A celebrity in his own right, Ted Franklin Belue is recognized in faraway places. At home in Murray, he is pretty much incognito. Hefting a huge watermelon while browsing booths at the local farmers market with his wife, Lavina, Belue’s inherent energy simmers beneath the surface. He appears agile and fit as if he could leap or lunge on the spot if needed.
Writer, scholar, musician, living history consultant, re-enactor, and on-air commentator for the INSP Network, Outdoor Channel, History Channel, NBC, and NPR, Belue is gracious when greeted. Asked what has kept him busy through the COVID era and beyond, the first thing he mentions is the thirtieth anniversary of the film, “Last of the Mohicans,” the Michael Mann movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
Belue chronicled his experiences and reflections on his participation in the epic in a two-part series for the July/August and September/October 2022 issues of Muzzleloader magazine. He describes his role in the film as a “grunt,” a French and Indian War extra, the “lowest of the low in cinema’s uncredited pecking order.”
Looking back, he does not remember exactly how he got the gig, but he does recall that “A few months employment on a historic movie set of an era I loved sounded intriguing, even fun, and it dovetailed perfectly with my schedule.”
He sensed that the movie presented the rarest of opportunities. He asked himself, “Where else could a nonfiction writer of 18th-century frontier Americana experience an enduro of mock combat on a huge scale between yesteryear’s imperial forces with the day’s weapons and Native allies, cast high in the Blue Ridge shadowing Fort William Henry? And, be fed, quartered, and paid to do it?”
Interest in history has been a lifelong pursuit of Belue. “Early in my life, at least by third grade,” he admitted, “I became infatuated with the romance of America’s first ‘far west,’ that being frontier Kentucky, and woodland Indians, especially the Shawnee. In school, I realized I had a knack for being able to express myself with a pen.”
Also inspired by the past, Michael Mann’s affinity for “Last of the Mohicans” was sparked by the 1936 film version of the James Fennimore Cooper tale, starring Randolph Scott. According to Mann, “It was a black-and-white 16-millimeter print. I must have been three or four—it’s the first memory I have of a motion picture.”
That early impression led to Mann’s creation of the 1992 version. The director bought the screenplay with the intention of portraying Indians more realistically. He disliked the one-dimensional depiction of them as “simplistic villains.”
“I wanted people to be as intelligent, capricious humane, venal, and libidinous as anybody else,” he said.
For Ted Franklin Belue, realism is also a professional priority. The casting call for the movie laid out a series of requirements to boost authenticity. Applicants were not supposed to have facial hair, be in good physical condition, and “have prior experience with 18th-century military portrayals.”
Despite his pursuit of realism, Mann made a few additions to the script. According to Belue’s article, “He added romance, fast-paced action, a soaring orchestral score tinged with fiddles, Celtic and Appalachian voices and a script likening the Seven Years Wars in America to an existential threat.”
In 1992, when critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film, he said, “The Last of the Mohicans” is not as authentic and uncompromised as it claims to be — more of a matinee fantasy than it wants to admit — but it is probably more entertaining as a result.”
He also remarked, “The scenes of forest-fighting follow all the usual Hollywood rules: the hero rarely misses, and the villains rarely hit anyone needed later in the story.”
Today, Ted Franklin Belue is still committed to drawing people into frontier history through his work with the INSP channel. This year, he is featured on Daniel Boone episodes of the “Into the Wild Frontier” series. In addition, the books he has written on the topic – most recently, Finding Daniel Boone: His Last Years in Missouri – are available on Amazon.
Frontier Partisans’ Jim Cornelius lauds Belue as a model for “non-fiction historical storytelling that is accurate and authentic, but full of the rip-roaring vigor that the protagonists demand. This history is alive to him.”
