Face-to-Face: George C. Marshall portrait

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Martin Sullivan: Lemme begin by asking: Who has been in Arlington Cemetery and happened to pass by, or went to, General Marshall's grave?

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Anybody? Steve has. OK.

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The reason I ask is because, as a young enlisted man in the Army, years ago, that's how I first encountered General Marshall.

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I was stationed in Fort Myer. And I used to spend weekends sometimes roaming around Arlington

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soaking in the character of American history that that wonderful historical cemetery provides for us.

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And I'm just wandering around and a fairly modest tombstone caught my eye - because of the five stars of a general of the Army.

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and I went over to take a look. Marshall, that's what it said on one side, but underneath it said

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things, that I knew some of them, but I didn't know all of them

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Chief of Staff of the United States Army throughout all of World War Two

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Secretary of State, when we think of the Marshall plan which was so critical in reviving Europe in the post war era

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President of the American Red Cross, which I didn't know, but which he took on as a voluntary assignment

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Secretary of Defense and those of you who know your Korean War history know that it was President Truman who called General Marshall out of retirement, really in his old age, at the age of seventy, nearly, to come back and serve as Secretary of Defense and one of the toughest assignments that George Marshall had, as Secretary of Defense was what? Does anybody remember the great decision that Truman made that was so....

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illegible answer from crowd

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Yes! The firing of General Douglas MacArthur and that is a story that intertwines two powerful personalities as different as day and night.

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George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur, and General MacArthur, or "Dugout Doug" as some of his troops call him, is around the corner.

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we might look at Howard Chandler Christy, Howard Chandler Christy portrait of MacArthur

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but then the last item also caught my eye,

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Nobel Peace Prize, which of course he won for the Marshall plan, and which he accepted in Stockholm in 1953.

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And so how extraordinary that a career soldier who entered the Army at the beginning of the 20th Century after having graduated, not from West Point,

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but from Virgina Military Institute in Lexington

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went on through four decades of military service, much of it really obscure. Everybody knew George Marshall to be a brilliant, capable man, but it was not until he was almost 58 years old

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that he finally became recognized as a the man that President Roosevelt felt confident could be the leader of the United States Army as we prepared for World War Two.

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So that got me, personally, interested in the Marshall story.

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Now, here is a portrait of General Marshall in uniform and the date on this is attributed as 1949 but it must have been started earlier,

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Thomas Edgar Stephens, who is the portraitist here, is known for his images of a lot of famous Americans of the time.

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In fact, we have of course two five-star Generals on view here in the National Portait Gallery. Who's the other one?

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Eisenhower. But here's not here in the World War Two gallery. Because he's in the Hall of Presidents.

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But there are two things. One is that the same artist, Thomas Edgar Stephens, born in Wales, who painted a large number of important Americans

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and secondly, even though Eisenhower appropriately hangs in the hall of Presidents, he's wearing the same five star General military uniform as we see General Marshall in here

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There's a paradox because just as Eisenhower is represented as President even though the portrait is of a General, this portrait, done, we think beginning in 1947 By Thomas Edgar Stephens, was done after General Marshall had retired

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from the Army and he was in fact Secretary of State by that time,

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which he - a position he held for a couple years, but his military identity was what so many people think of when we think of "Who was George Marshall in American life?" General Marshall, and we'll talk about his qualities in a minute. Let's go back to the portrait

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What do we see here? What kind of man looks out at us? Across 60 years.

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Martin Sullivan: anyone wanna play with that a little bit? Give me some adjectives? Some descriptors...

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Audience #1: Tall.

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Martin Sullivan: Tall. He was over six feet.

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Audience #2: Resolute.

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Martin Sullivan: RESOLUTE. What a great word! Because General Marshall was an austere man, everyone said that.

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Um, he was not always serious but he was mostly always serious because of his sense of duty and service, okay?

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What about his eyes? Looking back at our eyes.

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Audience #3: [[inaudible]]

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Martin Sullivan: Pardon me?

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Audience #3: Thoughtful.

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Martin Sullivan: Thoughtful. Um, bright blue, piercing blue according to those who knew him well, and they could pierce like knives if he was displeased with you.

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Easy going, joking, or all business?

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Audience #4: All business.

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Martin Sullivan: All business, and that was part of the trait of being a career military man and part of what I think of as General Marshall's, uh Victorian persona.

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He regarded his his job as his duty, whatever his job was; don't complain, don't explain, unless you have to get into the details of it.

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Um, anything about the pose?

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He's seated in the chair, he's looking square at the portraitist, what does that say to us?

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Some of our other portraits that we see here, look-look at, for example, General Mark Clark another World War Two hero over here.

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Mark Clark has a sense of wistful tragedy almost, doesn't he?

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But he's not looking at the painter, he's not looking at us. He's either reflecting perhaps on the horrors of the war he saw particularity in Italy and Germany or maybe something else, or maybe he's just wishing he could get the heck out of dodge,

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uh but he's not heavily decorated either. General -I'm sorry- Admiral Halsey, in back of us. He's looking sort of toward the camera, but he's telling you "I'm Bull Halsey, and nobody messes with me,"

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right? And that was exactly his identity as a brilliant Naval commander in the Pacific, but lets go back to General Marshall.

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Austere. Simple.

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Martin Sullivan: No, he doesn't. And so we can always ask that question when we look at portraits.

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Is the portraitist doing a little makeover? Or are we looking at [[cellphone ring]] the way General-- I think that might be me! Would you excuse me? This is terrible! Yes! I'm sorry. Um--

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How old would you guess General Marshall is here? [[audience answer]] Well, he's--65 is a little closer. He's 67 or 68 years old.

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Was he a field commander in the typical tradition of military men who ascend to the high ranks? No, he was not. He was a brilliant staff officer.

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And that is how he made his mark in World War I, as a colonel, a young colonel, on the staff of General Blackjack Pershing - John J. Pershing.

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And Marshall, although he commanded troops, never commanded troops in battle. It was maybe the great regret of his life.

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But you can see in this painting a sense of a man who- probably has seen a lot, but went to bed and slept at night.

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The story is told, for example, when Eisenhower's enormous invasion force was preparing to leave England for Normandy,

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and the weight of a million lives, literally hung on the decisions that had been made by Eisenhower - and by Marshall and the staff at the Pentagon.

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General Marshall went home, had dinner with his wife, had a cup of tea, and went to bed.

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Said, 'There's nothing more I can do.' Okay? And I think we get a little bit of a sense of that quality.

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He was also not the easiest sitter. There are not tons of Marshall portraits hanging around, because he wasn't so much interested in himself [[cellphone ring]] or his image.

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And, in fact, the story is told of this particular portrait when--

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Oh my, we got all kinds of thing going on to-- [[laughter]]

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When Stephens had seduced General Marshall to come and sit for this portrait,

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he--of course he was Secretary of State, his desk was loaded with stuff, the phone was ringing off the hook, and in the middle of the sitting General Marshall abruptly just stood up, walked out! And didn't come back. [[laughter]]

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And Stephens at first thought, 'Oh my God, he really doesn't like what I'm doing'.

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But it turned out he had forgotten something that he was supposed to be doing, or had on his to-do list, and it just mattered to him more, you know?

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So, although he's represented here, I think very fairly, as the extraordinary, reserved, dignified human being that he was, he didn't put a lot of emotional energy into being a sitter.

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The simplicity of the background, perhaps also suggests a little bit of that.

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And you know, when you look at our military leaders today, one of the things that you'll see is the 'resume', OK? The fruit salad?

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Over the left breast pocket? Which is all of the medals, all the places they've served, and the honors that they've received, and so forth.

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And then there's typically other stuff going on - there's a name tag, there's a this-and-that.

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You know, for a five-star general this is not many decorations. It's fairly simple, and that is the way he liked it.

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He never won the Medal of Honor, unlike Douglas MacArthur.

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He was recognized by foreign governments, but chose not to wear any of the decorations as part of his uniform.

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He was, first and foremost, a really simple, living human being.

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There are so many stories about General Marshall that many of you probably will know.

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One that touches me, especially now in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan, is how,

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when the United States got into World War II in a big way, and General Marshall in his new quarters over at the Pentagon was brought the daily reports of casualties,

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he said to his briefers: 'I want to see the killed and the wounded numbers represented vividly in color. I don't want to just see a memo. I need to understand what this means to our military'.

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And then he personally signed letters of condolence to the families of troops who were killed in battle, until our casualties got to be so great that he could have been doing it all day long and still not kept up, okay?

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So this was a man with a fierce sense of duty, and at the same time, a really lovable simplicity.

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Another story about him is that when he was being driven to work at the Pentagon - and particularly on days like today when it was raining or whatever -

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if he saw, let's say, a group of secretaries waiting for a bus at a bus stop, he'd have his car pull over and he'd say 'Pile in!'

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Martin Sullivan: You know, none of the motorcade stuff, none of the --of the--tinted glass windows, and things like that. General Marshall was in so many respects a man of the people. It was perhaps sig--the single personal tragedy of his life was that he never really had a family of his own.

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As a student at VMI, he became attracted to a young woman who lived in Lexington, Virginia, Elizabeth Carter Coles, and he courted her even though she was an indefinite number of years older than he, which actually was quite a few, but he was a serious suitor, and obviously a guy with prospects. They married. Her health was never particularly good. She couldn't have children

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and she passed away relatively young, about 49 years old, and so he was a widower before the age of 50. And at that point he was at Fort Benning, Georgia as Commandant of the Infantry School and revolutionizing the way in which infantry strategy and tactics were being taught. And he was introduced to a woman who had come to town, Katherine Tupper Brown, from Baltimore,

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and there are charming stories about their courtship which she recounts. She wrote a book in the late Forties called Army Wife and one of them is about the first time they met at a mutual friend's home, and Colonel Marshall said, 'Well I'll drive you home, ah, Mrs Brown.' And she said, 'Well thank you very much Colonel.' And they got in his car and they drove and they drove

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and they drove, and she started seeing the same streets again while they were chatting and she said, 'Colonel, you live here, don't you know where you're going?' He said, 'I have taken every step I could to avoid the direct route to where you're going because I really want to talk with you.' [[laughs]] And so they married.

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And she brought some stepchildren into his life, of whom he was very fond. One of whom, however, Alan Tupper Brown, became a personal tragedy, because he was one of many young men who came into the service and was killed in action, in Italy, in 1944.

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And he was very close. General Marshall invested all of that emotion that he hid from his colleagues he invested in his family and so that loss was staggering for him personally in the middle of all the issues of the war that were going on. And so he made it a point, on an inspection trip, under General Mark Clark, to go to the point where his stepson had been killed.

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Martin Sullivan: And of course, you can go on and on with stories about General Marshall and his time. One of the reasons this room, I think, feels like a good place for him is that he is surrounded by some of the iconic figures. And one, in particular, I want to call our attention to, in fact, we can move over and talk about Winston Churchill and George Marshall, for just a second

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[[sound of footsteps]]

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Now, this is the United States National Portrait Gallery. What's Winston Churchill doing in it? [[Audience member speaks]] He was an honorary--

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Martin Sullivan: He was made an honorary citizen of the United States, and although that in itself was a threshhold, he probably belongs in here even if that had never happened, because of his importance to the people of the United States. This is a portrait made by Douglas Chandor and

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you know the Hall of Presidents, we talked about the Eisenhower portrait? Do you know the portrait of FDR that has his hands--ah, multiple representations of his hands doing different things, his glasses are in them, his pen and so forth? Same artist.

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Douglas Chandor, who I think captured more of the vitality, the energy, the potency, of both FDR and Winston Churchill. And Churchill and Marshall had a particularly good relationship, and in a lot of respects, I think it would be fair to say that they had an easier relationship than General Marshall and his own boss, FDR.

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One of the stories about George Marshall, who was a stickler for propriety was that when he was not the Chief of Staff of the Army but the Deputy Chief of Staff, he was one of a cluster of military men around Roosevelt's desk talking about military preparations and priorities, how to spend the limited money that Congress had appropriated to do this, that, or the other thing, and--

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and the President said, 'Well, I think we need to build 10,000 new bombers,' or something like that, and went around the room to just hear from different people, who were all yes-men, and then he turned to General Marshall and he said, 'What about you, George?' and Marshall said, 'Mr President, I don't agree at all.

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And--okay, that's pretty flat in a room of conviviality and two things occurred. Number one, Marshall won the argument and number two, FDR never called him George again.[[Laughter]] General Marshall.

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Winston Churchill, on the other hand, came to admire the man whom he called the Organizer of Victory. They had a relationship which was not intimate. You know, think of the way this guy lived. Totally different to Marshall's. Winston Churchill up all night, garrulous, drinking champagne, brandy, massive cigars, telling stories, annoying everyone with his self-centeredness, okay?

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George Marshall tight up--wrapped tight as a drum, austere in all of his habits, tried to be in bed at night at 9 o'clock or 9:30, up early in the morning to ride his horse. Somehow, these two men found a way to communicate a basis for the allies to work together successfully during the Second World War. And I think this portrait gives us one clue as to why that relationship worked. What is Winnie wearing?

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Martin Sullivan: He's wearing a field marshal's outfit, sort-of, he's wearing a military outfit. He had been of course First Lord of the Admiralty at one point in his very long career. And look at all of his, ah, 'fruit salad' and his many medals and so forth. He was a wannabe! Marshall was the real thing.

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Not to say that Winston Churchill was not the real thing, he was a brave man, he fought in the Boer War and so forth. But during the Second World War--and he was six years older than Marshall--there was nothing that Churchill liked better than putting on military garb and inserting himself into that circle of people.

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Since we're here, I can't resist turning around and looking past Ian at that portrait and that is who? [[audience]] MacArthur. General MacArthur.
Martin Sullivan: General MacArthur. And again, what a contrast. Two gentlemen who were towering figures in the United States Army. Born in the same year, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, 1880. Douglas MacArthur, the son of a famous general, went to West Point; the only child of his adored mother.

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His mother actually moved across the river from West Point so that she could be near young Doug throughout his academy years. Rapid ascent through the ranks. Was a general and earned the Medal of Honor in the First World War when Marshall was behind the lines as a staff officer for General Pershing.

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And of course, this portrait by Howard Chandley--[[corrects]] Chandler Christy, who is probably best known as an illustrator, a magazine illustrator and so forth, captures the swagger, the bravado, the sense of the swirling of events around the man; that sort of

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beat-up old hat that MacArthur was constantly photographed in. When he came ashore again in the Philippines after having been kicked out by the Japanese and having said, 'I shall return,' that's that MacArthur.

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And Marshall tried so hard not to be a rival of Douglas MacArthur but to accommodate him. General MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the United States Army long before General Marshall, actually under President Hoover; and some of you may know that it was General MacArthur as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army who took on

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a notorious task, which he glamorized, of using our army against the civilian bonus marchers who came to Washington in 1932, World War One vets. So they were very different. And Marshall, who rose very late, I mean he was not even a general until his mid-fifties, somehow ascended above MacArthur in the ranks. And MacArthur never got over it. MacArthur, from his exile in the Pacific was constantly demanding more, more, more,

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and feeling that Marshall, as one of General Pershing's protogés, was always going to be against him. And so the firing of MacArthur by Truman, when General Marshall was by then Secretary of Defense, was a deeply hurtful thing to the pride of Douglas MacArthur, who was an immensely proud man to begin with.

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So, this is just a sort of an introduction to a great American life. One of the thing that strikes me is how a man who has now been dead almost 50 years, since 1959, General Marshall, although he's not widely known--there are high schools named after him, there is, I think still, the Marshall Space Center in Alabama, and of course there are

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there are Marshall Scholars, as part of our exchange with Europe, a residue of the Marshall Plan. But for many people George Marshall is still somebody to emulate.

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We have another brilliant portrait of General Marshall. And when I came to be Director of the Portrait Gallery six months ago and said, 'Is there a Marshall portrait I could hang in my office?' They said, well, we have that one but you can't have that because it's hanging. Let's look and see if there's another one, and they came back and said, 'Actually Secretary of Defense Gates got to you--

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got to it first and it's in his office, and he outranks you. [[laughter]] So that's where it is. So General Marshall's influence continues to live. There was a wonderful show mounted here in 1997. Jim Barber, Dr Jim Barber who's historian of the National Portrait Gallery, was curator of that show, and I'm stealing all of Jim's thunder {SPEAKER name="Dr. Jim Barbour}} No, no.

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Martin Sullivan: No? Alright. But one of the elements of the catalog of that show is an affectionate tribute by Colin Powell. General Colin Powell saw George Marshall as the model of the military leader that Powell himself wished to be. And so, a portrait gallery is a lot of things. It is evocative of our own past in so many ways; different people; different times; different sorts of accomplishment. I think it's astounding that at the moment General Marshall's portrait is flanked on the right side by Pete Seeger and other--Frank Sinatra and other people who have done very different things in American life. But we hope that the National Portrait Gallery particularly through the images of evocative personalities like General Marshall reminds us of the greatness of our people, and becomes inspirational for all of us. And that's my last word on the subject. I'd love to have your comments or questions.

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Martin Sullivan: OK. [[crosstalk]]
Audience Question 1: ...do they choose? I mean, I know when a photographer takes my picture...for display and that kinda thing, so what...?

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Martin Sullivan: Yeah. Well, two things. Um, number one, sitters sometimes choose the artist who does their portraits.

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Now in the case of Thomas Edgar Stevens who did General Marshall - he happened to have, Stevens, happened to have been a pal of Ike and I think that's how that connection was made.

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Uh, and so his portraits of other famous Americans opened the door.

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This painting was in the hands, by the way, of a woman, a Lisa Mellon Bruce, the daughter of Paul Mellon whose generosity founded the National Gallery of Art. And she was married to David Bruce, a great American diplomat.

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The painting actually went originally to the National Gallery of Art before there was a National Portrait Gallery, and came here after, uh, after this institution was established.

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Poses, typically the artist is in control. Uh, and sitters could resent that, and quarrel with it, and insist on different things.

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My colleagues here could go on all night, probably, with anecdotes about the push back from sitters who didn't like what they were told to do or be.

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But typically the artist is kind of running the scene. Very good questions. Other questions?

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Audience Question 2: I was wondering about the faith of these generals. Certainly, um, as I understand it, Churchill was more of an atheist or an agnostic,

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and, but I don't know about these others. And--
Martin Sullivan: Yes.
Audience Question 2: --and if it had any effect at all on their ability to command,

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or if it even came to anyone's attention in those times, as it does occasionally in these current times.

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Martin Sullivan: Yeah, and that's a, that is an equally marvelous question which it's hard to answer.

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Now, George Marshall and his wife Katherine were active members of the Episcopal church, especially when they, uh, bought their home in Leesburg, Virginia - Dodona Manor.

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Um, and that was an important ritual in his life, from the point when he was young, continuing on up.

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There is no doubt that the combination of a religious orientation and his personal humility, uh,

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in my view, made him someone very aware that there was a higher power - a deity, guiding the fortunes of human beings.

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Um, he was not an orator, he was not somebody who prayed a lot on his own in public. Didn't have prayer breakfasts. Things of that kind.

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He was not nearly as irreverent as Churchill, who grow up-who grew up in the, sort of, noble British Anglican church, a very different, a very different kind of thing.

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But I don't know enough to say more than that, it's a very good question.

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Any other questions - or Ian, are we running out of time? Or--?

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Anyone- pardon?

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Marshall was born, not in Virginia, but in Uniontown Pennsylvania.

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-Which is in the southwestern corner of the state. And was - at the time of his birth - a fairly flourishing town.

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His father was a rather successful small-town guy, who got nearly wiped out in the, in the U.S. depression of 1893.

00:31:49.000 --> 00:32:02.000
And, when uh, when young George wished to go to school, it, Westpoint was a possibility but it didn't materialize.

00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:12.000
-His father had gone to VMI, and in those days, and this is an interesting story, to get into Westpoint, for example,

00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:21.000
Uh, you had to have your senator or congressmen - and even to VMI - you had to have a politician approve you.

00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:32.000
And Marshall got in to see President McKinley, in order to be approved as a Virginian - at VMI.

00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:43.000
He was not a Virginian therefore by birth - collaterally he was a descendent of John Marshall - The great chief justice - and a great Virginian.

00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:59.000
And as Marshall grew older, the Virginian uh, gentlemen-rural-lifestyle was what he treasured the most -at his home out in Leesburg, and elsewhere.

00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:15.000
One story I happen to like about Marshall, was when he was secretary of state, the famous diplomat George Kennan, was head of the state department of planning office and Kennan was a um, a cultured-widely traveled guy.

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:22.000
And it was accustomed, in those days, when you received distinguished guests, that you'd open up your bar and offer them a drink.

00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:31.000
And so, one day there was a delegation there and uhm, - and it must've been mostly Americans because Marshall would not have said this in public otherwise -

00:33:31.000 --> 00:33:39.000
He said "Kennan, you pour." and Marshall was a bourbon drinker, not a heavy drinker, but if he had a drink it would be bourbon.

00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:46.000
And so Kennan put ice cubes in, and then the whiskey, and Marshall looked at it for a moment, and he said

00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:56.770
"Kennan, they tell me you're a pretty good planning staff director - and for all I know, you are. But who the hell taught you to put the ice cubes in before the whiskey?"

00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:03.000
Martin Sullivan: --little Virginia story there. Tradition.

00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:06.000
Yeah. Uh, any other questions, or thoughts?

00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:11.000
We really appreciate you coming. Face-to-Face happens regularly and Ian will tell you more -

00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:17.000
Ian: Next Thursday we'll continue our 'commanders and chiefs' theme with Francis Flavin talking about Sequoia. Hope to see some of you here.

00:34:17.000 --> 00:34:25.000
Martin Sullivan: Yeah, and Francis Flavin, who's a good scholar of American Indian history, is definitely worth coming for - for those who are in the neighborhood.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:30.000
Ian: Under Secretary of American Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:41.328
Martin Sullivan: Great. Thank you all so much for coming, it's been great to have you here. [[clapping]]