaterinburg, Siberia.

Our next movie to watch this week is the animated cartoon from 1997 called Anastasia. About four minutes in, the movie places us in a dimly lit room with an eerie red glow. The architecture is reminiscent of an ancient castle or a wizard’s lair, with towering stone pillars intricately carved with arcane symbols and patterns.

At the heart of the scene stands a mesmerizing, fiery pillar of swirling red energy, that’s where the eerie red glow comes from in the room. This pillar seems to be the focal point of the chamber, radiating a sense of powerful, magical energy. The surrounding walls are lined with bookshelves, filled with ancient tomes and scrolls, hinting at a repository of forgotten knowledge and secrets.

To the left, a large globe sits atop a cluttered desk, alongside scattered books and parchment, suggesting ongoing studies or experiments. The right side of the image reveals a grand staircase leading to a lofted area, adding to the room’s sense of depth and mystery.

A lone figure, draped in a flowing red cloak, stands near the fiery pillar, their face obscured by shadows.

We hear some voiceover explaining what’s going on as more magical elements are swirling around angrily in the shot…almost like a tornado.

The voiceover says that Rasputin was consumed by his hatred of Nicholas and his family and sold his soul for the power to destroy them. Ah, that’s who the cloaked figure is near the pillar performing some sort of ritual. He’s getting sucked into the tornado, leaving only his skeletal bones behind. The cartoon skeleton is outlined in a glowing blue that contrasts against the red lighting.

Just then, a glass vial wrapped with what looks like a snake with a skull on top appears in the air. Inside the glass vial is some sort of a green magical element floating. The blue skeleton grabs it, and we can see it forming around the skeleton.

Then, we see the evil-looking Rasputin again, his face lit by the green magic. Under his breath, he mutters to the magical green element that it must, go and fulfill its dark purpose—to seal the fate of the czar and his family once and for all.

The green element oozes out of the glass vial as it leaves the room and to the streets outside. The voiceover says from that moment on, the spark of unhappiness across our country was fanned into a flame, and on the screen, we can see the little green magical elements doing something that seems to be spreading into people rioting, revolting, and tearing down statues.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Anastasia

What the movie is setting up here is how Rasputin betrays and kills Czar Nicholas and his family, allowing only Anastasia to survive.

That is not at all historically accurate to what really happened. What is true is that the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was killed along with his family in Yekaterinburg on July 17th, 1918.

Since the movie’s version of this event is highly fictional, let’s get a quick summary of what really happened.

To understand this, we have to realize that in mid-1918, the Great War was still raging. What we now call World War I. Of course, we know now that it ended in November of 1918, but in July of 1918, they didn’t know that for sure. What they did know was that things were going badly for Russia in the war.

They were one of the first countries to join the war in 1914, and almost right away the Russian armies were not doing well. They were being defeated so badly that Nicholas II decided to take personal control of them. His advisers didn’t like this idea, but he did it anyway, and for the next few years he spent most of his time away from the government running the military during the war.

That’s important to the story because of the other character we see in the movie: Rasputin. He was a real person, although he wasn’t necessarily the evil mastermind behind the demise of the Czar and his family.

That said, Rasputin was…well…there are a lot of questions around the real Rasputin. We do know he was a self-proclaimed holy man. He was a mystic. So, obviously, the cartoon movie takes those things to the extreme by making him some sort of a magician when in reality he was probably more of a religious figure—a prophet of sorts.

We do know he was a friend of Nicholas II and the rest of the imperial family, and he helped with the imperial family’s only son, Alexei, who was sick a lot due to hemophilia. So, Rasputin acted as a sort of religious healer for little Alexei which meant he was around quite a bit.

Meanwhile, when Nicholas II went away to lead the Russian army in World War I, as the months and years dragged on, Empress Alexandra relied more and more on Rasputin’s advice.

A lot of people in Russia didn’t like Rasputin and saw him as nothing more than a fake, a fraud, a charlatan. As his influence over the empire grew, so, too, did the unhappiness within the Russian public about how the Empress was allowing him to influence her decisions.

On top of that, Nicholas II was not doing a good job leading the Russian army in the war. They were suffering huge loss of life and the cost of the war weighed heavily on the economy. High inflation and lots of poverty became the norm in Russia.

So, the riots and unrest we see happening in the movie really did happen, but it wasn’t because of some magical power by Rasputin, but instead it was because the Russian people were fed up with the way the Czar was leading the country. The riots that broke out in February of 1917 were so bad that Nicholas II had no choice but to abdicate the throne—he did that on March 15th, 1917. That formally ended the monarchy in Russia that had been established back in 1721.

So, to back up with a little historical context: World War I is still going on. Russia is in the war. Meanwhile, back at home, Russians are without the monarchy that has led the country for hundreds of years. There was a provisional government in place, but that was overthrown by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party in the fall of 1917.

Meanwhile, Nicholas II and his family had already left the palace after Nicholas II abdicated, and they were placed under house arrest.

At this point, essentially Russia was entangled in a civil war on top of World War I still going on, too. For the purposes of our story today, though, Lenin, had to figure out what to do with the former monarch and his family. Well…we wouldn’t be talking about it if we didn’t already know what they decided to do.

What’s tricky about this part of the story, though, is that there has been a lot of conflicting reports and sources about exactly what happened. As they say, history is written by the winners, and in this case, much of the history that survived is written by those who made sure the Romanov family did not survive.

The gist of the story, though, is that out of fear of approaching anti-Bolshevik forces nearing where the Czar and his family were being held, Nicholas II and his family were woken up in the early morning hours of July 17th, 1918 and led to the basement of a house. It was for their own safety against the oncoming forces. At least, that’s how the story goes for what they were told. Instead, though, the entire family was executed in the basement.

Or was it? Did their youngest daughter, Anastasia, survive? Some say she did.

Because of what I just mentioned, this version of history being written by the winners, the true story of exactly what happened in that basement has been studied, debated, and researched by historians ever since.

If you want to watch the story, this week is a great one to watch the 1997 animated cartoon simply called Anastasia. The sequence we started this segment with is right at the beginning, at about four minutes into the movie. And if you want to learn more about the true story, we dug deeper into what really happened back in episode #94 of Based on a True Story, where we learned what is most likely the true story of what really happened to Anastasia.

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On July 18th, 1895, George Kelly Barnes was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Or, maybe not. To be honest, we don’t know exactly when he was born. Some sources say he was born on July 17, some say July 18, some say it was 1895, some say it was 1897, some say it was 1900. But, regardless, George Kelly Barnes was born sometime this week in history. He was perhaps best known by his nickname, “Machine Gun” Kelly. He was a prohibition-era gangster who robbed banks and became famous after kidnapping an Oklahoma oil man for ransom.

He was played by Charles Bronson in the 1958 biopic about his crimes simply called Machine-Gun Kelly.

Oh, and if you’re thinking of the musician who goes by the name Machine Gun Kelly, his real name is Colson Baker and according to my research it seems Baker got the nickname because his rapping style was shooting off fast, like a machine gun. So, perhaps the nickname for the musician is inspired by the gangster, but that’s where the relation ends.

On July 19th, 1860, Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. She’s best known for the axe murders of her father and stepmother, although she was officially acquitted of the crimes…Her story was told in the 2018 movie simply called Lizzie where Lizzie is played by Chloë Sevigny.

On July 20th, 356 BCE, Alexander III was born in Pella, Macedonia. Or, maybe it was the 21^st. Or maybe it wasn’t this week in history at all, and it was the 23^rd…as you might imagine, tracking birthdays back in 356 BCE wasn’t an exact science, but nevertheless, this was probably the birth week of the great the king of Macedonia known as Alexander the Great. He conquered much of the known world at the time, a story that was told in the 2004 film simply named Alexander with Colin Farrell playing the lead role. We covered that movie back in episode #157 of Based on a True Story.

Oh, and as a personal note, my mom’s birthday is also this week on July 19th, and I know she listens to the podcast so happy birthday, mom! I love you!

Onto our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies released this week in history, can you believe this week marks the one-year anniversary of Barbieheimer?

That’s right, it was on July 21^st, 2023, that the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer both opened in theaters.

While Oppenheimer is obviously more of a historical movie than Barbie, if you saw Barbie then you’ll know that about an hour and 40 minutes into the movie, an older woman named Ruth reveals herself as the creator of Barbie.

In the movie, Ruth is played by Rhea Perlman, but the character of Ruth is for Ruth Handler, who really was the woman who created Barbie. But the real Ruth Handler passed away in 2002, so obviously she couldn’t be in the movie herself.

Originally, Ruth and her husband Elliot were interested in making furniture, which they did with a business partner named Harold Matson. During World War II, their furniture sales declined, and they tried making toy furniture instead. It worked! In fact, it worked so well, they shifted entirely and that’s how Mattel got into toy manufacturing.

Oh, and the name “Mattel” comes from mixing Harold Matson’s name—his nickname was “Matt” with Elliot Handler’s name. Matt-El. I guess they couldn’t get Ruth’s name in there.

Despite not having her name on the company, Ruth was very much involved in Mattel.

At the beginning of the movie, we hear Helen Mirren’s voiceover talking about girls playing with baby dolls and they could only play at being mother. On the screen we can see a bunch of little girls playing with baby dolls. Then comes Barbie, and in the movie we can see a huge version of Margot Robbie’s Barbie wearing a black-and-white striped bathing suit, towering over the little girls playing with the baby dolls.

Once we get past the fact that it’s a highly stylized interpretation of things, that’s actually not a bad version of how Ruth came up with the idea for the Barbie doll. It is true that in the 1950s, most little girls in the United States played with baby dolls as a way of preparing them to be mothers later in life. But, one day, Ruth saw her daughter and friends playing with rolls of paper they were pretending were them—and they were roleplaying being adults.

So, Ruth had an idea: What if we make a toy for girls to roleplay what it’s like to just be an adult woman? A mother, maybe, but there’s a lot more to what women can do than being a mother, so why not let little girls use their imaginations?

Where the movie stretches things a little bit with that introduction is that it gives the idea little girls only ever played with baby dolls—that there was no such thing as anything but a baby doll. Which simply isn’t true. In fact, when Ruth had first pitched the idea of the adult-looking doll for little girls, other executives at Mattel rejected the idea. Then, in 1956, when Ruth was on vacation in Europe with her family, she came across a doll called Bild Lilli. That was a German doll based on a comic strip character named Lilli. And the newspaper the comic appeared in? Bild. Hence the name of the doll, Bild Lilli.

You can find images of that doll online if you want to see what it looked like.

In the movie, Rhea Perlman’s version of Ruth tells Margot Robbie’s version of Barbie that she named Barbie after her daughter, Barbara.

And that’s true. Ruth Handler named the Barbie doll after her daughter, Barbara.

That brings us to another little tie-in to history from the movie because when Barbie first premiered to the world on March 9^th, 1959, she was wearing a black-and-white striped bathing suit. That’s the same bathing suit Margot Robbie’s version of Barbie is wearing in the movie when we see her for the first time in the introduction.

And just like the movie was a hit so, too, was the doll back in 1959. Barbies were flying off the shelf. I would highly recommend you look up a photo of the original 1959 Barbie doll and compare that to what the Bild Lilli dolls looked like? You can see just how much Ruth was inspired by the Bild Lilli dolls for Barbie.

In 1961, Ruth and Elliot introduced Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken.

While we see Ken in the Barbie movie, Ruth doesn’t talk to Ken so she doesn’t mention where his name came from…but, in truth, just like Barbie was named after Ruth’s daughter, Ken got his name from Ruth’s son, Kenneth.

Although it’s worth pointing out that Barbie and Ken only got their names. Everything else about Barbie and Ken, from how they look to their backstories, and so on, that’s not based on the real Barbara and Kenneth.

Oh, and as a fun little fact, Mattel actually bought out the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964 and instead sold Barbies in their place.

But, going back to an hour and 40 minutes into the Barbie movie, we have a few more historical elements to pull from dialogue in this scene.

The first is when Ruth tells Barbie, “Baby, I am Mattel. Until the IRS got to me but that’s another movie.”

But…actually, let’s skip this one because the movie circles back to it later, so we’ll do the same.

Another line of dialogue is a clever nod to the real Ruth Handler not being in the movie, because when the character of Ruth in the movie who, as I mentioned before, is played by Rhea Perlman…when she comes out and tells Barbie that, “I’m Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie.”

Everyone around gasps and Will Ferrell’s character mentions her ghost keeps an office on the 17^th floor. I thought that was a smart bit of dialogue to allude to the fact that the real Ruth Handler is gone.

Then, our last bit of dialogue to examine is what Ruth says next. She says, “You guys, you think the lady who invented Barbie looks like Barbie? Ha! I’m a five-foot-nothing grandma with a double mastectomy and tax evasion issues.”

And all of that is based on truth, because the real Ruth Handler was all of those things. Well, I guess, I found sources that said she was actually 5’ 2”, but she was a grandma—I couldn’t find if Barbara has children, but Kenneth did. The double mastectomy mention is also based on reality because Ruth Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970, and then had a mastectomy. To add something the movie doesn’t mention, Ruth’s experience having the mastectomy led to her not being satisfied with the options for breast prosthesis available, so she invented her own.

But then that leads to the final mention in the movie’s dialogue: Tax evasion issues.

And this brings us back to a moment ago when I mentioned Ruth’s line, “Baby, I am Mattel. Until the IRS got to me but that’s another movie.”

I’m sure Ruth Handler’s life could be turned into a movie—although there’s not a biopic about her that I’m aware of.

But, the movie was correct to suggest that was the reason why Ruth left Mattel.

That happened in 1978, when they were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy, mail fraud, and giving the SEC false financial statements. After pleading no contest, Ruth received a fine of $57,000, sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service—and she resigned from Mattel.

Oh, and her husband, and other executives, too, it’s not like Ruth was the only one affected by this. But the movie focuses on her more, so that’s why I was doing the same.

After she left Mattel, she focused on her prosthesis company for women—called Nearly Me—which she ran until she sold it in the 1990s and retired. Ruth Handler passed away on April 27^th, 2002, from complications during a surgery for her colon cancer.

So, that’s one half of the Barbieheimer that released one year ago.

The other movie, of course, is Oppenheimer, about the life of Julius Robert Oppenheimer.

Surprisingly, I haven’t covered that movie, and it probably could stand to have its own episode—let me know if you want that to happen—but for today, let’s cover a few of the movie’s major plot points, starting with probably the biggest thing you’ll think of when you think of Oppenheimer: The development of the atomic bomb.

According to the movie, another famous name was involved in that: Albert Einstein. There’s a scene about 54 minutes into the movie where Oppenheimer goes to Princeton to visit with Einstein to get his thoughts on whether or not an atomic explosion would destroy the world.

The movie is correct to show Oppenheimer and Einstein meeting—in fact, they had more than just one conversation. For a time, Oppenheimer and Einstein had offices just down the hall from each other, so who knows how many times they talked?

Unfortunately, those kind of conversations aren’t the kind that get documented, so what they specifically talked about—we don’t know. So, while the movie is correct to show Oppenheimer speaking with Einstein, the specifics of what they’re saying is all made up for the movie.

Speaking of the movie, can we take a step back from this movie for a moment? Because, did you realize we’re doing our own little Barbieheimer combination this week, talking about both movies…and since Oppenheimer was directed by Christopher Nolan, have you seen that other blockbuster movie of his: Inception?

Well, this is a bit of Oppenheimerception because not only did the Oppenheimer movie release this week in history, but one of the major plot points in the movie also really happened this week in history.

And since we’re not doing a full event from the Apollo 11 launch today, let’s make up for that pulling an event from this week in 1945 in the Oppenheimer movie that released this week in 2023.

July 16^th, 1945. Southern New Mexico.

We’re in a barren landscape stretching out as far as the eye can see. The ground is dry and dusty, with sparse vegetation dotting the desolate expanse. The sky above is overcast, and at the center of this image is the only sign of civilization, a solitary structure—it looks like an industrial rig or tower of some sort. Surrounding the tower, a few vehicles are scattered, connected by dirt roads that crisscross the otherwise empty terrain. These vehicles hint at human activity, but their small number emphasizes the remoteness of the location.

The movie cuts closer now, to the base of the rig, where an Army truck is unloading something big—something we can assume is a component of the bomb. They take it into a tent at the base of the tower. We also see Cillian Murphy’s version of J. Robert Oppenheimer figuring out calculations; how far people had to be away from the bomb’s test. For example, Oppenheimer determines that without high winds the radiation clouds should settle within two to three miles, so in theory anyone further than that should be safe.

Then we see what I’m guessing is the nuclear core being carefully placed in the large device they took off the truck and into the tent at the base of the tower. It seems to be a case of some sort, protecting the smaller core inside. Once inside, they seal it up and raise it by wires to the top of the tower.

But they don’t drop it right away. The movie has a lot of lead-up to the test that helps build tension, and I won’t describe it all here because it’s about ten minutes of movie runtime so that could be well over four or five times that to unpack it for our purposes, but eventually, at about an hour and 55 minutes into the movie, we hear the countdown: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Any noise in the movie disappears.

What used to be nighttime looks like day as spectators donning welder’s glasses watching from a long distance away. There’s still no noise, just an unnaturally bright light as the movie shows people gazing in wonder. Huge plumes of fire rise into the dark sky. The movie mentioned something about 5:30, but the bright, orange ball of flame is a stark contrast against the pitch-black sky, so I’m guessing it’s 5:30 in the morning.

Then, the sound comes back with a roar. The violence of the explosion rips through scenes of different people at different times as they hear it where they’re at. After the bright light fades away, not much time passes before sunrise, and everyone starts to cheer the successful test.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Oppenheimer

In the interest of being up front, the establishing scene that I described of them taking the device off the truck probably didn’t happen on July 16^th. That’s when the test happened, but even in the movie after they put the core in the casing there is some time that passes until the actual test.

That test is the event from this week in history, and if you’re not familiar with the Trinity Test, that was the first successful detonation of a nuclear weapon, marking the dawn of the atomic age.

In the true story they nicknamed what the movie shows as a silver device the “Gadget’s” core. The bomb itself didn’t have a name, really, so they just called it the “gadget.” So, that sequence of putting it in the device and raising it up the tower was just a few days earlier than the test on the 16^th.

To be more specific, it was on July 12^th that the core was taken to the test area. On the 13^th, the non-nuclear components were taken to the test site and assembled with the gadget’s core. For a bit of geographical context, the test site was located in a region called Tularosa Basin, the Trinity Test Site is located on White Sands Missile Range, about 230 miles away from the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico where they built the device. That’s over 370 kilometers.

It’s now a National Park that’s usually closed to the public, but every so often they have open houses for the public. As of this recording, the next public open house is on October 19^th, 2024, so if you want to learn more about that check out the link in the show notes for the U.S. Army’s Trinity Test Site.

After a couple days of assembling the device, it armed and ready by the evening of the 15^th.

Oh, and something from the true story we don’t see in the movie, they had a pile of mattresses underneath the gadget as it hung over 100 feet from the tower. The idea was it’d break the fall if the cables snapped and the device fell to the ground…thankfully that didn’t happen, but I’m guessing the mattresses wouldn’t have saved the nuclear device had that happened.

Just like we see in the movie, at 5:29 AM on July 16^th, the Trinity Test was performed. And just like we see in the movie, it was a massive explosion of nuclear destruction.

But, the reason for going so far into the middle of nowhere was for safety. That’s what the movie is implying when it shows Oppenheimer trying to calculate the safe distances for people to observe.

And while that did happen, the calculations they came up with simply weren’t enough.

Some have estimated about 500,000 people lived within 150 miles of the nuclear detonation. Most weren’t informed of the test. They didn’t evacuate. But, they did see the bright flash. So they knew something was going on…but the U.S. government insisted the explosion they saw was an accident. Just some ammunition that blew up.

By the time the truth came out about what it was, it became so hard to prove deaths were a result of the test. Some have reported a spike in child deaths soon after it, though. And even though we’re talking about history, we’re not talking about ancient history…for example, a new group was started in 2005, with this purpose:

Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium

Seeking justice for the unknowing, unwilling and uncompensated, innocent victims of the July 16, 1945, Trinity test in South-Central New Mexico.

I pulled that quote from their website, and you can learn more about their work at trinitydownwinders.com. I’ll make sure to include in the show notes. And while you’re in there, if you want to watch Oppenheimer, Barbie, or any of the movies from this week in history, you’ll find where to watch them on streaming with the links in the show notes.