How ‘Legend of Van Dorn’ Fixes a Shocking Cultural Error

Lee Wilson started reading about Earl Van Dorn, his first thought wasn’t that he wanted to play him in a movie.

He wondered why there wasn’t a movie already.

“His life just didn’t sound real,” Wilson said of Van Dorn, who rose to the ranks of Confederate Major General in the Civil War. “He fights in the Mexican War, fights Comanches, becomes a Confederate general, has these huge successes and terrible failures, gets into it with Nathan Bedford Forrest, Lincoln brands him a pirate, and then he’s murdered by a jealous husband. How has nobody made this movie?”

Eventually, somebody did.

‘The Legend of Van Dorn,” directed by Shane Stanley and written by Wilson, was released in August.

Wilson also plays Van Dorn, something he says wasn’t necessarily the plan when he began writing the screenplay.

“I thought that was a long shot. My acting career had pretty much stalled. I’d had a few minor roles and some major roles in films that never got picked up,” he said. “I knew I could write Van Dorn. I wasn’t assuming anybody was going to hand me the lead role.”

Stanley eventually did.

“I was asked by the eventual producer who I had in mind to play Van Dorn. We were on a video call, so I kind of gestured both hands toward my face and said, ‘Ta da.’”

“He then asked me if that was a requirement for them to get the script and I told him that my requirement was to audition for the director. Shane wanted me to do screen tests and then wanted to have a conversation with me. That’s when he said, ‘You can do this. I want you to do this.’”

The film follows Van Dorn during the final months of his life, when his military career was suddenly on the upswing again. His December 1862 raid on Holly Springs had wrecked a major Union supply depot and derailed Ulysses S. Grant’s first attempt to take Vicksburg. A few months later, Van Dorn’s cavalry won again at Thompson’s Station in Tennessee.

At the same time, Van Dorn was having an affair with Jessie Peters, the wife of a prominent physician. It was quite a comeback. It didn’t last long.

Dr. George Peters shot Van Dorn in Spring Hill, Tennessee, on May 7, 1863. That was the part of Van Dorn’s story that caught Wilson’s attention.

“That’s the tragedy of the guy,” he said. “Things are finally going his way again. He’s winning. He’s getting some of his reputation back. And while that’s happening, he’s making decisions in his personal life that are going to destroy everything.”

Not Quite a Hero

Making a Civil War movie about a Confederate general in 2026 presents an obvious problem. Wilson didn’t want to dodge it.

He also didn’t want to solve it by turning Van Dorn into something he wasn’t.

“I wasn’t interested in making him a hero,” Wilson said. “I wasn’t interested in making him a villain either. He’s a fascinating person with some major character flaws. Show that. Let people decide for themselves what they think about him.”

Van Dorn certainly gives audiences plenty to consider.

Before the Civil War, he had graduated from West Point, fought in Mexico and served on the frontier as a cavalry commander in a successful effort to defend the Cherokee and Anadarko tribes from the Comanche.

During the war, he rose rapidly, suffered serious setbacks as an infantry commander and later found considerably more success returning to cavalry command. He was undefeated as a commander of cavalry.

Then there was Van Dorn the man.

He was charming, reckless and notoriously attractive to women. It was enough to earn him a memorable nickname in the newspapers: “the terror of ugly husbands.” His private behavior ultimately accomplished what the Union Army couldn’t.

Wilson found that contradiction more interesting than trying to clean Van Dorn up for a modern audience.

“People are complicated,” he said. “History gets boring when we pretend they weren’t.”

The cast around Wilson includes Ellie Patrikios as Jessie Peters, Joe Lando as Dr. George Peters, David B. Meadows as Nathan Bedford Forrest and D.B. Sweeney as Stansted.

“Lincoln has put out a bounty on his head, claiming him for being a pirate over an instance where he commandeered two Union boats.” Michael Talbot-Haynes finds truth within The Legend Of Van Dorn.https://t.co/GwbgET1IUk #SupportIndieFilm #Romance #TheLegendOfVanDorn #Drama pic.twitter.com/nrzbXZgG4m

— Film Threat (@FilmThreat) September 1, 2026

Some of the movie’s stranger episodes sound like inventions of a screenwriter. They aren’t.

At one point Van Dorn and Forrest came close to a duel. Earlier in the war, after Van Dorn seized Union vessels, President Lincoln’s administration declared him a pirate.

The film also tells the story of Alice Thompson (Lisa Stewart), a Tennessee woman who famously waved a Confederate flag while caught in the crossfire at the Battle of Thompson’s Station.

“You start telling people some of this stuff, and they can’t believe it happened,” Wilson said. “That’s what I keep coming back to. You don’t have to make Van Dorn’s life more dramatic. It already was.”

Then the Reviews Started Coming In

For an independent historical film, getting the movie made was one hurdle. Finding out what people thought about it was another.

So far, the critical response has been favorable.

Michael Talbot-Haynes at Film Threat gave The Legend of Van Dorn an 8/10. He praised the movie’s period look and compared Wilson’s performance to the kind of leading-man work found in classic Hollywood, referring to the “stately power” of his work as Van Dorn.

CineDump also responded positively, saying Wilson “capably anchors the film,” calling Ellie Patrikios “a standout as Jessie Peters” and describing David Meadows as “equally impressive” in the role of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

For Wilson, some of the reaction has been a little surreal.

“You work on something for so long that you really can’t watch it like a normal person anymore,” he said. “So it’s interesting when somebody notices a costume or a location or something an actor did in a scene.

Wilson is especially pleased when viewers tell him the movie sent them looking for the real Van Dorn. Maybe that’s because that’s essentially how the movie began.

Wilson started out knowing relatively little about Van Dorn. The more he learned, the more he wondered how this story had never made it to the screen.

And yet Van Dorn is nowhere near as familiar today as Grant, Lee, Sherman or Forrest.

“I think that’s what grabbed me,” Wilson said. “How does somebody live a life like this and then basically disappear from popular memory?”

“The Legend of Van Dorn” doesn’t try to answer every question about Earl Van Dorn. It doesn’t have much interest in telling viewers whether they should admire him, either.

It does make a pretty good case that he shouldn’t have been forgotten.

“The Legend of Van Dorn” is available now on digital platforms, including Amazon Prime. More information about the film, cast and its historical background is available at the official *The Legend of Van Dorn* website.

Daniel Rucker is the Director of Communications for Film Read, the studio behind “The Legend of Von Dorn.” He enjoys watching great films on cold, rainy nights and has worked in the industry for over 20 years.