The Statue of Liberty (1985) - full transcript
Documentary showing the history of the world-famous Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, the impact it still has on people and the state of liberty as a personal and political concept in America in 1985.
MAN:
Listen:
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
"that all men are created equal
"that they are endowed
by their creator
"with certain
unalienable rights;
"that among these
are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."
Thomas Jefferson.
PAUL SIMON:
♪ Many's the time
I've been mistaken ♪
♪ And many times confused ♪
♪ Yes, and I've often
felt forsaken ♪
♪ And certainly misused ♪
♪ Oh, but I'm all right ♪
♪ I'm all right ♪
♪ Just weary to my bones ♪
♪ Still, you don't expect
to be bright and bon vivant ♪
♪ So far away from home ♪
♪ So far away from home. ♪
♪ I don't know a soul
who's not been battered ♪
♪ I don't have a friend
who feels at ease ♪
♪ I don't know a dream
that's not been shattered ♪
♪ Or driven to its knees ♪
♪ Oh, but it's all right ♪
♪ It's all right ♪
♪ For we've lived
so well so long ♪
♪ Still, when I think of
The road we're traveling on ♪
♪ I wonder what's gone wrong ♪
♪ I can't help it, I wonder
what's gone wrong. ♪
MAN:
The statue's only a symbol.
The statue is only copper
and granite and steel, iron.
It's what it speaks
to us about--
what it makes us feel inside
that's so important.
We are all the beneficiaries
Of those who've gone before us--
Who've worked,
who've fought, on occasion
who have cared, immensely
to the very depth of their soul,
to achieve liberty.
If we really want to know her
the beginning
should be the question:
"What is liberty?"
Liberty is the most civilized
and least of evils
in this world.
Liberty is the absence
of constraints
and barriers and impediments.
It's freedom to be oneself--
to do what one wants to do,
to remain oneself for
as long as one chooses to.
And basically, that's all.
It's not happiness, it's not
responsibility, it's not truth.
It's just being oneself.
Well, liberty is
the old French word
that we have begun in English
to equate with freedom.
MAN:
What is liberty?
Oh, well...
That's quite a question.
But I suppose almost nobody
really asks themselves
that question.
Well, I can always
quote the Declaration:
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
that all men are
created equal..."
And the moment I do that,
I'm in trouble again, because...
obviously I was not included
in that pronouncement.
"...that they are endowed
by their creator
"with certain
inalienable rights;
"and among these rights
are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."
Ah, what is liberty?
READER:
"Colossal statuary
does not consist simply
"in making an enormous statue.
"It ought to produce an emotion
in the breast of the spectator
"not because of its volume
"but because its size
is in keeping
"with the idea
that it interprets
and with the place
which it ought to occupy."
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
Daily News, London, July 3:
"It towers to the skies
"from the factory yard
of the Rue de Chazelles
"and the view from its coronet
"sweeps clear
of the six-story houses
and right beyond
the walls of Paris."
McCULLOUGH:
In the autumn of 1875
on a quiet residential
street in Paris
where nothing much
had ever happened
work began on a statue
unlike any ever built before.
It would be a gift
from the people of France
to the people
of the United States
and it would celebrate an ideal:
liberty.
When completed
she would be the tallest
structure in the New World
her torch stretching
305 feet above the harbor--
taller even than the recently
completed Brooklyn Bridge.
She was hand-built
by Frenchmen in Paris.
Italian immigrant stonemasons
laid her foundation in New York.
And hundreds of thousands
of French and Americans--
ordinary people, mostly--
paid for her construction.
But she was primarily the
creation of one driven man:
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi--
a man who wasn't even sure
he liked Americans.
READER:
"Monsieur Bartholdi has
conceived this celebration
"of American independence,
applying to it a sublime phrase
"which sums up the progress
of modern times--
"'Liberty enlightening
the world.'
"He has chosen to represent
this great idea
"by a statue
of colossal proportions
"which will surpass all
that have ever existed
since the most ancient times."
McCULLOUGH:
But the idea for the Statue
of Liberty was not Bartholdi's.
It was born over
brandy and cigars
at a country home near Paris
one evening in 1865.
The host was
Edouard de Laboulaye--
historian, professor of law
chairman of the French
Antislavery Society.
The talk was of liberty,
then in trouble in France
curtailed by the tyranny
of Emperor Napoleon III
and menaced by
the revolutionary chaos
that seemed
the likely alternative.
Laboulaye believed passionately
that democracy was the future
and America its shining example.
And so, very shrewdly
he proposed a huge monument
to celebrate liberty
as America was about to
celebrate its 100th birthday.
The great gift
would both commemorate
a century of
French-American relations
and help spur France
to restore liberty at home.
No one who was gathered that
evening at Professor Laboulaye's
was more interested
than Bartholdi--
so deeply interested, he wrote
that "The idea remained
fixed in my memory."
READER:
"I will try to glorify the
Republic and liberty over there
"in the hope that someday I will
find it again here in France
if it can be done."
Bartholdi.
McCULLOUGH:
He was born in the medieval city
of Colmar in Alsace
to a family
of comfortable means.
He started out as a painter
and turned to sculpture
which allowed work
on a bigger scale.
At age 21,
he created a Napoleonic general
so tall at 26 feet
that it couldn't fit
into the exhibition hall
for which it was intended.
It made him famous
all over France.
MAN:
Bartholdi is an Alsatian
as well as a Frenchman.
Still young for an artist
of his reputation,
he gives you the impression
of a man of power
and his works confirm it.
He loves to model
on a colossal scale
perhaps because
this most readily conduces
to the simplicity and
massiveness of effect
which he seeks in art.
He is a sculptor of the old
and as most of us still think,
the best school.
McCULLOUGH:
He traveled to Egypt
for the opening
of the French-built Suez Canal.
He wanted to build a mammoth
monument at its entrance--
a lighthouse in the form of an
Egyptian woman bearing a torch.
He presented his plan
to the ruler of Egypt
and gave it the grand title
of "Progress"
or "Egypt Carrying the Light
to Asia."
He was turned down but only
momentarily discouraged.
And he carefully saved
his drawings.
In 1871, Laboulaye urged
Bartholdi to visit America
and on June 21, Bartholdi
sailed for the first time
through the Verrazano Narrows
into New York Harbor.
He never forgot the moment.
READER:
"It is exactly here that
my statue should be erected--
"here, where people have their
first view of the New World.
"I have found
the admirable spot.
"It is Bedloe's Island,
just opposite the Narrows
which are, so to speak,
the gateway of America."
McCULLOUGH:
His "admirable spot"
had once sheltered a pesthouse,
a gallows, a pauper's grave
and was now an abandoned fort.
But Bartholdi was certain
he had found the site
for his masterpiece.
From New York
he traveled across America
never missing an opportunity
to promote his dream.
The size of the country
impressed him.
He marveled at the immensity
of Niagara Falls and Yosemite
Monument Valley
and the giant sequoias.
"Everything is big here,"
he told his mother
"even the peas."
READER:
"All of these things are
of the greatest interest.
"What is lacking in the cities,
and most of the men, however
is charm and taste."
McCULLOUGH:
In 1875, a new and
moderate republic
had been established in France.
Paris was once again
the cultural capital of Europe,
some said the world.
For Laboulaye and Bartholdi
the time was perfect
to bring their idea
to the French people.
They formed
a French-American union
and to raise money,
launched a nationwide lottery.
In all, 181 municipalities,
40 general councils
10 chambers of commerce, and
100,000 individual subscribers
contributed the 600,000 francs
Bartholdi thought he would need.
READER:
"She will not resemble those
bronze colossi, so venerated
"of which it is proudly declared
"that they have been cast from
cannons taken from the enemy.
"Our statue will be made
of pure copper
and be the product
of labor and of peace."
McCULLOUGH:
Bit by bit, Bartholdi evolved
the form of his statue
borrowing generously.
A woman in robes
bearing the light of reason
had stood for liberty
since classical times.
It was rumored all over France
that the statue was modeled
after the face
of Bartholdi's mother
and the body of his mistress.
And there was still
another influence:
the Freemasons, a secret
international brotherhood
linked to the ancient builders
of the pyramids
and the cathedrals.
Freemasons were devoted to peace
to liberty and enlightenment.
George Washington
was a freemason
and so were Jefferson
and Franklin
and countless others
who made America.
Freemasons designed
the dollar bill.
Freemasons planned
the Washington Monument--
an obelisk, symbolizing
the ray shining from god
to enlighten mankind.
And Masonic symbols
were to be present
in the statue
of liberty as well:
a torch, the light
of human intellect;
a book, the laws
of the supreme architect
indelibly inscribed with the
date of America's independence.
Bartholdi himself
became a freemason
as he began construction.
READER:
Daily News, London:
"The workshop was built
"wholly and solely
for the accommodation
"of this one inmate
and her attendants--
"some 50 workmen
hammering for their lives
on sheer copper
to complete her tresses."
McCULLOUGH:
Now in the workshops
of Gaget and Gauthier
at 25, Rue de Chazelles,
work began in earnest.
Bartholdi drove himself hard
supervising every aspect
of the work.
He built three successively
larger models
the last a quarter
of the final size.
Each enlargement required
more than 9,000 measurements
taken painstakingly
from plumb lines
and then multiplied accordingly
over and over again.
Finally, a full-sized
model was built
in pieces made of wooden lath
these first roughly
covered with plaster
then carefully carved
in full detail.
Craftsmen spent weeks
working on fingers, toes
and eyebrows.
READER:
May 13, 1876:
"A worker who is applying
and smoothing clay
looks like a pygmy in relation
to one of the fingers."
READER:
Daily News, London.
"The farther the coppersmiths
advanced with their task
"the more Lilliputian
they became in relation to it.
"What were men, for instance,
or the children of men
in that awful eye?"
READER:
"The Bartholdi statue must be
modeled after some Ohio girl.
The ears are three feet long."
McCULLOUGH:
Once the plaster carving
was finished
a wooden negative was built--
a honeycomb, conforming exactly
to the pieces of the model.
In another corner of the shop,
men took big sheets of copper
about the thickness
of a silver dollar
and hammered them
into the honeycomb
until they had precisely
the same shape and contour
as the plaster original.
By the time they were finished
300 copper sections
were readied for assembly.
Bartholdi finished
the right arm and torch first
so they could be displayed
at the American Centennial
exhibition at Philadelphia.
Though the statue was
to be a gift from France
Americans were expected
to provide the place
for her to stand.
But Bartholdi had no guarantee
the Americans
would come through.
There had been complaints
about the statue all along.
READER:
"It would unquestionably
be impolite
"to look a gift statue
in the mouth
"but inasmuch as no mouth
has yet been cast
"of the bronze Liberty,
"we may be permitted to suggest
that when a nation promises
"to give another nation
a colossal bronze woman
"and after having given one arm,
"calmly advises the recipient
of that useless gift
"to supply the rest of the
woman at its own expense
"there is a disproportion
between the promise
"and its fulfillment,
which may be forgiven
but which cannot be
wholly ignored."
New York Times.
McCULLOUGH:
Some Americans
distrusted the French
whom they believed radical
or effete, even immoral.
Clergymen worried about a pagan
goddess on American soil.
And art critics scoffed
that the statue would
look like a bag of potatoes
with a stick
projecting from it.
READER:
"Of course the female arm
has its uses
"but it is only
of secondary importance.
"A woman without arms
might be of considerable value
"but arms without
any accompanying woman
would be utterly valueless."
McCULLOUGH:
When New Yorkers seemed less
than enthusiastic about the gift
Bartholdi hinted
he would be just as happy
to have his statue stand
in Philadelphia.
But Bartholdi had no intention
of setting the statue
he now called "my American"
anywhere but in New York Harbor.
READER:
"If there is any place
on Earth that needs light
it is certainly New York."
McCULLOUGH:
The arm and torch were
eventually returned to Paris
but there was a problem:
Bartholdi wasn't exactly sure
how to hold all
the pieces together.
The more than 40-foot span
of her shoulders
high above the tides
and squarely into the wind
would create a sail
as big as on any ship.
And how would a structure
so enormous
actually be built,
transported across an ocean
and kept stable on its pedestal?
A new man was enlisted
one of the greatest engineers
of the century--
Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel.
Already celebrated throughout
France for his daring bridges
Eiffel would later create
the world's most famous tower.
He spent a year devising
a sturdy but elastic framework
that would not only carry
the 80-ton copper skin,
but be heat-, cold-,
and storm-proof.
Now in the courtyard
of Gaget and Gauthier
Eiffel began building
his statue.
It was a sturdy pylon
made of cross-braced
iron posts, 96 feet high
and this supported
a framework of light beams
a forerunner of the skyscraper.
Most ingenious of all were
the hundreds of short,
thin iron bars
fitted to the framework
which would attach directly to
the inside of the copper skin.
They would act like springs
allowing the statue to sway,
expand and contract and breathe.
Each copper piece would be
separately riveted to the frame.
Thus, no one piece would
carry the weight of any other.
When Eiffel's pylon was finished
workers began wrapping it
in copper.
Bartholdi, ever the promoter,
held a lunch in the leg
to introduce Eiffel to the press
and to keep his structure
front-page news.
READER:
The New York Herald,
April 5, 1884:
"The entry is by the sole
of the uplifted foot
"a fairly spacious doorway.
"It is rather dark inside,
but the gloom is pierced
"by thousands of little
eyelets of light
"marking the holes
left for the rivets.
"From the gallery of the torch
"all the glory of Paris
bursts on the view--
"miles and miles of house roofs
"all as even as if they had
been mown like grass
with a scythe."
McCULLOUGH:
She was proclaimed
a modern cathedral.
The Freemasons were delighted.
Jules Grevy, the president
of the French Republic
came to see her.
So did Victor Hugo
the venerable poet
of French democracy--
82 years old,
and only months from death
but determined
to see for himself
this huge testament
to the ideals
for which he had struggled
all his life.
He stood silently
for a long time
staring first at the statue,
then at Bartholdi.
Finally he spoke.
"The idea," he said,
"it is everything."
( band playing
the "Marseillaise" )
On July 4, 1884,
she was formally handed over
to the Minister of the
United States, Levi P. Morton.
She was at last what
Bartholdi had called her:
"my American."
In New York, though no one had
figured out how to pay for it
the pedestal was underway.
The designer was America's
most fashionable architect
Richard Morris Hunt.
During 1882 and '83, he sketched
out innumerable designs
toying with pyramids
and ziggurats
and other less exotic styles.
Corresponding frequently
with Bartholdi--
although each man
heartily disliked the other--
Hunt arrived at last
at the final form.
It was a solid monument of
Classical and Egyptian features
that took into account the
contours of the abandoned fort.
Almost as tall
as Liberty herself
Hunt's pedestal would complement
Bartholdi's statue
but not compete with it--
if, that is, someone could
come up with the money.
Back in Paris,
workers dismantled the statue
and packed her in 210 crates, 36
just for nuts, bolts and rivets
and put her aboard the sleek,
white warship Isere.
The statue sailed
on May 21, 1885
and very nearly didn't make it.
Halfway across, the Isere
was struck by a storm.
For 72 hours
she struggled to remain upright
as her huge, wildly shifting
cargo threatened to capsize her.
Nearly 100 ships greeted
the battered Isere
on her arrival
in New York Harbor.
But it was still not certain
the dismantled statue
would ever be reassembled.
READER:
"It is ridiculous for Frenchmen
"to continue to impose
on Americans
"a present they refuse to accept
"to worry them with a souvenir
that offends them
"to humiliate them
with a generous idea
"they do not comprehend
and to beg for thanks
that they will not give."
READER:
"The greatest difficulty,
I believe
"will be the American character
which is hardly open
to things of the imagination."
READER:
"Bartholdi is said to be so mad
"about the wrangles
over the pedestal of his statue
"that he has serious thoughts
of remodeling part of his work
"so that Liberty may appear
"in the attitude of applying
her thumb to her nose
and twiddling her fingers."
McCULLOUGH:
As the Isere began to unload
her precious cargo
work on the pedestal stopped.
The money had run out.
READER:
"This torch and arm
ought to be extended
"as if asking for alms
instead of triumphantly
raised toward heaven."
READER:
"It would be
an irrevocable disgrace
"for the city of New York
and the American Republic
"to see France send us
this splendid gift
"without our having furnished
simply a place to put it.
There is only one thing to do--
we must collect money."
Joseph Pulitzer.
McCULLOUGH:
Joseph Pulitzer,
a Hungarian immigrant
was the new publisher
of an old newspaper
The New York World.
He was a strange, brilliant man
half blind and almost
wholly neurotic.
A self-styled champion of
the ordinary people of his city
he could not abide
the noise they made
lining the walls of his office
with cork to shut it out
and eventually running his paper
from far out at sea,
on a yacht called Liberty.
In 1885, he launched an attack
on wealthy New Yorkers
who would allow their city
to be disgraced
by not having provided
a foundation for Liberty.
From that moment on,
he promised he would
publish the name
of every man, woman and child
who contributed to the statue
no matter how small
their contribution.
READER:
"The $250,000 that
the statue has cost
"was paid out by the mass
of French people--
"by workers, shopkeepers,
salesgirls, craftsmen.
"Let us not wait for the
millionaires to give this money.
"This isn't a gift
from French millionaires
"to American millionaires
"but a gift
of the whole French people
"to the whole American people.
"Give something,
no matter how little.
Let us hear from the people."
McCULLOUGH:
He did hear-- Pulitzer and
The World raised $120,000
much of it in contributions
of a dollar or less.
READER:
"We have taken three lessons
in French and we don't like it
"but we love
the good French people
"for giving us
the beautiful statue
"and we send you a dollar--
the money we have saved
to go to the circus with."
READER:
"Since leaving off
smoking cigarettes
"I have gained 25 pounds,
so I cheerfully enclose a penny
for each pound."
McCULLOUGH:
Finally, in the spring of 1886
workmen began prying open
the wooden crates
that had been sitting
on Bedloe's island for a year.
In just three months
the statue once again
rose up around its skeleton
21 years after the dinner
at Professor Laboulaye's;
15 years after Bartholdi
first sailed through
the Verrazano Narrows;
ten years after the American
Centennial celebration
for which the statue
had originally been intended.
Three days before
the official unveiling
Bartholdi nervously surveyed
his finished work.
READER:
"I was very anxious
about the formation
"of some of the lines.
"But it is a success.
I believe that it will last
until eternity."
McCULLOUGH:
October 28, 1886,
dawned cool and cloudy
and at 10:00 in the morning,
a steady rain began to fall.
Nobody seemed to mind.
Enthusiastic crowds of more than
a million lined the streets.
20,000 New Yorkers
paraded down Broadway.
Early in the afternoon
some 600 dignitaries were
ferried out to Bedloe's Island
for the great unveiling.
The general public
was not invited
and exactly two women
were present for the ceremony
honoring this giant statue
of a woman--
an irony not lost on
a group of suffragists
who circled the island
in a chartered boat
shouting their outrage
through a megaphone.
But their words
went largely unheard
in the unceasing din.
The French flag hung
over the statue's face.
Bartholdi himself,
dressed in evening clothes
had climbed into the torch
where he sat ready
to pull the silken cord
that would formally
unveil his creation
once President Grover Cleveland
completed his formal remarks.
But somehow signals
were misinterpreted.
The sculptor gave a sharp pull
before the president had even
made it to the podium.
Newspapers on both sides of
the Atlantic printed every word
of every speech
and all the songs and anthems.
The Times of London, however
looked upon the proceedings
with skepticism.
READER:
"We question why 'Liberty'
"should be sent from France,
which has too little
to America, which has too much."
McCULLOUGH:
Nobody said a thing
about welcoming immigrants.
READER:
"On they go,
from this pen to that
"towards a little metal wicket,
the gate of America.
"Through this wicket
drips the immigrant stream--
"all day long,
every two or three seconds
an immigrant with a valise
or bundle into a new world."
H.G. Wells, 1905.
MAN:
Anyone that came through it--
I mean, there was gates
to go through--
but once people passed by
to see her
they felt just like
a newborn baby.
WOMAN:
I felt like the world opened up
and it was the most
beautiful sight I have seen.
I felt like reaching for it
and I thought maybe I was
going to climb over it.
It was the most gorgeous sight
I have seen.
Since then, I always look
at the statue
and I feel that's like
a god-sent country.
MAN:
Personally, I believe
that the Statue of Liberty
is supposed to be remembered
by anyone who passed by
the Statue of Liberty.
I mean, for people
that came after that,
they don't seem to realize
how much tears
and also how much laughter
people lost or gained
by going through the Statue
of Liberty in those days.
FORCHE:
I think more than
any other American symbol
it probably endures
in the heart warmly
as does the poem
inscribed on the base of it.
I feel that perhaps
it was an early symbol
of our intention toward equality
and a country made
from a human community
built as a human community,
a global community.
READER:
"Not like the brazen giant
of Greek fame
"with conquering limbs
astride from land to land
"here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates
"shall stand a mighty woman
with a torch
"whose flame is
the imprisoned lightning
"and her name,
Mother of Exiles.
"From her beacon hand
glows worldwide welcome.
"Her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor
"that twin cities frame.
"'Keep, ancient lands,
your storied pomp'"
"cries she with silent lips.
"'Give me your tired
"'your poor
"'your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free
"'the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore
"'send these
"'the homeless,
tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp
beside the golden door.'"
Symbols are important.
You send a Christmas card
or a Hanukkah card.
You go to a wake.
You embrace,
you kiss, you touch.
Symbols are important.
And reminders of the essence of
this country are very important
because the further we get
away from our essence
the deeper trouble we're in.
So it's good to have
a great statue in the harbor
that says, "This is why we came
and let's not forget it."
MAN:
Well, from childhood
when I was in Tabriz, Iran
on the U.S. stamps
and everything
was the Statue of Liberty.
And I had a very idealized
notion of America
a land of freedom
and everything you've heard
in the textbooks,
I bought it as a child.
So that even though later years
I went to school
and I learned about nuances,
ambiguities, shades
and all kinds of shadows
the Statue of Liberty had
the first day
that I approached New York
which was a shattering
experience for me
to find that a whole nation was
welcoming me spiritually
to a new land.
CUOMO:
The way I described it
was a fictional interview
on Ellis Island of my mother.
"What's your name?"
"Immaculata Giordano Cuomo."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"Do you have any money?"
"No, maybe a few dollars."
"Are you educated?"
"Not really."
"Where are you going?"
"To meet my husband."
"Where is he?"
"New Jersey."
"Does he have a job?"
"No, but he makes
I Fosse, trenches."
"Oh, he's a ditch digger?"
"Yes."
"What do you have?"
"Nothing much,
Except one child."
"You have no money,
no friends, no job.
"Your husband's a ditch digger.
Why did you come here?"
"Because over there was worse."
"What do you expect
of this country
with the little
you brought us?"
"Just one thing.
"Before I die,
I'd like one of my sons
to be governor
of the state of New York."
( ship's horn blasts )
( man shouts )
The Statue of Liberty!
How...
are...
you?
( speaking Greek )
Eh-eh-eh-eh--
Talk... English.
I... learn.
All right.
First thing you learn--
to Statue of Liberty,
you don't say "How are you?"
To people you say
"How are you?"
To statue you say...
"It's pretty."
"It's beautiful!"
Not "How are you?"
( ship's horn blasts )
FORMAN:
My first reaction
was very disappointing
because she looks small
from the distance, you know?
And then she grew up in my eyes
when I was standing there
looking at her.
KOSINSKI:
I think she's the only woman
I have always been in love with.
From the age of 12.
And for a long time I thought
I would never
meet her in person.
When I arrived here, I was 24--
that's probably the first
trip I have made.
The first photograph
of myself in New York
was of myself in front of her.
There I was, finally joined
with the object of what
was actually long love.
McCULLOUGH:
To me, the Statue of Liberty
is like the light
that's left on at home.
If you're coming back
on a passenger ship,
coming back on a troop ship,
coming home
there she is saying
you knew you were here
you'd taken the right boat.
Then you're right under it
And you look up,
and you say "My God!"
"My God."
And you feel something,
I think really
much more than just
being an American.
You feel the importance
of being... human
And you feel a kind
of fraternal bondage
with everybody
who has come here.
We came
from Russia.
and
then
we went
to...
Our
mother
died
so we went
to Italy.
Then we
came here.
I come from Austria,
and I ended up in New Jersey.
Che vuole dire
"Liberta"?
Oh, he knows.
Liberta...
Freedom!
Una nazione che...
che puo uscire fuori
e che...
He says it's a nation
that you can go out...
Senza paura...
You don't have
to get scared.
No fright,
no fright...
And it's different
from Europe
altogether.
You can say
anything you want.
You can get home
any time you want.
You don't have
to get scared.
It's a different
country altogether
from Europe.
Liberty means
freedom.
Quello ce l'ha
liberta...
That's what
it's all about.
Ce tutto buono,
e tutto va bene.
He loves it
very much.
He loves America.
And then, when I saw the statue,
I really cried.
I cried.
It made me feel...
It made me remember
all those years when
I used to be a kid.
I used to run with my father
you know, in the fields
over there playing ball.
I never thought ever in my life
that I was going to lose it.
Until you lose it, you don't
know what freedom is, really
and liberty means, to you.
I went through hell in Europe.
My grandparents
and my only brother
was taken to concentration camp
and when I was lucky enough
and fortunate enough
to get a visa to this country
which we-- my parents-- elected
because we could have gone
to Israel or any other country
but we picked the United States.
And when I first saw
the Statue of Liberty
I broke down in tears
and I could have fallen on
my knees and kissed the ground
I was fortunate enough to reach
this blessed country.
( speaking Creole )
INTERPRETER:
He had to come
because he could not live
no more in his country.
So he had to find
a way to survive.
and that's why he came here.
MAN:
The earliest image I have
of the Statue of Liberty
is in Rumanian cartoons
in our communist newspaper
which always portrayed her
with not a torch in the hand
but either a bloodied knife
with "North Korea" written on it
or aimed at the Soviet Union
or, you know, your basic
propagandistic political cartoon
and from that point
to the commercial
that has the statue
with her hand raised
saying "I'm Sure, I'm Sure,
everything is all right.
I have enough deodorant"
there is an entire range,
you know
that goes from the polemic
against that image
to the trivialization of it
that includes
a great range of emotion
including a genuine one.
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty, may you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze
eternally ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Lady in the harbor ♪
♪ Harbors the flame
that enlightened the world ♪
♪ Give me your tired,
your poor ♪
♪ Yearning to be free ♪
♪ To be free ♪
♪ Welcome, you huddled masses ♪
♪ To America's golden shore ♪
♪ Majestically crowned
stands Lady Liberty ♪
♪ Lady Liberty ♪
♪ Oh! Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ May you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Oh! Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ May you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Eternally! ♪
McCULLOUGH:
Here is an enormous
symbolic work of sculpture
at the gateway to our country.
It isn't a warrior.
She isn't bombastic
or domineering or threatening.
She isn't a symbol of power.
The Statue of Liberty
is an act of faith.
MAN:
My parents came from overseas
and I look upon and think first
of what they saw
what their hopes were
that they came as refugees.
They came escaping a world
they never wanted to see again.
They came enchanted by an idea
that here they could
be themselves
and be the best that was
within them to be.
They came to a place
where everyone could
stand erect, with dignity
as a child of God.
That's what I think
they believed
and that's what I see in it.
It reminds me of how much
we yet have to do
to achieve the full promise
of that statue.
You know, it was
Archibald MacLeish
Who said "America is promises."
It is, but for many it's
a land of unfulfilled promises.
I have a dream
that one day
this nation will rise up
live out the true
meaning of its creed.
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
that all men are created equal."
( crowd cheering )
I suppose it occurs
on two levels.
One is inside, one is outside.
So that finally,
or first of all, perhaps
liberty is... individual
passion or will to be free.
But this passion,
this will is always...
contradicted by
the necessities of the state.
Everywhere--
for as long as we've
heard of mankind
as long as we've
heard of fates.
I don't know if it will
be like that forever.
For a black American
for a black inhabitant
of this country
the Statue of Liberty
is simply...
a very bitter joke...
meaning nothing to us.
FORMAN:
America is a symbol
of everything good, great
generous, rich, comfortable,
wonderful in the world.
And you come here
and you must be, inevitably,
let down after awhile.
You know, the first
two or three days
or two or three weeks
are always wonderful
but then the everyday life comes
and then you learn all
the other aspects of life
and it's a letdown and you
must be disappointed, right?
Now, do you have statistics
how many people then
turned finally and left
and went back from
where they came from?
Such a tiny percentage.
That means that
there is something
deep down in this society
which is so valuable,
so strong and so inspiring
that, in spite all
of difficulties
all of troubles, all of evil
all of the crime you see
around yourself
all of greed, all of hypocrisy
that still this is the best.
This is the best.
And that lady up there,
she symbolizes that.
BALDWIN:
No one was ever born
who agreed to be a slave
who... accepted it.
That is, slavery is a condition
imposed from without.
Of course, the moment
I said that I realized
multitudes and
multitudes of people
for various reasons of their own
enslave themselves
every hour of every day
to this or that doctrine
this or that
delusion of safety
this or that lie.
Anti-Semites, for example,
are slaves to a delusion.
People who hate Negroes
are slaves.
People who love money
are slaves.
We're living in a universe,
really, of willing slaves
which is what makes the
concept of liberty so dangerous
and the concept of freedom
so dangerous.
JORDAN:
The greatest threat
is the inattention
of the people of this country
to liberty.
If we don't attend to it,
if we take it for granted
and let people trample on it
in even minute ways
it can gradually
suffer an erosion
just like the statue itself
suffered some erosion.
You have to attend to liberty.
FORCHE:
I was out on the
Circle Line ship
and I passed the statue.
She is now in a protective cage
while reconstruction
is being done.
It occurred to me that she seems
to be webbed or imprisoned now.
At a time when I feel
we have, as Americans
become less welcoming
of people from other countries
who would like to make
their homes here.
That's very evident to me
and it's a heartbreaking
image for me
to see her encased
in scaffolding.
I know what it's for
but it also for me symbolizes
something I wish were not true
or as true as it seems to be.
( ship's horn blasts )
( bell clanging )
I think probably everything
threatens liberty.
Everything is a potential trap.
Hence, one has
to be on the lookout.
Anything can become
a potential threat
because basically it's
a very fleeting state of being.
And in a way, to be free is,
in a sense, a transgression.
One's freedom always
threatens someone else
and someone else's freedom
threatens mine as well.
So it's a very
precarious balance
between my freedom to be myself
and someone else's freedom
to be himself or herself.
CUOMO:
She makes me think,
more than feel.
Makes me think how important
it is to remain vigilant
especially now, as a governor
where every day there are
new temptations
to forget that
our strength is liberty.
It can be very, very tempting
to squash a little freedom here,
to restrain a little bit there--
so she makes me think.
JIMMY STEWART:
You see, boys forget
what their country means
by just reading "The land
of the free" in history books.
Then they get to be men,
they forget even more.
Liberty is too precious a thing
to be buried in books.
Men should hold it up
in front of them
every single day of their lives
and say, "I'm free...
to think and to speak.
"My ancestors couldn't, I can.
And my children will."
MAN:
Oh, my God!
We finally,
really did it.
You maniacs!
You blew it up!
God damn you!
God damn you
all to hell!
MAN:
If you could say
one single force
that is threatening liberty,
in my opinion, it's ignorance.
Second, is to treat ourselves
as only economic units
rather than as spiritual beings.
America is not an actuality
but it's a potentiality.
We have to remember
that the universe
will not see somebody
like you again
in the entire
history of creation
So it's up to you to become
a dot, a paragraph
a page, blank page
chapter in the
history of creation.
FORMAN:
I don't think anybody
who was born in this country
really cares.
I think that if this show
is for American audiences
forget it.
You know, you are born here
and you take
everything for granted
And all you really mainly
see is what bothers you
and what irritates you.
We are so complacent.
It's so easy to accept
pleasant things.
It's like they should be here
and that I am, you know,
entitled to them.
No, I think that this...
this pile
of granite and iron
means a lot only for people
who came from abroad
who came following that light
in the torch.
MAN:
You know, we're so
used to freedom.
We're so used to doing
whatever we want.
We're so used to--
if we want to insult
the president, we do it.
But, you know, when you look
around the world, if you travel
you begin to realize
that we're the only people
who can do all this
in the world...
without any static.
McCULLOUGH:
Liberty is... what we Americans
have always wanted first of all.
It's what the country
was founded for
it's what the Revolution
was fought for.
All the great songs and sayings
and pronouncements of those
Revolutionary figures
were about liberty.
And they knew what it meant.
And because the French sent
the statue here
it was their way
of saying, implicitly
we recognize that that is
the gateway to a new world
and to the hope of the world.
PAUL SIMON:
♪ And I dreamed I was dying ♪
♪ I dreamed that
my soul rose unexpectedly ♪
♪ And looking back down at me,
smiled reassuringly ♪
♪ And I dreamed I was flying ♪
♪ High up above
my eyes could clearly see ♪
♪ The Statue of Liberty
sailing away to sea ♪
♪ And I dreamed I was flying. ♪
♪ For we come on the ship
they call the Mayflower ♪
♪ We come on the ship
that sailed the moon ♪
♪ We come in the age's
most uncertain hours ♪
♪ And sing an American tune ♪
♪ Oh, and it's all right ♪
♪ It's all right,
it's all right ♪
♪ You can't be
forever blessed ♪
♪ Still, tomorrow's gonna be
another working day ♪
♪ And I'm trying
to get some rest ♪
♪ That's all I'm trying,
to get some rest. ♪
Listen:
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
"that all men are created equal
"that they are endowed
by their creator
"with certain
unalienable rights;
"that among these
are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."
Thomas Jefferson.
PAUL SIMON:
♪ Many's the time
I've been mistaken ♪
♪ And many times confused ♪
♪ Yes, and I've often
felt forsaken ♪
♪ And certainly misused ♪
♪ Oh, but I'm all right ♪
♪ I'm all right ♪
♪ Just weary to my bones ♪
♪ Still, you don't expect
to be bright and bon vivant ♪
♪ So far away from home ♪
♪ So far away from home. ♪
♪ I don't know a soul
who's not been battered ♪
♪ I don't have a friend
who feels at ease ♪
♪ I don't know a dream
that's not been shattered ♪
♪ Or driven to its knees ♪
♪ Oh, but it's all right ♪
♪ It's all right ♪
♪ For we've lived
so well so long ♪
♪ Still, when I think of
The road we're traveling on ♪
♪ I wonder what's gone wrong ♪
♪ I can't help it, I wonder
what's gone wrong. ♪
MAN:
The statue's only a symbol.
The statue is only copper
and granite and steel, iron.
It's what it speaks
to us about--
what it makes us feel inside
that's so important.
We are all the beneficiaries
Of those who've gone before us--
Who've worked,
who've fought, on occasion
who have cared, immensely
to the very depth of their soul,
to achieve liberty.
If we really want to know her
the beginning
should be the question:
"What is liberty?"
Liberty is the most civilized
and least of evils
in this world.
Liberty is the absence
of constraints
and barriers and impediments.
It's freedom to be oneself--
to do what one wants to do,
to remain oneself for
as long as one chooses to.
And basically, that's all.
It's not happiness, it's not
responsibility, it's not truth.
It's just being oneself.
Well, liberty is
the old French word
that we have begun in English
to equate with freedom.
MAN:
What is liberty?
Oh, well...
That's quite a question.
But I suppose almost nobody
really asks themselves
that question.
Well, I can always
quote the Declaration:
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
that all men are
created equal..."
And the moment I do that,
I'm in trouble again, because...
obviously I was not included
in that pronouncement.
"...that they are endowed
by their creator
"with certain
inalienable rights;
"and among these rights
are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."
Ah, what is liberty?
READER:
"Colossal statuary
does not consist simply
"in making an enormous statue.
"It ought to produce an emotion
in the breast of the spectator
"not because of its volume
"but because its size
is in keeping
"with the idea
that it interprets
and with the place
which it ought to occupy."
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
Daily News, London, July 3:
"It towers to the skies
"from the factory yard
of the Rue de Chazelles
"and the view from its coronet
"sweeps clear
of the six-story houses
and right beyond
the walls of Paris."
McCULLOUGH:
In the autumn of 1875
on a quiet residential
street in Paris
where nothing much
had ever happened
work began on a statue
unlike any ever built before.
It would be a gift
from the people of France
to the people
of the United States
and it would celebrate an ideal:
liberty.
When completed
she would be the tallest
structure in the New World
her torch stretching
305 feet above the harbor--
taller even than the recently
completed Brooklyn Bridge.
She was hand-built
by Frenchmen in Paris.
Italian immigrant stonemasons
laid her foundation in New York.
And hundreds of thousands
of French and Americans--
ordinary people, mostly--
paid for her construction.
But she was primarily the
creation of one driven man:
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi--
a man who wasn't even sure
he liked Americans.
READER:
"Monsieur Bartholdi has
conceived this celebration
"of American independence,
applying to it a sublime phrase
"which sums up the progress
of modern times--
"'Liberty enlightening
the world.'
"He has chosen to represent
this great idea
"by a statue
of colossal proportions
"which will surpass all
that have ever existed
since the most ancient times."
McCULLOUGH:
But the idea for the Statue
of Liberty was not Bartholdi's.
It was born over
brandy and cigars
at a country home near Paris
one evening in 1865.
The host was
Edouard de Laboulaye--
historian, professor of law
chairman of the French
Antislavery Society.
The talk was of liberty,
then in trouble in France
curtailed by the tyranny
of Emperor Napoleon III
and menaced by
the revolutionary chaos
that seemed
the likely alternative.
Laboulaye believed passionately
that democracy was the future
and America its shining example.
And so, very shrewdly
he proposed a huge monument
to celebrate liberty
as America was about to
celebrate its 100th birthday.
The great gift
would both commemorate
a century of
French-American relations
and help spur France
to restore liberty at home.
No one who was gathered that
evening at Professor Laboulaye's
was more interested
than Bartholdi--
so deeply interested, he wrote
that "The idea remained
fixed in my memory."
READER:
"I will try to glorify the
Republic and liberty over there
"in the hope that someday I will
find it again here in France
if it can be done."
Bartholdi.
McCULLOUGH:
He was born in the medieval city
of Colmar in Alsace
to a family
of comfortable means.
He started out as a painter
and turned to sculpture
which allowed work
on a bigger scale.
At age 21,
he created a Napoleonic general
so tall at 26 feet
that it couldn't fit
into the exhibition hall
for which it was intended.
It made him famous
all over France.
MAN:
Bartholdi is an Alsatian
as well as a Frenchman.
Still young for an artist
of his reputation,
he gives you the impression
of a man of power
and his works confirm it.
He loves to model
on a colossal scale
perhaps because
this most readily conduces
to the simplicity and
massiveness of effect
which he seeks in art.
He is a sculptor of the old
and as most of us still think,
the best school.
McCULLOUGH:
He traveled to Egypt
for the opening
of the French-built Suez Canal.
He wanted to build a mammoth
monument at its entrance--
a lighthouse in the form of an
Egyptian woman bearing a torch.
He presented his plan
to the ruler of Egypt
and gave it the grand title
of "Progress"
or "Egypt Carrying the Light
to Asia."
He was turned down but only
momentarily discouraged.
And he carefully saved
his drawings.
In 1871, Laboulaye urged
Bartholdi to visit America
and on June 21, Bartholdi
sailed for the first time
through the Verrazano Narrows
into New York Harbor.
He never forgot the moment.
READER:
"It is exactly here that
my statue should be erected--
"here, where people have their
first view of the New World.
"I have found
the admirable spot.
"It is Bedloe's Island,
just opposite the Narrows
which are, so to speak,
the gateway of America."
McCULLOUGH:
His "admirable spot"
had once sheltered a pesthouse,
a gallows, a pauper's grave
and was now an abandoned fort.
But Bartholdi was certain
he had found the site
for his masterpiece.
From New York
he traveled across America
never missing an opportunity
to promote his dream.
The size of the country
impressed him.
He marveled at the immensity
of Niagara Falls and Yosemite
Monument Valley
and the giant sequoias.
"Everything is big here,"
he told his mother
"even the peas."
READER:
"All of these things are
of the greatest interest.
"What is lacking in the cities,
and most of the men, however
is charm and taste."
McCULLOUGH:
In 1875, a new and
moderate republic
had been established in France.
Paris was once again
the cultural capital of Europe,
some said the world.
For Laboulaye and Bartholdi
the time was perfect
to bring their idea
to the French people.
They formed
a French-American union
and to raise money,
launched a nationwide lottery.
In all, 181 municipalities,
40 general councils
10 chambers of commerce, and
100,000 individual subscribers
contributed the 600,000 francs
Bartholdi thought he would need.
READER:
"She will not resemble those
bronze colossi, so venerated
"of which it is proudly declared
"that they have been cast from
cannons taken from the enemy.
"Our statue will be made
of pure copper
and be the product
of labor and of peace."
McCULLOUGH:
Bit by bit, Bartholdi evolved
the form of his statue
borrowing generously.
A woman in robes
bearing the light of reason
had stood for liberty
since classical times.
It was rumored all over France
that the statue was modeled
after the face
of Bartholdi's mother
and the body of his mistress.
And there was still
another influence:
the Freemasons, a secret
international brotherhood
linked to the ancient builders
of the pyramids
and the cathedrals.
Freemasons were devoted to peace
to liberty and enlightenment.
George Washington
was a freemason
and so were Jefferson
and Franklin
and countless others
who made America.
Freemasons designed
the dollar bill.
Freemasons planned
the Washington Monument--
an obelisk, symbolizing
the ray shining from god
to enlighten mankind.
And Masonic symbols
were to be present
in the statue
of liberty as well:
a torch, the light
of human intellect;
a book, the laws
of the supreme architect
indelibly inscribed with the
date of America's independence.
Bartholdi himself
became a freemason
as he began construction.
READER:
Daily News, London:
"The workshop was built
"wholly and solely
for the accommodation
"of this one inmate
and her attendants--
"some 50 workmen
hammering for their lives
on sheer copper
to complete her tresses."
McCULLOUGH:
Now in the workshops
of Gaget and Gauthier
at 25, Rue de Chazelles,
work began in earnest.
Bartholdi drove himself hard
supervising every aspect
of the work.
He built three successively
larger models
the last a quarter
of the final size.
Each enlargement required
more than 9,000 measurements
taken painstakingly
from plumb lines
and then multiplied accordingly
over and over again.
Finally, a full-sized
model was built
in pieces made of wooden lath
these first roughly
covered with plaster
then carefully carved
in full detail.
Craftsmen spent weeks
working on fingers, toes
and eyebrows.
READER:
May 13, 1876:
"A worker who is applying
and smoothing clay
looks like a pygmy in relation
to one of the fingers."
READER:
Daily News, London.
"The farther the coppersmiths
advanced with their task
"the more Lilliputian
they became in relation to it.
"What were men, for instance,
or the children of men
in that awful eye?"
READER:
"The Bartholdi statue must be
modeled after some Ohio girl.
The ears are three feet long."
McCULLOUGH:
Once the plaster carving
was finished
a wooden negative was built--
a honeycomb, conforming exactly
to the pieces of the model.
In another corner of the shop,
men took big sheets of copper
about the thickness
of a silver dollar
and hammered them
into the honeycomb
until they had precisely
the same shape and contour
as the plaster original.
By the time they were finished
300 copper sections
were readied for assembly.
Bartholdi finished
the right arm and torch first
so they could be displayed
at the American Centennial
exhibition at Philadelphia.
Though the statue was
to be a gift from France
Americans were expected
to provide the place
for her to stand.
But Bartholdi had no guarantee
the Americans
would come through.
There had been complaints
about the statue all along.
READER:
"It would unquestionably
be impolite
"to look a gift statue
in the mouth
"but inasmuch as no mouth
has yet been cast
"of the bronze Liberty,
"we may be permitted to suggest
that when a nation promises
"to give another nation
a colossal bronze woman
"and after having given one arm,
"calmly advises the recipient
of that useless gift
"to supply the rest of the
woman at its own expense
"there is a disproportion
between the promise
"and its fulfillment,
which may be forgiven
but which cannot be
wholly ignored."
New York Times.
McCULLOUGH:
Some Americans
distrusted the French
whom they believed radical
or effete, even immoral.
Clergymen worried about a pagan
goddess on American soil.
And art critics scoffed
that the statue would
look like a bag of potatoes
with a stick
projecting from it.
READER:
"Of course the female arm
has its uses
"but it is only
of secondary importance.
"A woman without arms
might be of considerable value
"but arms without
any accompanying woman
would be utterly valueless."
McCULLOUGH:
When New Yorkers seemed less
than enthusiastic about the gift
Bartholdi hinted
he would be just as happy
to have his statue stand
in Philadelphia.
But Bartholdi had no intention
of setting the statue
he now called "my American"
anywhere but in New York Harbor.
READER:
"If there is any place
on Earth that needs light
it is certainly New York."
McCULLOUGH:
The arm and torch were
eventually returned to Paris
but there was a problem:
Bartholdi wasn't exactly sure
how to hold all
the pieces together.
The more than 40-foot span
of her shoulders
high above the tides
and squarely into the wind
would create a sail
as big as on any ship.
And how would a structure
so enormous
actually be built,
transported across an ocean
and kept stable on its pedestal?
A new man was enlisted
one of the greatest engineers
of the century--
Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel.
Already celebrated throughout
France for his daring bridges
Eiffel would later create
the world's most famous tower.
He spent a year devising
a sturdy but elastic framework
that would not only carry
the 80-ton copper skin,
but be heat-, cold-,
and storm-proof.
Now in the courtyard
of Gaget and Gauthier
Eiffel began building
his statue.
It was a sturdy pylon
made of cross-braced
iron posts, 96 feet high
and this supported
a framework of light beams
a forerunner of the skyscraper.
Most ingenious of all were
the hundreds of short,
thin iron bars
fitted to the framework
which would attach directly to
the inside of the copper skin.
They would act like springs
allowing the statue to sway,
expand and contract and breathe.
Each copper piece would be
separately riveted to the frame.
Thus, no one piece would
carry the weight of any other.
When Eiffel's pylon was finished
workers began wrapping it
in copper.
Bartholdi, ever the promoter,
held a lunch in the leg
to introduce Eiffel to the press
and to keep his structure
front-page news.
READER:
The New York Herald,
April 5, 1884:
"The entry is by the sole
of the uplifted foot
"a fairly spacious doorway.
"It is rather dark inside,
but the gloom is pierced
"by thousands of little
eyelets of light
"marking the holes
left for the rivets.
"From the gallery of the torch
"all the glory of Paris
bursts on the view--
"miles and miles of house roofs
"all as even as if they had
been mown like grass
with a scythe."
McCULLOUGH:
She was proclaimed
a modern cathedral.
The Freemasons were delighted.
Jules Grevy, the president
of the French Republic
came to see her.
So did Victor Hugo
the venerable poet
of French democracy--
82 years old,
and only months from death
but determined
to see for himself
this huge testament
to the ideals
for which he had struggled
all his life.
He stood silently
for a long time
staring first at the statue,
then at Bartholdi.
Finally he spoke.
"The idea," he said,
"it is everything."
( band playing
the "Marseillaise" )
On July 4, 1884,
she was formally handed over
to the Minister of the
United States, Levi P. Morton.
She was at last what
Bartholdi had called her:
"my American."
In New York, though no one had
figured out how to pay for it
the pedestal was underway.
The designer was America's
most fashionable architect
Richard Morris Hunt.
During 1882 and '83, he sketched
out innumerable designs
toying with pyramids
and ziggurats
and other less exotic styles.
Corresponding frequently
with Bartholdi--
although each man
heartily disliked the other--
Hunt arrived at last
at the final form.
It was a solid monument of
Classical and Egyptian features
that took into account the
contours of the abandoned fort.
Almost as tall
as Liberty herself
Hunt's pedestal would complement
Bartholdi's statue
but not compete with it--
if, that is, someone could
come up with the money.
Back in Paris,
workers dismantled the statue
and packed her in 210 crates, 36
just for nuts, bolts and rivets
and put her aboard the sleek,
white warship Isere.
The statue sailed
on May 21, 1885
and very nearly didn't make it.
Halfway across, the Isere
was struck by a storm.
For 72 hours
she struggled to remain upright
as her huge, wildly shifting
cargo threatened to capsize her.
Nearly 100 ships greeted
the battered Isere
on her arrival
in New York Harbor.
But it was still not certain
the dismantled statue
would ever be reassembled.
READER:
"It is ridiculous for Frenchmen
"to continue to impose
on Americans
"a present they refuse to accept
"to worry them with a souvenir
that offends them
"to humiliate them
with a generous idea
"they do not comprehend
and to beg for thanks
that they will not give."
READER:
"The greatest difficulty,
I believe
"will be the American character
which is hardly open
to things of the imagination."
READER:
"Bartholdi is said to be so mad
"about the wrangles
over the pedestal of his statue
"that he has serious thoughts
of remodeling part of his work
"so that Liberty may appear
"in the attitude of applying
her thumb to her nose
and twiddling her fingers."
McCULLOUGH:
As the Isere began to unload
her precious cargo
work on the pedestal stopped.
The money had run out.
READER:
"This torch and arm
ought to be extended
"as if asking for alms
instead of triumphantly
raised toward heaven."
READER:
"It would be
an irrevocable disgrace
"for the city of New York
and the American Republic
"to see France send us
this splendid gift
"without our having furnished
simply a place to put it.
There is only one thing to do--
we must collect money."
Joseph Pulitzer.
McCULLOUGH:
Joseph Pulitzer,
a Hungarian immigrant
was the new publisher
of an old newspaper
The New York World.
He was a strange, brilliant man
half blind and almost
wholly neurotic.
A self-styled champion of
the ordinary people of his city
he could not abide
the noise they made
lining the walls of his office
with cork to shut it out
and eventually running his paper
from far out at sea,
on a yacht called Liberty.
In 1885, he launched an attack
on wealthy New Yorkers
who would allow their city
to be disgraced
by not having provided
a foundation for Liberty.
From that moment on,
he promised he would
publish the name
of every man, woman and child
who contributed to the statue
no matter how small
their contribution.
READER:
"The $250,000 that
the statue has cost
"was paid out by the mass
of French people--
"by workers, shopkeepers,
salesgirls, craftsmen.
"Let us not wait for the
millionaires to give this money.
"This isn't a gift
from French millionaires
"to American millionaires
"but a gift
of the whole French people
"to the whole American people.
"Give something,
no matter how little.
Let us hear from the people."
McCULLOUGH:
He did hear-- Pulitzer and
The World raised $120,000
much of it in contributions
of a dollar or less.
READER:
"We have taken three lessons
in French and we don't like it
"but we love
the good French people
"for giving us
the beautiful statue
"and we send you a dollar--
the money we have saved
to go to the circus with."
READER:
"Since leaving off
smoking cigarettes
"I have gained 25 pounds,
so I cheerfully enclose a penny
for each pound."
McCULLOUGH:
Finally, in the spring of 1886
workmen began prying open
the wooden crates
that had been sitting
on Bedloe's island for a year.
In just three months
the statue once again
rose up around its skeleton
21 years after the dinner
at Professor Laboulaye's;
15 years after Bartholdi
first sailed through
the Verrazano Narrows;
ten years after the American
Centennial celebration
for which the statue
had originally been intended.
Three days before
the official unveiling
Bartholdi nervously surveyed
his finished work.
READER:
"I was very anxious
about the formation
"of some of the lines.
"But it is a success.
I believe that it will last
until eternity."
McCULLOUGH:
October 28, 1886,
dawned cool and cloudy
and at 10:00 in the morning,
a steady rain began to fall.
Nobody seemed to mind.
Enthusiastic crowds of more than
a million lined the streets.
20,000 New Yorkers
paraded down Broadway.
Early in the afternoon
some 600 dignitaries were
ferried out to Bedloe's Island
for the great unveiling.
The general public
was not invited
and exactly two women
were present for the ceremony
honoring this giant statue
of a woman--
an irony not lost on
a group of suffragists
who circled the island
in a chartered boat
shouting their outrage
through a megaphone.
But their words
went largely unheard
in the unceasing din.
The French flag hung
over the statue's face.
Bartholdi himself,
dressed in evening clothes
had climbed into the torch
where he sat ready
to pull the silken cord
that would formally
unveil his creation
once President Grover Cleveland
completed his formal remarks.
But somehow signals
were misinterpreted.
The sculptor gave a sharp pull
before the president had even
made it to the podium.
Newspapers on both sides of
the Atlantic printed every word
of every speech
and all the songs and anthems.
The Times of London, however
looked upon the proceedings
with skepticism.
READER:
"We question why 'Liberty'
"should be sent from France,
which has too little
to America, which has too much."
McCULLOUGH:
Nobody said a thing
about welcoming immigrants.
READER:
"On they go,
from this pen to that
"towards a little metal wicket,
the gate of America.
"Through this wicket
drips the immigrant stream--
"all day long,
every two or three seconds
an immigrant with a valise
or bundle into a new world."
H.G. Wells, 1905.
MAN:
Anyone that came through it--
I mean, there was gates
to go through--
but once people passed by
to see her
they felt just like
a newborn baby.
WOMAN:
I felt like the world opened up
and it was the most
beautiful sight I have seen.
I felt like reaching for it
and I thought maybe I was
going to climb over it.
It was the most gorgeous sight
I have seen.
Since then, I always look
at the statue
and I feel that's like
a god-sent country.
MAN:
Personally, I believe
that the Statue of Liberty
is supposed to be remembered
by anyone who passed by
the Statue of Liberty.
I mean, for people
that came after that,
they don't seem to realize
how much tears
and also how much laughter
people lost or gained
by going through the Statue
of Liberty in those days.
FORCHE:
I think more than
any other American symbol
it probably endures
in the heart warmly
as does the poem
inscribed on the base of it.
I feel that perhaps
it was an early symbol
of our intention toward equality
and a country made
from a human community
built as a human community,
a global community.
READER:
"Not like the brazen giant
of Greek fame
"with conquering limbs
astride from land to land
"here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates
"shall stand a mighty woman
with a torch
"whose flame is
the imprisoned lightning
"and her name,
Mother of Exiles.
"From her beacon hand
glows worldwide welcome.
"Her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor
"that twin cities frame.
"'Keep, ancient lands,
your storied pomp'"
"cries she with silent lips.
"'Give me your tired
"'your poor
"'your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free
"'the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore
"'send these
"'the homeless,
tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp
beside the golden door.'"
Symbols are important.
You send a Christmas card
or a Hanukkah card.
You go to a wake.
You embrace,
you kiss, you touch.
Symbols are important.
And reminders of the essence of
this country are very important
because the further we get
away from our essence
the deeper trouble we're in.
So it's good to have
a great statue in the harbor
that says, "This is why we came
and let's not forget it."
MAN:
Well, from childhood
when I was in Tabriz, Iran
on the U.S. stamps
and everything
was the Statue of Liberty.
And I had a very idealized
notion of America
a land of freedom
and everything you've heard
in the textbooks,
I bought it as a child.
So that even though later years
I went to school
and I learned about nuances,
ambiguities, shades
and all kinds of shadows
the Statue of Liberty had
the first day
that I approached New York
which was a shattering
experience for me
to find that a whole nation was
welcoming me spiritually
to a new land.
CUOMO:
The way I described it
was a fictional interview
on Ellis Island of my mother.
"What's your name?"
"Immaculata Giordano Cuomo."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"Do you have any money?"
"No, maybe a few dollars."
"Are you educated?"
"Not really."
"Where are you going?"
"To meet my husband."
"Where is he?"
"New Jersey."
"Does he have a job?"
"No, but he makes
I Fosse, trenches."
"Oh, he's a ditch digger?"
"Yes."
"What do you have?"
"Nothing much,
Except one child."
"You have no money,
no friends, no job.
"Your husband's a ditch digger.
Why did you come here?"
"Because over there was worse."
"What do you expect
of this country
with the little
you brought us?"
"Just one thing.
"Before I die,
I'd like one of my sons
to be governor
of the state of New York."
( ship's horn blasts )
( man shouts )
The Statue of Liberty!
How...
are...
you?
( speaking Greek )
Eh-eh-eh-eh--
Talk... English.
I... learn.
All right.
First thing you learn--
to Statue of Liberty,
you don't say "How are you?"
To people you say
"How are you?"
To statue you say...
"It's pretty."
"It's beautiful!"
Not "How are you?"
( ship's horn blasts )
FORMAN:
My first reaction
was very disappointing
because she looks small
from the distance, you know?
And then she grew up in my eyes
when I was standing there
looking at her.
KOSINSKI:
I think she's the only woman
I have always been in love with.
From the age of 12.
And for a long time I thought
I would never
meet her in person.
When I arrived here, I was 24--
that's probably the first
trip I have made.
The first photograph
of myself in New York
was of myself in front of her.
There I was, finally joined
with the object of what
was actually long love.
McCULLOUGH:
To me, the Statue of Liberty
is like the light
that's left on at home.
If you're coming back
on a passenger ship,
coming back on a troop ship,
coming home
there she is saying
you knew you were here
you'd taken the right boat.
Then you're right under it
And you look up,
and you say "My God!"
"My God."
And you feel something,
I think really
much more than just
being an American.
You feel the importance
of being... human
And you feel a kind
of fraternal bondage
with everybody
who has come here.
We came
from Russia.
and
then
we went
to...
Our
mother
died
so we went
to Italy.
Then we
came here.
I come from Austria,
and I ended up in New Jersey.
Che vuole dire
"Liberta"?
Oh, he knows.
Liberta...
Freedom!
Una nazione che...
che puo uscire fuori
e che...
He says it's a nation
that you can go out...
Senza paura...
You don't have
to get scared.
No fright,
no fright...
And it's different
from Europe
altogether.
You can say
anything you want.
You can get home
any time you want.
You don't have
to get scared.
It's a different
country altogether
from Europe.
Liberty means
freedom.
Quello ce l'ha
liberta...
That's what
it's all about.
Ce tutto buono,
e tutto va bene.
He loves it
very much.
He loves America.
And then, when I saw the statue,
I really cried.
I cried.
It made me feel...
It made me remember
all those years when
I used to be a kid.
I used to run with my father
you know, in the fields
over there playing ball.
I never thought ever in my life
that I was going to lose it.
Until you lose it, you don't
know what freedom is, really
and liberty means, to you.
I went through hell in Europe.
My grandparents
and my only brother
was taken to concentration camp
and when I was lucky enough
and fortunate enough
to get a visa to this country
which we-- my parents-- elected
because we could have gone
to Israel or any other country
but we picked the United States.
And when I first saw
the Statue of Liberty
I broke down in tears
and I could have fallen on
my knees and kissed the ground
I was fortunate enough to reach
this blessed country.
( speaking Creole )
INTERPRETER:
He had to come
because he could not live
no more in his country.
So he had to find
a way to survive.
and that's why he came here.
MAN:
The earliest image I have
of the Statue of Liberty
is in Rumanian cartoons
in our communist newspaper
which always portrayed her
with not a torch in the hand
but either a bloodied knife
with "North Korea" written on it
or aimed at the Soviet Union
or, you know, your basic
propagandistic political cartoon
and from that point
to the commercial
that has the statue
with her hand raised
saying "I'm Sure, I'm Sure,
everything is all right.
I have enough deodorant"
there is an entire range,
you know
that goes from the polemic
against that image
to the trivialization of it
that includes
a great range of emotion
including a genuine one.
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty, may you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze
eternally ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Lady in the harbor ♪
♪ Harbors the flame
that enlightened the world ♪
♪ Give me your tired,
your poor ♪
♪ Yearning to be free ♪
♪ To be free ♪
♪ Welcome, you huddled masses ♪
♪ To America's golden shore ♪
♪ Majestically crowned
stands Lady Liberty ♪
♪ Lady Liberty ♪
♪ Oh! Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ May you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Oh! Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ Offering rest
to the oppressed ♪
♪ Who yearn to be free ♪
♪ Yearn to be free ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Glorious lady ♪
♪ Beautiful lady ♪
♪ Liberty ♪
♪ May you hold
your torch raised ♪
♪ Under God may it blaze ♪
♪ Eternally ♪
♪ Eternally! ♪
McCULLOUGH:
Here is an enormous
symbolic work of sculpture
at the gateway to our country.
It isn't a warrior.
She isn't bombastic
or domineering or threatening.
She isn't a symbol of power.
The Statue of Liberty
is an act of faith.
MAN:
My parents came from overseas
and I look upon and think first
of what they saw
what their hopes were
that they came as refugees.
They came escaping a world
they never wanted to see again.
They came enchanted by an idea
that here they could
be themselves
and be the best that was
within them to be.
They came to a place
where everyone could
stand erect, with dignity
as a child of God.
That's what I think
they believed
and that's what I see in it.
It reminds me of how much
we yet have to do
to achieve the full promise
of that statue.
You know, it was
Archibald MacLeish
Who said "America is promises."
It is, but for many it's
a land of unfulfilled promises.
I have a dream
that one day
this nation will rise up
live out the true
meaning of its creed.
"We hold these truths
to be self-evident;
that all men are created equal."
( crowd cheering )
I suppose it occurs
on two levels.
One is inside, one is outside.
So that finally,
or first of all, perhaps
liberty is... individual
passion or will to be free.
But this passion,
this will is always...
contradicted by
the necessities of the state.
Everywhere--
for as long as we've
heard of mankind
as long as we've
heard of fates.
I don't know if it will
be like that forever.
For a black American
for a black inhabitant
of this country
the Statue of Liberty
is simply...
a very bitter joke...
meaning nothing to us.
FORMAN:
America is a symbol
of everything good, great
generous, rich, comfortable,
wonderful in the world.
And you come here
and you must be, inevitably,
let down after awhile.
You know, the first
two or three days
or two or three weeks
are always wonderful
but then the everyday life comes
and then you learn all
the other aspects of life
and it's a letdown and you
must be disappointed, right?
Now, do you have statistics
how many people then
turned finally and left
and went back from
where they came from?
Such a tiny percentage.
That means that
there is something
deep down in this society
which is so valuable,
so strong and so inspiring
that, in spite all
of difficulties
all of troubles, all of evil
all of the crime you see
around yourself
all of greed, all of hypocrisy
that still this is the best.
This is the best.
And that lady up there,
she symbolizes that.
BALDWIN:
No one was ever born
who agreed to be a slave
who... accepted it.
That is, slavery is a condition
imposed from without.
Of course, the moment
I said that I realized
multitudes and
multitudes of people
for various reasons of their own
enslave themselves
every hour of every day
to this or that doctrine
this or that
delusion of safety
this or that lie.
Anti-Semites, for example,
are slaves to a delusion.
People who hate Negroes
are slaves.
People who love money
are slaves.
We're living in a universe,
really, of willing slaves
which is what makes the
concept of liberty so dangerous
and the concept of freedom
so dangerous.
JORDAN:
The greatest threat
is the inattention
of the people of this country
to liberty.
If we don't attend to it,
if we take it for granted
and let people trample on it
in even minute ways
it can gradually
suffer an erosion
just like the statue itself
suffered some erosion.
You have to attend to liberty.
FORCHE:
I was out on the
Circle Line ship
and I passed the statue.
She is now in a protective cage
while reconstruction
is being done.
It occurred to me that she seems
to be webbed or imprisoned now.
At a time when I feel
we have, as Americans
become less welcoming
of people from other countries
who would like to make
their homes here.
That's very evident to me
and it's a heartbreaking
image for me
to see her encased
in scaffolding.
I know what it's for
but it also for me symbolizes
something I wish were not true
or as true as it seems to be.
( ship's horn blasts )
( bell clanging )
I think probably everything
threatens liberty.
Everything is a potential trap.
Hence, one has
to be on the lookout.
Anything can become
a potential threat
because basically it's
a very fleeting state of being.
And in a way, to be free is,
in a sense, a transgression.
One's freedom always
threatens someone else
and someone else's freedom
threatens mine as well.
So it's a very
precarious balance
between my freedom to be myself
and someone else's freedom
to be himself or herself.
CUOMO:
She makes me think,
more than feel.
Makes me think how important
it is to remain vigilant
especially now, as a governor
where every day there are
new temptations
to forget that
our strength is liberty.
It can be very, very tempting
to squash a little freedom here,
to restrain a little bit there--
so she makes me think.
JIMMY STEWART:
You see, boys forget
what their country means
by just reading "The land
of the free" in history books.
Then they get to be men,
they forget even more.
Liberty is too precious a thing
to be buried in books.
Men should hold it up
in front of them
every single day of their lives
and say, "I'm free...
to think and to speak.
"My ancestors couldn't, I can.
And my children will."
MAN:
Oh, my God!
We finally,
really did it.
You maniacs!
You blew it up!
God damn you!
God damn you
all to hell!
MAN:
If you could say
one single force
that is threatening liberty,
in my opinion, it's ignorance.
Second, is to treat ourselves
as only economic units
rather than as spiritual beings.
America is not an actuality
but it's a potentiality.
We have to remember
that the universe
will not see somebody
like you again
in the entire
history of creation
So it's up to you to become
a dot, a paragraph
a page, blank page
chapter in the
history of creation.
FORMAN:
I don't think anybody
who was born in this country
really cares.
I think that if this show
is for American audiences
forget it.
You know, you are born here
and you take
everything for granted
And all you really mainly
see is what bothers you
and what irritates you.
We are so complacent.
It's so easy to accept
pleasant things.
It's like they should be here
and that I am, you know,
entitled to them.
No, I think that this...
this pile
of granite and iron
means a lot only for people
who came from abroad
who came following that light
in the torch.
MAN:
You know, we're so
used to freedom.
We're so used to doing
whatever we want.
We're so used to--
if we want to insult
the president, we do it.
But, you know, when you look
around the world, if you travel
you begin to realize
that we're the only people
who can do all this
in the world...
without any static.
McCULLOUGH:
Liberty is... what we Americans
have always wanted first of all.
It's what the country
was founded for
it's what the Revolution
was fought for.
All the great songs and sayings
and pronouncements of those
Revolutionary figures
were about liberty.
And they knew what it meant.
And because the French sent
the statue here
it was their way
of saying, implicitly
we recognize that that is
the gateway to a new world
and to the hope of the world.
PAUL SIMON:
♪ And I dreamed I was dying ♪
♪ I dreamed that
my soul rose unexpectedly ♪
♪ And looking back down at me,
smiled reassuringly ♪
♪ And I dreamed I was flying ♪
♪ High up above
my eyes could clearly see ♪
♪ The Statue of Liberty
sailing away to sea ♪
♪ And I dreamed I was flying. ♪
♪ For we come on the ship
they call the Mayflower ♪
♪ We come on the ship
that sailed the moon ♪
♪ We come in the age's
most uncertain hours ♪
♪ And sing an American tune ♪
♪ Oh, and it's all right ♪
♪ It's all right,
it's all right ♪
♪ You can't be
forever blessed ♪
♪ Still, tomorrow's gonna be
another working day ♪
♪ And I'm trying
to get some rest ♪
♪ That's all I'm trying,
to get some rest. ♪