The True Story O Brother, Where Art Thou Was Based On! (Malcolm's Recent Family History)

I recently discovered that the Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? was actually based on a true story involving my family! In this video, I share the fascinating tale of how my great-grandfather tapped a popular 1930s musical group to help a politician he supported win a Texas governor's race against a candidate with ties to the KKK. I talk about the real-life people and events that inspired the movie's characters and plot, and reveal details that weren't included in the film. From the crazy water crystals business to Papio Daniel's flower company, learn the true history behind one of the Coen Brothers' most beloved movies!

Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. And today is a very interesting episode for me because something very weird happened to me last week. There is a movie that I have liked, , since I was a kid. Cause it came out when I was in middle school. I want to say, Oh brother, where art thou? And when I first saw it, I was like, it is very weird how many similarities it has to stories my family told me about my great grandfather.

Malcolm: But, I discounted these similarities for three reasons. One, it was very clearly based on the Odyssey. Two, it was very clearly based on the Bible and themes of biblical redemption. So I was like, okay, there's already so much content in this. It couldn't possibly also be based on a true story. And three, the whole thing takes place in Mississippi and all the stories I were told about took place in Texas.[00:01:00]

Malcolm: So I ignored it. Well, a few days ago, I was Googling some of the characters from it. And they're like, oh yeah, Papio Daniel was based on a real Texas politician and I was like, like a huge wave hitting me. I was like, oh shi all of it was true? All of it was based on my great granddad? That is insane! And, and, and what's insane is I actually looked to see if there were YouTube videos covering this and there weren't.

Malcolm: And I assume that part of it is due to how nuanced and niche this history is. It's all about it. Texas gubernatorial election in the in the the 1930s, I think but it is it is also like surprisingly accurate to the plot of the movie. So I am going to combine both what I was able to find in terms of historical evidence of what went down, as well as evidence from family oral tradition into essentially what happened here [00:02:00] and what is the true iteration of the story in oh brother where art thou if you were to to take it out

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: so the first thing to note is is just so you know that like i'm not Making up that this is actually based on this Papio Daniel was a real Texas politician.

Malcolm: He was a, a Texas governor and in the movie, he is the politician that attempts to use the popularity of this musical group to win office. In real life. What happened was, is, is my great grandfather, who was a radio station owner and a business magnate at the time, tapped Papio Daniel, who was the star of a musical group, to try to defeat a candidate who was supporting the Klan's interest in a Texas election.

Malcolm: So the fact that this was a Klan group versus [00:03:00] an anti Klan group is accurate. What is mixed up in the storytelling is the who the different characters are. Papio Daniel, while the, the politician is named Papio Daniel, he would probably better be named. Carr P Collins, who is my ancestor, and he was somebody who wanted to have a political fight with a specific other somebody, and he tapped a musician to win that political fight.

Malcolm: So, now we're gonna go back. First of all, you gotta understand the origins of this political fight. Why was he so, so, so angry? at this other candidate. Why did he need this other candidate to lose? And why was he looking for somebody to run against him? So we're going to go back three generations for this.

Malcolm: But first, Simone, you saw the movie recently. What'd you think? You hadn't seen it in a long time. It's,

Simone: it's a great movie. It's holds up incredibly well. And it's one of those movies that's stylized, but not in a way that makes it stuck in time or dated, [00:04:00] which I quite like.

Malcolm: Yeah. Well, and you also didn't think our fans would care about this episode at all.

Malcolm: I

Simone: really, yeah, I, I, I failed to understand why this is interesting or why this matters.

Malcolm: I think it's good evergreen content. If you have a family history that tells a part of history that other people haven't heard. It's interesting to

Simone: you and nobody else cares. Everyone,

Malcolm: nobody else cares. Apparently it was interesting enough to other people that they made a movie about it.

Simone: I don't know. There's so many interesting, historically accurate elements of the movie, I think things that they throw in that they make important that they. It's a very nerdy, it's a surprisingly nerdy movie where people, the people who created it from clothing to products, to cars, to what people were.

Simone: How people spoke, I think was very obsessively done. It was almost, it was like it was made by some obscure man in Japan. Who's one obsession was depression era, like South middle Texas, you know, [00:05:00] like just a crazy otaku who like nailed it.

Malcolm: But better than how much it's localized to Texas culture, which really shocked me as a kid.

Malcolm: Cause people said it was Mississippi culture, but you know, digging into it, it's very clearly more model on Texas culture. But anyway. Which is where it actually, you know, the historical figures and the historical fight took place. So we're going to go three generations earlier than the events of the movie.

Malcolm: So, Warren Collins was the brother of if you have seen the Free State of Jones the, the second main character to the, to Newton Knight, the guy who like wrote the, the rules for the Free State of Jones. And 15 of his relatives, so either brothers or kids of his, his brothers were part of the 50 founding members of the Free State of Joe.

Malcolm: So it was basically one family. So one of the brothers from this family went to Texas and started a different separatist group that was trying to create a different separatist state. It was called the Texas Jayhawkers. And this is where the Kaiser burnout comes from when they tried to. to [00:06:00] kill these people.

Malcolm: And there's many interesting stories that I could go into if this does well about my ancestors. So this guy, there's this famous story. He was, he was leading this group of anti confederates. And they had captured a lot of their, their people and they were going to execute them. And so he pretending to be somebody else comes into the camp and he gets them all drunk and he drinks a lot because, you know, I guess everyone in my family drinks a lot and he did a jig that it was apparently so captivating that it distracted the confederate guards while they let everyone lose.

Malcolm: But if you watch the Free State of Jones, because I think a lot of people, they see something like the Civil War and they don't understand why there could be so much intergenerational hatred between groups and so much intergenerational hatred between the descendants of these people and people like the Klan.

Malcolm: And if you watch that movie, I think by the end of that movie, you'll be like, oh, I can understand wh