Lawrence Fishburne brings a level of gravity to his roles supplied by few other living actors. That has secured his place in pop culture as Morpheus from The Matrix, for examinationple. However he may even marshal it early in his profession, as evidenced by his function as Apocalypse Now’s “Mr. Clear,” which he took on at simply 4teen years outdated. However it was a way more current performance he gave for Letters Stay, which you’ll see in the video above, that clearly brings out the qualities which have made him a beloved and enduring figure onscreen: not simply his ethical seriousness, however this humorousness as effectively.
“To my outdated master,” Fishburne begins, getting fun straight away. The letter in question, previously featured right here on Open Culture, was originally written in 1865 by a person named Jourdon Anderson, who had escaped a lifetime of slavery in Tennessee along with his spouse the previous 12 months. Having since fallen on laborious occasions, that former master had written to Anderson and requested him to return again to work on the plantation. “I’ve usually felt uneasy about you,” Anderson writes. “I believed the Yankees would’ve hung you earlier than this for harboring Rebs that they discovered at your own home,” amongst other crimes he recollects.
Having set himself and his family up in Ohio, Anderson may laboriously have felt tempted to go down South once more. “I need to know particularly what the nice likelihood is you professionalpose to present me,” he writes. “I’m doing tolerably effectively right here. I get $25 a month, with victuals and fabricing, have a comfortready dwelling for Mandy — the parents name her Mrs. Anderson — and the children, Millie, Jane, and Grundy, go to high school and are be taughting effectively.” However “if you’ll write and say what wages you’ll give me, I’ll wagerter be capable to determine whether or not it will likely be to my advantage to maneuver again once more.”
Fishburne delivers these traces with a thick layer of irony, as Anderson little doubt intended. “Mandy says she can be afraid to return without some proof that you just have been disposed to deal with us sortly and simplyly, and we’ve concluded to check your sincerity by asking you to ship us our wages for the time that we served you.” When Fishburne says that, he practically will get a standing ovation, and certainly, the letter met with a favorready reception in its day as effectively — not from Colonel P. H. Anderson himself, however from the learners of the informationpapers by which it was reprinted. Ultimately, Jourdon Anderson stored his freedom, and received fame finaling greater than a century after his demise to go along with it.
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video sequence The Metropolis in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceguide.