Levon Helm (The Band) aka Virgil Caine plays Gen J.B.Hood in Tommy Lee Jones' Movie

We've had a pretty good discussion on this before but General Hood did not lose his arm at Gettysburg. He was badly wounded but he eventually recovered the use of the limb.
 
Why do Hood portrayals show him to be an "old" man?
He died at 48 years old, probably looking much older than he was. So seeing that he's a "ghost" here, he would've had to die first. The title of the book the movie's based on is:
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Because that seems to fit the impression most people have of him. It’s what people expect.

I don’t know about that. I reckon most people knowledgeable about the rebellion know he was pretty young but many people who saw that Gettysburg movie think he was old.
 
I don’t know about that. I reckon most people knowledgeable about the rebellion know he was pretty young but many people who saw that Gettysburg movie think he was old.
I had no problems with Patrick Gorman's portrayal of him in Gettysburg, although I'm not a Hood specialist by any stretch. In fact, I rather liked it. It's not even Gorman's actual age at the time, but that he looked old for the part, and even more so in Gods and Generals, which was set before Gettysburg.


Hood.jpg

Hood as portrayed by (l. to r.) Patrick Gorman in Gettysburg (1993) and Gods and Generals (2003), Levon Helm in In the Electric Mist (2009) and the general himself in real life (c. 1865).

One might argue that Levon Helm appeared in Electric Mist in a form that Jones' character would recognize as Hood (i.e., "old") -- given that it's all sort of mystical and surreal to begin with -- but that doesn't really hold for the other two films.
 
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