A celebrity in his own right, Ted Franklin Belue is recognized in faraway places. At home in Murray, he is pretty much incognito. Hefting a huge watermelon while browsing booths at the local farmers market with his wife, Lavina, Belue’s inherent energy simmers beneath the surface. He appears agile and fit as if he could leap or lunge on the spot if needed.
Writer, scholar, musician, living history consultant, re-enactor, and on-air commentator for the INSP Network, Outdoor Channel, History Channel, NBC, and NPR, Belue is gracious when greeted. Asked what has kept him busy through the COVID era and beyond, the first thing he mentions is the thirtieth anniversary of the film, “Last of the Mohicans,” the Michael Mann movie, starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
Belue chronicled his experiences and reflections on his participation in the epic in a two-part series for the July/August and September/October 2022 issues of Muzzleloader magazine. He describes his role in the film as a “grunt,” a French and Indian War extra, the “lowest of the low in cinema’s uncredited pecking order.”
Looking back, he does not remember exactly how he got the gig, but he does recall that “A few months employment on a historic movie set of an era I loved sounded intriguing, even fun, and it dovetailed perfectly with my schedule.”
He sensed that the movie presented the rarest of opportunities. He asked himself, “Where else could a nonfiction writer of 18th-century frontier Americana experience an enduro of mock combat on a huge scale between yesteryear’s imperial forces with the day’s weapons and Native allies, cast high in the Blue Ridge shadowing Fort William Henry? And, be fed, quartered, and paid to do it?”
Interest in history has been a lifelong pursuit of Belue. “Early…
