Glory & Honor, Glory & Honor, Glory & Honor, Glory & Honor

Production Notes

Delroy Lindo and Henry Czerny. - Photo by Michel Gauthier All photos © 1997 TBS, Inc. All rights reserved

“'Inveniam viam aut faciam—I shall find a way or make one.'
Those were the words from the Roman, Seneca, but they're going to be known as mine.” Robert Peary

On April 6, 1909 one of modern history's most remarkable events took place—two American men conquered the North Pole for the first time. One came home to a hero's welcome; the other slipped into anonymity, all but forgotten by history. Turner Network Television presents the epic story of Matthew Henson, the unsung hero of Commander Robert E. Peary's famed North Pole expedition, in GLORY & HONOR.

This largely untold story of Matthew Henson and Robert Peary attracted the talents of critically acclaimed film talents to television without hesitation. Urban action-adventure director Kevin Hooks (Passenger 57, Fled) shed life on the city streets to shoot in -15º weather. Delroy Lindo (Malcolm X, Ransom, Get Shorty, Clockers) plays the black man now credited as “co-discoverer of the North Pole,” with Henry Czerny (Clear and Present Danger, Mission: Impossible) as Robert E. Peary. The film is executive produced by Bruce Gilbert (Coming Home, The China Syndrome, On Golden Pond).

Robert Caputo, a distinguished photographer noted for his works for National Geographic Magazine, approached executive producer Bruce Gilbert with the story. “What compelled me was the complex relationships between Robert Peary and Matthew Henson. There is this tug-of-war between Peary, who was obsessed with a goal, and Henson, who was taking from life what it presented. It has been called `GLORY & HONOR' from the beginning, because those words personify the different personalities of these two men.”

Gilbert continues, “It's hard to understand the quest for the North Pole in the context of modem times, when airliners fly over it every single day. But the quest for the North Pole had been a dream for centuries. It was followed with the kind of worldwide attention that a space launch is looked at today. Except that several countries sponsored expeditions to claim the last great geographical prize.”

At a time when the United States was trying to prove itself a world power, Robert E. Peary, a civil engineer, was consumed with reaching the North Pole. Henry Czerny, who portrays Peary in Glory & Honor, explains, “Peary wanted to be the first person to the North Pole because he felt that was his chance to be part of the elite. It was a matter of national, as well as personal, glory.”

Peary hired Matthew Henson to be his personal valet in the early 1890s. Delroy Lindo, who portrays Henson, says, “Because of the time in which these men lived, the relationship started out as one of a master and a servant. But during the 18 years of association and nine attempts to the North Pole, Henson—by virtue of the fact that he learned to communicate with the Inuit people, served as Peary's translator and drove the dog sleds—became indispensable to Peary.” Czerny adds, “Henson was certainly less obsessive than Peary, but just as ambitious.”

“It was an extremely complex relationship,” continues Lindo. “The master-servant relationship, which was the norm in American society at the time, was made nonsense by the severe world of the Arctic. That hierarchy could not exist because the Arctic demanded that man's ability and character prevail to survive. Peary was forced by circumstance to rely on Matthew Henson, who became the link to the Inuit people. Neither Peary nor Henson could have gotten to the Pole without them. Yet, each time Peary and Henson returned to the United States, their relationship reverted back to the classic master—servant relationship.” After they returned from the North Pole, Peary became a national hero and celebrity. Henson, who, for all his heroism, was still a black man in a society largely closed to people of color, spent his life without notoriety, working as a parking attendant and later as a clerk in a Customs House in New York.

The actors feel a responsibility to be accurate in their portrayal of the men they represented in the film. Lindo says, “I went to The National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C, where they opened the archive doors to me. The Explorers Club in New York was also a great help. I was even able to meet descendants of Henson and they, too, were incredibly open, sharing and generous in teaching me the reality of Henson's life.”

Striving for authenticity, the filmmakers shot on location near the Arctic Circle on Baffin Island,. For Lindo, “authenticity” came in the form of an ice camp at the start of production. He recalls, “The Inuit natives invited me to `live on the land' for a night. I slept in an igloo that the Inuit built on the spot. It took five hours—what a skill to cut bricks out of snow! I was humbled and honored by their desire to share with me a truly significant portion of what it means to survive in the Arctic and to experience what Henson might have experienced.”

“It was a dangerous environment that you could never become too comfortable with,” says director Kevin Hooks of the stark and dramatic landscape. Adds Gilbert, “We shot on the frozen Polar Sea, often in blinding snowstorms. The ice does crack sometimes, creating crevices that are covered by snow, and you can't see them. We did lose a couple of snow mobiles through the ice, but fortunately no one was hurt.” Recalls Hooks, “One day we picked a camera position on `packed ice,' as we now know they call it. It was high tide when we set it up and low tide when we finished the scene. We looked behind as we were striking the set to realize we had just missed a forty-foot rise. It was things like that you had to be careful of out there.”

Getting to location was another challenge. “You couldn't exactly roll your trucks up and park, and there were no streets signs to indicate where to go,” says Gilbert. “We had more than 70 skidoos (snow mobiles) with kimotiks (sled boxes) of various sizes attached to move people and equipment. To see all of these vehicles heading out over the ice was like watching a wagon train on skis.”

“You hoped when you arrived on set your mouth wasn't so frozen you couldn't say your lines,” recalled Czerny. “You know you're close to the environment when you get that odd shiver during your scene and it's not necessarily fake—it's very real.” Peary lost eight toes in the quest for the North Pole before being successful on the ninth and final try.

The 19O9 expedition faced life-threatening battles. “The real problem of getting to the North Pole was starvation on the frozen Polar Sea,” explains Gilbert. “Not only could the ice open up, cutting off your return, but it could hold you up for so long you ran out of food.”

There has always been controversy about whether the expedition actually got to the pole at all and, if so, who from Peary's group actually made it there first. “Henson was most likely the first Westerner to the North Pole,” says Gilbert. “He was the expedition member who broke the trail for most of the nine expeditions—and certainly did so on the last leg of the final expedition. The records that Peary kept are mysteriously blank on the day of arrival at the North Pole. Later pages were inserted that refer to their arrival, but no where else in the 18 years of meticulous journals was there any insert after the fact, like this.”

The men who made Glory & Honor see any number of interesting and important messages in the story. “I hope that Henson's contribution to American history and culture is acknowledged in a way that it has not been before,” says Lindo. “There is a legacy here that needed to be illuminated and illustrated to inform generations to come about people like Henson,” says Hooks. John Houston, first assistant director, Inuit casting director and native of Baffin Island, sees it as something more personal: “The knowledge that what Henson found in the Arctic was something he never could have expected to find—love, understanding, friendship and a group of peopk who accepted him for who he was, regardless of his skin color, religion and all the other things that were such causes for intolerance from which he came.” Gilbert concludes, “Most of all, it's a story that has a moral for our times about the right way to live and the right way to balance going after glory and living with honor.”

Matthew Henson lived his life after conquering the North Pole quietly and with honor. The glory came 79 years later, when, on April 6, 1988, his body was moved from a cemetery in New York and reinterred with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery—next to Robert Peary. On the 1988 tombstone, Henson is at last credited with being “co-discoverer of the North Pole.”

“For myself, I got to where I was supposed to be.

There's honor enough in that.”

Matthew Henson

TNT's GIory & Honor