For Love and Glory (1993)

Daniel Markel plays Andrew Jackson Doyle, the handsome, fun-loving son of a Virginia plantation owner who is balking at his parents’ plans for his future.

Since he’s flunked out of VMI, those plans include running the family plantation and marrying Emily, the pretty blonde cousin who’s been living with the family for the last 15 years.

Ah, but he takes one look at pretty red-headed Rebecca Morgan serving food and drinks at a local pub and decides she’s the girl he loves.

She’s reluctant at first. She’s familiar with the way rich sons of plantation owners play with the heartstrings of naive young girls.

But she’s also eager to escape her current existence as caretaker for a father who’s drunk more than sober.

The Morgan family hardly embraces the new bride. But Andrew Jackson’s parents have problems of their own.

His mother Antonia wants to protect the world she’s known at the Elysian Fields plantation, where slaves are forbidden from learning to read or write and whipped for the slightest transgression.

His father Henry is a lawyer, convinced slavery is an albatross around the neck of the South, convinced war is foolhardy.

But war comes, ripping apart the young lovers as Alexander Jackson dashes off to battle and threatening to rip apart life at Elysian Fields as well.

Review:

Lackluster battle scenes speckle a telefilm that covers lots of expected ground.

There’s the poor white woman, shocked by the way slaves are treated. There’s the young black male slave, eager for freedom. There are a host of young men, shocked to find out what war is really like.

But this TV movie benefits from fiery performances from its two leads, Daniel Markel as Andrew Jackson Doyle and Tracy Griffith as the sassy Rebecca Morgan.

Another fresh touch comes from the friction between Antonia (Kate Mulgrew) and Henry (Robert Foxworth) Doyle. He’s having a none-too-secret affair with one of the slave women and has fathered her child. His wife is particularly hard on mother and son, as a result.

Directed by:
Robert Young

Cast:
Daniel Markel … Andrew Jackson Doyle
Tracy Griffith … Rebecca Morgan
Zach Galligan … Thomas Doyle
Tom O’Brien … Christian Morgan
Olivia d’Abo … Emily Doyle
Kate Mulgrew … Antonia Doyle
Robert Foxworth … Henry Doyle
Eric Schweig … Moses Moon
Laura Charrington … Ruby
Victor Love .. Peyton
Barton Heyman … Absher

Runtime: 95 min.

Memorable lines:

Henry Doyle: “Listen to me as a lawyer, not your husband. Slavery is a noose around the South’s neck, slowly choking it to death.”
Antonia, his wife: “Need I remind you, Henry, that our fortune is in the land and the slaves, which my family has owned for generations. And I expect you to defend that way of life. Is that clear?”

Rebecca Morgan, having just kissed Andrew Jackson for the first time: “You want to call on me, Andrew Jackson Doyle, you better be damned sure you never have whiskey on your breath.”

Henry Doyle: “Killing is a two-edged sword son. There’s more manhood in running 1,000 acres of Virginia topsoil than strutting your feathers in some useful cockfight.”

Antonia to Andrew Jackson: “How could you choose a wife so unworthy of you? She’s common.”

Rebecca to her brother: “Nothing’s simple anymore, Christian.”

Emily: “We prayed for you every day you were gone.”
Rebecca: “I bet. ‘Please let that common thing fall in a pit and never come out.'”

Laura Charrington as Ruby, the Elysian Fields slave Henry Doyle visits in the darkness of night in For Love and Glory (1993)

Olivia d’Abo as Emily Doyle, the pretty cousin who resents Rebecca’s marriage to Andrew Jackson Doyle in For Love and Glory (1993)

Eric Schweig as Moses Moon, explaining why a Cherokee would fight for the South in For Love and Glory (1993)

Tracy Griffith as Rebecca Morgan, demanding a visit to the Confederate front line in For Love and Glory (1993)