Cheap The Speeches of Douglas MacArthur (Video) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Speeches of Douglas MacArthur

Not too bad, with lapses
Most of MacArthur's speaking career was over before there was anyone around recording it, so in that sense much of the best material was just never available. What you get here is good, long clips from several key speeches -- the radio broadcast urging Filipinos to rise up against the Japanese in support of the American invasion (as good as anything Churchill ever did in that line), the celebration of the liberation of Manila, the Ambassador Hotel speech (calling for the abolition of war -- pretty interesting stuff for a celebrated military figure, and the best thing on this tape), and the speech to the Republican Convention (1952) in which he probably kicked away his last shot at the nomination. And of course there's his 4-20-51 testimony to Congress ("Old Soldiers Never Die"). This latter one has been edited according to choices I'd have to call downright weird; the rhetorically effective and clever introduction is cut, the controversial and passionate self-defense about his conduct in Korea is mostly cut, but for some bizarre reason long chunks of his routine report about the political situations in Japan and the Philippines and China (but not his analysis of the Red Chinese war aims) are there at excruciating length. On the plus side, his rarely heard analysis of Asian anti-colonialism _is_ there, so the big selection from the middle part of the speech is not a total waste. I have no idea what, or if, the editor was thinking.

Besides the long clips there are some good short ones -- a few seconds each from his farewell to the Philippines in 1945, the Japanese surrender on the Missouri, etc.

Audio quality is mixed as might be expected, coming from kinescope, sound film, and radio wire-recording, but it's all intelligible. Lots of good footage of MacArthur speaking give you a feel for his delivery. Also, unfortunately, lots of stock footage of warfare and documentary materials are shown in the middles of speeches, using MacArthur as a voiceover, and thus distorting the sense of what he was saying. This lowered this collection by a star in my book, anyway. The other star off is for the strange editing of his most famous speech.

Still, it's a pretty good representation of a speaking style now largely disappeared from the US -- the transitional style of FDR, MLKJr., and JFK -- many sections are excellent, there is ample opportunity to study MacArthur's gesture and delivery, and MacArthur himself was always an interesting speaker. Good for a collection, but probably not the first speech tape you should buy. Out of its 55 minutes, at least 40 are useful for classroom purposes or home study.