White House heroes, failures and figments fodder for Hollywood
Posted on Friday, November 7, 2008
The polling places are closed. Winner of the popular vote for America’s most beloved chief executive is — President Ford.
Not Gerald, silly — Harrison, leader of the free world in Air Force One.
According to an Oct. 23 survey conducted by Moviefone, the film-listing service and Web site, Ford ranked above Morgan Freeman (Deep Impact ), Michael Douglas (The American President ), Bill Pullman (Independence Day ), and Kevin Kline (Dave ). The month-long Internet poll drew more than 1. 1 million votes (now that’s voter turnout ).
Candidates, take note. You can glean nearly as much about what Americans want — and don’t — from a politician at the multiplex as in the voting booth.
Movies about presidents, or any contender for public office, come in three types: wish-fulfillment fantasy; exaltation or defamation of a real-life figure; and the inside-politics fable.
The wish-fulfillment film boasts an omnipotent chief executive. He goes mano-a-mano with terrorists ! He tries to save the planet from a killer comet ! He woos a fetching lobbyist !
These fantasies are pleasant diversions from more serious examinations of real chiefs — think Abe Lincoln in Illinois or Nixon — that explore the making and / or unmaking of a president. The legacies of two troubled presidencies are the subject of two films this election cycle.
W., Oliver Stone’s lame-duck saga of the current president stars Josh Brolin in a pitchperfect performance about a wayward soul who stops drinking and finds purpose. Now in theaters, it plays like a Saturday Night Live sketch, only not funny.
And coming in December is Frost / Nixon, based on the play by Peter Morgan (The Queen ), an account of British chat-show host David Frost as he corners the former American chief executive into apologizing for the misdeeds of his administration.
Cinematically speaking, Richard Nixon would win the vote as Hollywood’s most unpopular president. He’s the tortured and lonely subject of Frost / Nixon (with a stormy Frank Langella as Nixon ), Robert Altman’s 1984 Secret Honor (a venomous Philip Baker Hall ), Stone’s 1995 Nixon (a morose Anthony Hopkins ), and the 1999 satire Dick (a sly Dan Hedaya ).
Bill Clinton could take the oath as most satirized chief executive. His administration inspired an interest in all things West Wing. For don’t we presume that the presidents in Dave (1993 ), Wag the Dog (1997 ), and Primary Colors (1998 ) — men of position papers and compromising positions — are all the Man From Hope ?
No surprise, Hollywood’s most beloved president is Honest Abe, hymned in D. W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln (1930, with Walter Huston ); Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, Henry Fonda ); Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940, Raymond Massey ); and Lincoln (1974, Hal Holbrook in the TV miniseries ). He is soon to be the subject of a Steven Spielberg bio-pic starring Liam Neeson, slated for 2010.
It’s a good bet that Abe and Teddy Roosevelt will be campaigning for Oscars that year, as Martin Scorsese’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (with Leonardo DiCaprio as the Rough Rider ) should also be in theaters.
Presidents — fantasy, real and allegorical — have been movie stars for as long as there have been movies.
William McKinley was the subject of one of the earliest film documentaries, the 1897 President McKinley at Home, showing him in front of his ancestral house in Ohio.
Andrew Jackson was twice played by Charlton Heston, as a dashing lover in the romantic melodrama The President’s Lady (1953 ) and a dashing warrior in the swashbuckler The Buccaneer (1958 ), set during the battle of New Orleans.
If the quality of a presidency is measured in Oscars, then Woodrow Wilson takes the prize: Wilson (1944 ), a bio-pic about the 28 th president, took five statuettes.
Wilson, released as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term, was as much about WW as about his pertinence to FDR’s policies. For the story of the 28 th president, who led the country through World War I, was useful to framing the debate about negotiated peace and disarmament as World War II wound down.
Presidential fantasies are fun. Political bio-pics are edifying. But perhaps the most satisfying are the inside-Washington fables that show elected officials as ordinary people navigating extraordinary political seas.
It may be heretical to say so, but more memorable than Huston’s fine 1930 performance as Lincoln is his 1933 role as a party stooge who evolves into an enlightened president in Gabriel Over the White House.
In a more satirical vein is Preston Sturges’ The Great Mc-Ginty (1940 ), with Brian Donlevy as a party hack who lies and gets elected, but when he tells the truth, gets deported. Its cinematic cousin, Warren Beatty’s Bulworth (1998 ), boldly imagines what might happen if a U. S. senator told the truth.
A common thread of the political fable is that of the outsider co-opted and, in some cases, corrupted, by the political machine. Consider A Face in the Crowd (1957 ), Elia Kazan’s still-startling film, with Andy Griffith as a musician and homespun philosopher, then radio star, and finally a political kingmaker and demagogue. Or Being There (1979 ), with Peter Sellers as the simple-minded gardener mistaken for a political oracle because he speaks in sound bites.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939 ) has to be the most enduring among the political fables. How the junior senator from Wisconsin (James Stewart ) — who is unknowingly a prop of his state’s political machine — upholds values and rises above Washington sharks is tonic. Mr. Smith’s idealism renews ours — always a good thing before entering the voting booth.
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