Liberty (1986 film) Liberty (1986 film) Liberty is a television film which aired on NBC on June 23, 1986. It is a largely fictionalized account of the construction of the Statue of Liberty, which had been completed 100 years earlier. Scenes were shot on location in Paris and Baltimore. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Frank Langella) and author Édouard de Laboulaye (Jean-Pierre Cassel) agree to create a monument to present to the United States on behalf of the French people. Bartholdi searches for a model, approaching (and romancing) young woman Jeanne Baheau (Corinne Touzet) for the body of the statue, and deciding to use
Statue of Liberty public protest against the proposed exterior painting. The Army Corps of Engineers studied the patina for any ill effects to the statue and concluded that it protected the skin, "softened the outlines of the Statue and made it beautiful." The statue was painted only on the inside. The Corps of Engineers also installed an elevator to take visitors from the base to the top of the pedestal. On July 30, 1916, during World War I, German saboteurs set off a disastrous explosion on the Black Tom peninsula in Jersey City, New Jersey, in what is now part of Liberty State