Every four years in the U.S. we have a presidential election. This is one of those years, which makes it the perfect time to look back at the history of American presidents on film.

For our purposes, we will only go as far back as the beginning of the sound era.

The first film of the sound era to feature a president of the U.S. as a major character was D.W. Griffith’s 1930 film, Abraham Lincoln, starring Walter Huston as Lincoln, with Una Merkel as Ann Rutledge, Kay Hammond as Mary Todd Lincoln, and Ian Keith as John Wilkes Booth, among many others.

The next major film to examine the life of a president was Clarence Brown’s 1936 film, The Gorgeous Hussy, in which Lionel Barrymore played Andrew Jackson. The emphasis, however, was on Joan Crawford in the title role of Jackson’s unofficial first lady, an innkeeper’s daughter who was asked to take on the role by Jackson’s dying, pipe-smoking, wife played by Beulah Bondi in an-Oscar nominated performance.

Abraham Lincoln returned in three major films from 1938-1940.

John Carradine played him in Clarence Brown’s 1938 film, Of Human Hearts, which starred Walter Huston as a pre-Civil War minister who dies leaving Beulah Bondi, in another Oscar-nominated performance, as a single mother raising their son (Gene Reynolds as a boy, James Stewart as a young man) to become a doctor. During the Civil War, when Bondi hasn’t heard from her son in some time, she writes Lincoln a letter asking him to find her son. He does and chastises him for not keeping in touch with his mother, leading to the film’s luminous conclusion.

Henry Fonda became a major star playing Lincoln in John Ford’s 1939 film, Young Mr. Lincoln, which focuses on the future president’s early romances with the ill-fated Ann Rutledge and eventual wife Mary Todd, as well as some of his early court cases.

Raymond Massey received an Oscar nomination for reprising his Broadway role in John Cromwell’s 1940 film, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, which takes him from the backwoods of Kentucky to his 1860 election as the 16th president. Ruth Gordon co-starred as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Although he is not named in the film, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first sitting president to be featured in a film in Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film, Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring Oscar winner James Cagney as George M. Cohan and the ubiquitous Oscar-nominated Walter Huston as his father. Jack Young played “The President.”

Andrew Johnson was the subject of 1942’s Tennessee Johnson starring Van Heflin as the first president to be impeached. Lionel Barrymore played his nemesis.

Alexander Knox received an Oscar nomination for playing Woodrow Wilson in Henry King’s 1944 film, Wilson. Ruth Nelson played his first wife and Geraldine Fitzgerald his second.

Andrew Jackson was back in the guise of Charlton Heston in Albert Lewin’s 1953 film, The President’s Lady, opposite Susan Hayward as his pipe-smoking wife. Heston resurfaced as a pre-presidential Jackson in a supporting role in 1958’s The Buccaneer, directed by Anthony Quinn.

The 1960s began with Ralph Bellamy and Oscar-nominated Greer Garson as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello about the pre-Presidential Roosevelt’s bout with polio, otherwise focused heavily on fictional presidents.

Otto Preminger’s 1962 film, Advise & Consent, based on a monumental bestselling novel about the U.S. Senate’s behind-the-scenes machinations concerning an upcoming vote on the president’s choice for Secretary of State played by Henry Fonda. Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Don Murray, and Peter Lawford (the real-life brother-in-law of sitting president John F. Kennedy) were among the actors playing senators. Franchot Tone was the President and Lew Ayres the Vice-President

John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, featured Frank Sinatra as an Army Major trying to stop his fellow Korean War POW Laurence Harvey from assassinating the presidential nominee of his party at the party’s convention so that Harvey’s Communist-plant stepfather (James Gregory) and his evil mother (Oscar-nominated Angela Lansbury) can become President and First Lady. Instead, Harvey assassinates Gregory and Lansbury in one of the most shocking climaxes in film history. The film was pulled from exhibition and not shown anywhere until 1989 after President’s Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

Kennedy was portrayed by Cliff Robertson in his World War II days in 1963’s PT 109 released months before his assassination.

Oscar nominee Peter Sellers was the U.S. President and two other characters in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, while Henry Fonda played the President in Sidney Lumet’s highly realistic and very scary Fail Safe in which New York is destroyed by a Russian atomic bomb. New York audiences were relieved to find the city still standing when they exited the theatres where the film was being shown.

Also in 1964, Fonda was the front-runner for his party’s nomination for President in Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Best Man with Cliff Robertson as his nemesis, Oscar-nominated Lee Tracy as a dying former President, and Ann Sothern as Washington’s most gregarious hostess. Margaret Leighton and Edie Adams were Fonda’s and Robertson’s wives, respectively.

Perhaps the best screen President in 1964 was Fredric March in John Frankenheimer’s film of the best-selling novel, Seven Days in May, also starring Burt Lancaster as a maniacal Army General and Kirk Douglas as the Army Colonel who tries to stop him from carrying out a coup against the President. Edmond O’Brien received an Oscar nomination as March’s loyal friend, a U.S. Senator who is killed while investigating the potential coup.

Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK, was about Kennedy’s assassination while his 1995 film, Nixon, was about the candidate Kennedy defeated who later became president himself, the first since Andrew Johnson to be impeached. Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen received Oscar nominations for playing Richard and Pat Nixon.

Kevin Kline was a fictional president in 1993’s Dave and Michael Douglas was the fictional president in 1995’s An American President.

It wasn’t until 2012 that another major film about the U.S. presidency arrived. Fittingly, it was another one about the 16th President called simply Lincoln, for which Daniel Day-Lewis received his third Oscar, the first actor to receive three wins in the category, and the first actor to receive an Oscar playing a president, real or imagined. Sally Field became the first actress to receive an Oscar nomination for playing Mary Todd Lincoln.

All films mentioned are available on home video.

Happy viewing.