Unbelievable Scenes From Historical Movies That Actually Happened

 

Unbelievable Scenes From Historical Movies That Actually Happened

Savvy moviegoers know that movies based on historical events are never completely accurate (partly because people like us point it out). It's easy for a film lover to become jaded and assume that every sensational moment in a historical movie was dreamed up by a screenwriter - but just because historical movies fudge the truth, that doesn't mean they're 100% false, either. 

History itself is full of shocking and extreme human behavior, and sometimes filmmakers don't need to exaggerate what really happened. Sometimes real life does play out like a movie, and you might not even be aware of some movie characters based on real historical figures. These 12 movie scenes that actually happened might seem like Hollywood inventions, but sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.

1

Mess Attendant Doris Miller Really Did Take Down Several Japanese Planes At Pearl Harbor.

Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor has caught plenty of criticism over the years, for everything from sanitizing the racism common to the US military in the 1940s to just being a bad movie. But the film does accurately depict one of its biggest moments, when Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Doris Miller commandeers an unattended machine gun to shoot down several enemy planes.

When the real Doris Miller joined the US Navy as a 19-year-old in 1939, Navy policy prevented Black men from receiving promotions - only allowing them to serve in the "messman" branch. One of Miller's fellow messmen described the job as “seagoing bellhops, chambermaids, and dishwashers.” Miller's battle station was below deck, where his duty was to pass ammunition up to the ship's gunners.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Miller was doing laundry for one of the ship's officers when the Japanese surprise attack occurred. Miller reported to his battle station to find it flooded, then went above deck to assist in the counter-attack. He carried his mortally wounded captain to safety. After that, he helped an officer load and fire one of the ship's unattended anti-aircraft guns.

Then, without orders and without even any training, Miller commandeered a second gun and shot down multiple Japanese Zeros. Once his gun ran out of ammunition, Miller returned below deck and pulled several sailors out of the burning water. He was one of the last three sailors to abandon ship, swimming through 400 yards of water and burning oil to shore.

Miller became the first Black sailor to receive the Navy Cross. However, his actions weren't deemed worthy of a Medal of Honor, unlike 16 white servicemen who received one for their actions that day.

Although some Americans, including Ronald Reagan, believed that Miller's heroics single-handedly ended armed forces discrimination, it still took several more years for the US military to officially desegregate. Today, Miller is remembered as both a war hero and a trailblazer, and in 2020 the Navy named an aircraft carrier after him.

2
Bruno Gaido Really Did Take Down A Bomber And Get Promoted Like He Did In 'Midway'

One scene from 2019's Midway, which depicts the 1942 raid on the Marshall Islands by Japanese bombers, seems totally unbelievable. In the film, anti-aircraft fire heavily damages a Japanese plane and it careens towards the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Nick Jonas, playing real sailor Bruno Gaido, sees that his ship and crewmates are in imminent danger, and runs across the deck. He jumps into a parked bomber and fires its machine gun at the enemy aircraft.

The Japanese bomber barely misses the Enterprise, but does clip Gaido's bomber. Even more incredibly, Gaido gets promoted on the spot. The moment would appear to be the same exaggerated heroics you'd expect from other Roland Emmerich movies, but according to Gaido's nephew Mike Bortolotti, it really did happen that way.

Gaido actually did leave his duty station and take down the enemy plane - something he wasn't even trained for. Gaido's commanding officer, Admiral William Halsey, witnessed Gaido's heroism, summoned him to the bridge, and promoted him two ranks to Aviation Machinists' Mate First Class. Journalists even interviewed Gaido's mother Clementa about it shortly after it happened.

Bortolotti's only complaint? Nick Jonas's decision to use a Brooklyn accent. The real Bruno Gaido grew up in Milwaukee.

3
Abraham Lincoln’s Letter Read In ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Was Real

The 1998 WWII film Saving Private Ryan isn't based on a true story. Its main characters, Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) and Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) weren't real people, and the US Military didn't order a squad of soldiers to venture behind enemy lines and rescue a serviceman whose three brothers had perished in combat. However, it's definitely inspired by real events and real people.

In 1942, five brothers from the same family, the Sullivans, all lost their lives during the Battle of Guadalcanal. In response, the US Department of War instituted a "sole survivor" policy, which stated that family members of service people who perished in combat wouldn't have to serve. The policy was put into action in 1944, when the US Army brought Sergeant Fritz Niland home after his three brothers were KIA. Niland's story was the direct inspiration for the movie. (Although, unlike Private Ryan, Niland was easily located and didn't require a search party.)

At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, General George Marshall (a real person) and his staff are debating whether they should, like the title suggests, save Private Ryan. They mention the Sullivan brothers, but the deciding factor is when General Marshall reads "the Bixby Letter."

According to the movie, this is a letter President Lincoln wrote to grieving mother Lydia Bixby, who supposedly lost five sons in the Civil War. Determined not to allow Mrs. Ryan to share the same fate as Lydia Bixby, General Marshall agrees to rescue Private Ryan.

It might sound farfetched that General Marshall conveniently had a letter from the 1860s that  addressed his "sole survivor" problem in 1944, but the Bixby Letter is very much real. Many of the details about the document are uncertain - there's doubt as to whether Mrs. Bixby really lost five sons, as well as whether she might have been a Confederate sympathizer. Recent research has also indicated that the letter was written not by Lincoln, but by his secretary, John Hay. But regardless of the doubts, the Bixby Letter has stood the test of time as one of the most evocative writings about the human cost of war. Journalist Henry Watterson called it “the most sublime letter ever penned by the hand of man.” The full text of the letter reads:

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

4
Hugh Glass Really Did Survive A Bear Mauling, Like In 'The Revenant'

The harrowing bear attack in The Revenant is riveting cinema, but the idea of an adult male managing to fend off a 500 lb mother grizzly and then taking it out with a hunting knife seems farfetched. Yet a version of the scene really did happen to frontier woodsman Hugh Glass.

In 1823, Glass was part of an expedition to establish trade with the Crow Indians in present-day South Dakota. In August, Glass was alone searching for game when he came upon a mother grizzly and two cubs. Just like in the movie, the bear charged Glass and mauled him.

The movie version of the attack didn't play out exactly how it did in real life. In the movie, the bear charges and mauls Glass, then he plays possum and shoots the bear with a rifle, which leads to another round of fighting. Glass finally defeats the bear by pulling out a hunting knife and finishing it off. In reality, accounts differ on whether Glass took out the bear himself, or whether the other members of his party heard his screams and saved him.

Whatever the case, Glass did end up severely injured, sustaining a broken leg, a ripped scalp, a punctured throat, and many gashes. After his fellow trappers abandoned him, Glass crawled between 200 and 300 miles to safety.

The movie did take other liberties with Glass's story, however. He never had a son and he never tracked down John Fitzgerald for revenge. But overall the movie does do justice to Hugh Glass's feat of survival.

5
The Elderly Couple That Chose To Go Down With The 'Titanic' Together Were Real

One way humans try to understand tragic events is to personalize them. The thought of hundreds or thousands of people perishing at once can seem incomprehensible. Instead, we try to process the event through the eyes of one person or a small group. 

Audiences wept during Titanic when they saw the elderly couple holding each other in bed while the ship sank, having given up their seats on a lifeboat so others could live. It feels like a metaphor: the Titanic sinking was a chaotic and senseless tragedy, but some passengers were still brave enough to make the ultimate sacrifice so others could live. 

But a version of this scene really did happen. The elderly couple weren't invented characters but based on real-life couple Isidor and Ida Straus. Isidor, 67, was the co-owner of Macy's department store and a former US Congressman, and he and Ida, age 63, were first-class passengers on the fateful voyage. According to their great-grandson Paul A. Kurtzman, Ida boarded a lifeboat and a ship's officer offered Isidor the chance to join her. Seeing that some women and children wouldn't get a seat on a lifeboat, Isidor declined.

Then, instead of abandoning her husband of 40 years, Ida stepped off the lifeboat to remain with him as the ship went down. James Cameron actually filmed this moment, but didn't include it in the final cut. It's unknown if Ida and Isidor returned to their bed like the movie suggests, but everything else is accurate.

6
The 'Head In A Vise' Scene From ‘Casino’ Actually Happened6
The 'Head In A Vise' Scene From ‘Casino’ Actually Happened

Here's one that most of us hope is fictional, but did actually happen.

Like Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's 1995 mobster classic Casino is based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi (Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas), and Scorsese again based his characters on real people with changed names. Like Goodfellas, some of the events of Casino are fictional while others are real.

In the movie, Joe Pesci plays Nicky Santoro, a violent mob enforcer whose full brutality is revealed when he has to interrogate a hitman named Tony Dogs. Tony Dogs has recently shot up a Vegas mob bar and slain three people, including a cocktail server. Santoro wants to know if Tony Dogs worked alone, and when Tony Dogs insults him, Santoro puts his head in a vise. Tony Dogs still refuses to confess as the vise tightens, and finally his eyeball pops out.

Although the circumstances were different, a version of the infamous "head in a vise" scene really did happen in real life. Nicky Santoro is based on real-life mobster Anthony John “Ant” Spilotro.

As far as we know, Spilotro didn't torture anyone named Tony Dogs in Vegas in the 1970s, but he did use a vise on a mobster a decade earlier in Chicago. In 1962, a mobster named Billy McCarthy took out two mob-affiliated brothers, Ron and Phil Scalvo, and Spilotro and some associates interrogated him. How Spilotro dealt with McCarthy is arguably even more brutal than what happened in Casino.

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say McCarthy also lost an eye, as well as his life

7
Chris Kyle Actually Did Take Out An Enemy From Over A Mile Away, Like In 'American Sniper'

The real-life Chris Kyle is known to have exaggerated his military record in his autobiography American Sniper, and Clint Eastwood's movie based on his book does change and exaggerate real events for storytelling purposes. But the Navy SEAL sniper really did manage to take out an enemy from more than a mile away.

In the movie version, the enemy in question is a sniper and former Syrian Olympic sharpshooter named Mustafa, who menaces coalition troops and Iraqi police officers across Iraq. Mustafa has already slain one of Kyle's friends, Ryan "Biggles" Job. Toward the end of the movie, Kyle finally gets revenge by shooting Mustafa from a distance of 2,100 yards.

Though Mustafa was a real person, he didn't take out Biggles, and his sniping career wasn't cut short by Kyle. Instead of a legendary enemy sniper, Kyle shot an enemy insurgent who was aiming a rocket launcher at American troops. This is when Kyle's 2,100-yard shot actually happened, in August 2008.

The shot was Kyle's longest confirmed kill, but not the longest ever recorded. At the time, that would have been Rob Furlong's March 2002 shot from 2,657 yards. That record has since been broken by a Canadian sniper, who in 2017 took out an ISIS militant from 3,871 yards.

8
Howard Hughes Actually Crash Landed In Beverly Hills As ‘The Aviator’ Depicts.

It might seem ridiculous that Howard Hughes would have crashed an experimental military aircraft on its maiden flight over one of the most heavily populated cities in the world, but the crash scene in 2004's The Aviator is pretty close to what happened.

In both the movie and in real life, the Hughes Aircraft Company received two contracts during the 1940s to design new planes for use in WWII. The conflict ended before the planes were completed and the contracts were canceled, but Hughes still completed development of his XF-11 spy plane.

On July 7, 1946, Hughes took the XF-11 on its first test flight. The flight was only supposed to last 20 minutes, but Hughes decided on a longer flight around the Los Angeles Basin to show off his new creation. (The movie suggests the original plan was to fly for an hour and 45 minutes, and Hughes does stick to that after a little pushback.)

During the return to his company's Culver City airfield, Hughes discovered an oil leak in the right engine. The engine quickly lost power and the plane began to plummet. The movie shows Hughes attempting to land on a golf course, just as he tried to do in real life. Instead, Hughes crash landed in Beverly Hills, smashing into three homes and destroying one. The incident left Hughes with a crushed collarbone, six broken ribs, third-degree burns on his hands, and lung damage from smoke inhalation.

9
Johnny Cash Did Spontaneously Propose To June Carter Onstage.

Walk the Line tells the life story of country star Johnny Cash and his relationship with his wife and longtime singing partner, June Carter Cash. The movie definitely has its inaccuracies, but when it came to the moment when Johnny proposed to June, it didn't have to exaggerate.

In the movie, Johnny and June are onstage performing their hit duet "Jackson" (for which they had just won a Grammy), when Johnny stops mid-song and pops the question. June tries to get him to continue singing, and so Johnny pours his heart out about how much he loves her and how much he wants to be a better partner. She says yes.

It definitely seems like a Hollywood invention, but Johnny really did propose to June onstage on February 22, 1968, in London, Ontario, Canada. Just like in the movie, June tried to keep singing before she said "yes." They were married a week later in Franklin, Kentucky.

10
Xanadu From ‘Citizen Kane’ Is An Unexaggerated Depiction Of William Randolph Hearst’s Actual Estate.

Charles Foster Kane, the main character of Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, is fictional, but the movie was inspired by real events. Kane was based on real-life newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst - and so closely that the real Hearst actually tried to stop the film from ever being seen.

One detail seems like an exaggeration: Charles Foster Kane's wildly ostentatious pleasure palace, Xanadu, where he lives in isolation following the failure of his political career. It's even named after the lavish pleasure palace Kublai Khan completed in 1256. In reality, Hearst had his own pleasure palace that was just as luxurious as his fictional counterpart - and people can still visit it today.

Hearst spent 28 years building Hearst Castle on what ended up being over 250,000 acres of land near San Simeon, California (Kane's Xanadu was in Florida). The newspaper mogul spared no expense on the 165-room estate, which includes gardens, pools, terraces, walkways, 15th-century painted ceilings imported from Europe, and what was the world's largest private zoo. Today, the descendants of Hearst's zebras can still be seen roaming the grounds.

11
Tommy From ‘Goodfellas’ Really Did Whack A Fellow Crew Member Over An Insult.

Martin Scorsese based his 1990 classic Goodfellas on Nicholas Pileggi's 1985 mobster tell-all Wiseguy, but it's by no means a direct adaptation. Scorsese specifically changed the names of many of his main characters to acknowledge that he was also changing events and biographical details.

But Goodfellas isn't entirely fictional. In one memorable sequence, Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who's based on real-life mob enforcer Tommy DeSimone, takes out an underling for almost no reason. In the movie, bartender Michael "Spider" Gianco (Michael Imperioli) forgets to bring Tommy a drink, so Tommy humiliates him by ordering him to dance and shooting him in the foot. A few weeks later, Tommy makes fun of Spider's heavily bandaged foot, but this time Spider stands up for himself. When the rest of the crew laughs, an enraged Tommy whacks Spider.

It might seem like this sequence was invented to show just how brutal and merciless someone like Tommy DeSimone was, but mobster Henry Hill - who's the subject of Pileggi's book and the inspiration for Ray Liotta's character - told Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that the event pretty much happened like the movie said it did.

DeSimone really did antagonize and wound Spider over a forgotten drink, and really did take him out when Spider talked back. (Although DeSimone shot Spider in the thigh, not the foot, and there was no mention of dancing.) According to Hill, it was the Spider incident that made him finally realize DeSimone was a true psychopath.

12
William Wallace Really Was Executed As Theatrically As ‘Braveheart’ Portrays.

Braveheart is so full of inaccuracies that calling it a "historical film" is generous. The depiction of William Wallace's execution also wasn't entirely faithful to the details, but mostly because it was even more grisly than the movie suggests.

In Braveheart, William Wallace is sentenced to public execution unless he admits to treason against the king. The film doesn't specify what his exact punishment is going to be, probably to build suspense, but the real William Wallace was sentenced to be hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered, and that is indeed what happened.

Showing every last detail of these events would probably have meant an NC-17 rating for the film. Braveheart may not be 100% historically accurate, but the ending definitely gets the point across that Wallace met a terrible fate.

13
Al Capone Didn't Beat A Guy To Death With A Bat At A Banquet...It Was Three Guys.

Though the 1987 crime-drama blockbuster The Untouchables is based on real-life figures, the events portrayed are mostly Hollywood contrivances. One of its most notorious scenes, however, actually has roots in an even more gruesome factual occurrence.

When Robert De Niro's Al Capone delivers a memorable monologue at a banquet full of his underlings, which is punctuated by Capone bludgeoning the weak link amongst them with a trusty baseball bat, gangster movie magic was made. But surprisingly, unlike most of the rest of the highly sensationalized, action-oriented film, the violence portrayed onscreen actually for once fell short of what really transpired.

In 1929, fresh off the St Valentine's Day Massacre, the increasingly unhinged Capone did indeed spill traitorous blood via baseball bat at a gala dinner packed with his minions. However, unlike what is seen in the film, there were three victims not just one. The men (hit-men John Scalise and Albert Anselmi along with Lieutenant Joe Giunta) were revealed to be conspiring to take Capone out, and a feast held in their honor was a trap sprung for the Big Fellow (as he was known) to personally make them an example in front of others in the organization.