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A powerful courtroom drama on the question of obeying orders
The most important thing to remember about this Peabody Award winning production of Saul Levitt's play "The Andersonville Trial" is that it was produced in 1970, during the Vietnam War. However, the play was originally produced on Broadway in 1959, which is rather surprising because this particular version has a reputation for being a historic allegory in the grand tradition of "The Crucible." In 1959 the historic parallel would have been to the Nuremberg Trials where Nazi leaders were tried as war criminals. But in the wake of the My Lai massacre the court-martial of Capt. Henry Wirz (Richard Basehart), commandant of the infamous Andersonville prison during the Civil War it would be impossible for an audience to view this drama as anything else that a discussion of the war in Vietnam.

Henry Wirz was the only Confederate soldier to be convicted and executed for war crimes during the Civil War. Wirz remains a controversial figure whose name is associated with some of the worst atrocities of the war by many while considered a martyr to the Glorious Cause by others. As Union forces pushed into the South the Confederacy was ending up with more and more Union prisoners and the Andersonville Camp was created to relieve the situation in Richmond and elsewhere. However, in June of 1864 the Union discontinued the policy of prisoner exchanges and without that avenue of release or the construction of another facility, the prisoner population of Andersonville swelled to 26,000 prisoners crammed into a little more than 26 acres. Add to this the impoverishment of the Confederacy in the final year of the war when the 33,000 prisoners in Andersonville made it the fifth largest "city" in the Confederacy, and it is hardly surprising that hundreds of men were dying each day. Of the 45,000 prisoners sent to Andersonville, 13,000 died.

Levitt used the official record of the trial of Henry Wirz as his basic source material. While sticking to the facts, Levitt was obviously more interested in the personalities involved in the proceedings. So while "The Andersonville Trial" is accurate with regards to the time and place of the trial, names of the participants, and some of the dialogue, it is still much more of a drama than a documentary. Furthermore, as a televised stage play it is necessarily restricted to the primary set of the courtroom and the scope of its interest is pretty much restricted to that venue as well.

The pivotal character of the drama is Lt. Colonel N.P. Chipman (William Shatner in the role Scott played in the original Broadway production), the officer prosecuting Wirz (Richard Basehart), who responds to the charges against him with the defense that he was obeying orders and doing what he could under the circumstances. This leads Chipman to the conclusion what Wirz should have done was disobey orders that would lead to the deaths of thousands of prisoners. However, this is not an argument that an officer in the military can make lightly, and this sets up a conflict with the presiding judge, General Lew Wallace (Cameron Mitchell), who would achieve fame as the author of "Be-Hur: A Tale of the Christ." But Chipman feels compelled to come up with a response to the argument that following such orders is a legitimate defense.

Shatner's performance is superb, and those who remember playing Spencer Tracy's aide in "Judgment at Nuremberg" can appreciate the irony of his having a larger role in this related drama. The biggest compliment I can give Shatner's work is that I cannot imagine George C. Scott having played this role. One of the strengths of this production is how Scott takes a collection of "television stars" like Shatner, Basehart, Jack Cassidy, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Sheen, John Anderson and Whit Bissell, along with veteran character actors like Mitchell and Albert Salmi, to create a stellar ensemble cast. Just as impressive is how he has actors like Alan Hale, Jr. and Kenneth Tobey sitting as members of the Court-martial board. For Shatner, Basehart, Cassidy, Mitchell and Salmi you will be hard pressed to find anything better on their acting resumes.

"The Andersonville Trial" is one of the most powerful courtroom dramas you will ever see. It has something of an advantage over the likes of "The Caine Mutiny" and "A Few Good Men" in that the play is almost entirely the trial, which makes it more like "Breaker Morant" and, most obviously," Judgment at Nuremberg." The drama comes down to Chipman's cross-examination of Wirz and the prosecutor's futile effort to get the prisoner in the dock to explain why he did not do the "right" thing and disobey his orders. I think the net effect is to make Wirz more of a tragic figure than a monster, locked into a system of rules and beliefs that would not let him see a way out of the disaster happening before him.

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One of the Best Courtroom Dramas Ever
I was a teenager when this program originally aired on television, and I thought that William Shatner was merely playing the same old wildly emoting Captain Kirk that has made him the butt of so many jokes. After a recent second screening, I see that I was probably wrong. Shatner's prosecutor is a little over the top, but it's because his justifiable moral outrage at the defendant has caught him in a terrible trap, and forces him to ask questions that were almost unthinkable in 1865; namely, is it ever justifiable for an officer to refuse to follow orders which he judges are immoral?
The defendant, Wirz, as excellently played by Richard Basehart, is an immigrant from the European school of miltary theory, and he is by turns hateful, confused at the sudden shift in the meaning of his duty, and pathetic (Wirz is still considered something of a hero in the local area outside the present-day National Cemetery near Andersonville). Jack Cassidy, as the defending attorney, is fully aware of the prosecutor's dilemma, and seems to be taking great pleasure in pointing up the US Army's hypocracy in trying a man for following malicious orders, yet refusing to allow that he would have been militarily justified in refusing them. Cameron Mitchell is the presiding officer, Gen. Lew Wallace (of "Ben-Hur" fame), and portrays a man who is about to lose control of the proceedings through the unsettling forays of the Army's own prosecutor. I gave the film four stars because it is a little too long and drags a bit in some places. However, the depth of the story, and the exploration of the ethical problems dealt with in the courtroom, make it superior to a very similar movie, "Judgment at Nuremburg."

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Basehart was more than "Admiral Nelson"!
Basehart, like many other television stars, was unfortunate to be associated with a long-running program (four years on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"). A prolific and skilled actor, Basehart is a sympathetic figure as the commandant of the infamous Georgia prison. He is allowed to show depth that the 60's Irwin Allen show of which he is associated never allowed him.

The production also features two other actors playing against type in pivotal and revealing roles, Buddy Ebsen and the late Jack Cassidy. The two match Basehart in the acting department and do justice to the George C. Scott-directed presentation.

"The Andersonville Trial" ranks as one of the best productions ever shown on PBS.