‘Ben Franklin gets the Burns treatment’

    

Benjamin Franklin, revered Freemason, Founding Father, inventor, natural philosopher, statesman, entrepreneur, and more, is the subject of a two-part biography by filmmaker Ken Burns. It can be seen starting next Monday on PBS television and streaming.

I am doubtful the film will say anything about Franklin’s Masonic association. He was a busy man who milked the utmost from his eighty-four years in this world, whereas Burns’ story runs four hours.

Ken Burns, in his forty-one years of producing documentaries, has touched the periphery of Masonic history many times. Some of his previous biographies (Lewis & Clark, Mark Twain, The Roosevelts) honed in on famous Masons, and many of his histories bump into the works of others (The Statue of Liberty, The National Parks). Then, of course, his epic anthropological films (Jazz, Baseball, Country Music) unavoidably discuss the lives and deeds of a number of Masons.

It was on that basis that I once emailed him about twenty years ago to pitch the idea of a film on Freemasonry. Granted, it’s a huge subject, but it encompasses story elements that figure into his documentaries. From the giants of history astride the globe, to folks you might know living their lives on Main Street—with race relations and women’s inclusion in the mix—human progress is encapsulated in the Masonic story. There is a bottomless inventory of archives and artifacts, material culture and ephemera, art and music to drive Burns’ use of photographs and movie reels that supplement his interviews, narration, and cinematography.

I never did hear back.