The DVD Report #79

Happy Election Day!

Today is, of course, a historic one in which practically everyone will be glued to their TV sets, radios and/or internet sources for the results of many key races including the Presidency. There have been years, however, when Election Day news has either been slow in coming or downright dull and boring and to get my political fix I needed to watch an old politically themed movie or miniseries to fill the void. Here are a few of the films I turned to:

It’s been surpassed by newer, better films about the 16th President, but D.W. Griffith’s 1930 film, Abraham Lincoln, remains an interesting artifact of the early days of talkies. It is an episodic account of the great man’s life, focusing on events of the Civil War and his assassination. Walter Huston’s classy impersonation was one of his best lead performances on film and the supporting cast is quite good, especially Una Merkel as Ann Rutledge and Kay Hammond as Mary Todd Lincoln. As an alternative there’s John Cromwell’s 1940 film Abe Lincoln in Illinois with Raymond Massey Oscar nominated in the title role and an equally impressive Ruth Gordon as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Thirty-two years before Lincoln had to fight the Civil War, Andrew Jackson had to stave off Secessionists in his administration, a subject that is explored in Clarence Brown’s 1936 film The Gorgeous Hussy. The film focuses on the exploits of Peggy O’Neile Timberlake Eaton, the innkeeper’s daughter who rose to prominence and notoriety as Jackson’s de facto First Lady after the death of his beloved wife, Rachel. Joan Crawford plays Peggy in her first costume drama, surrounded by a strong cast that includes Robert Taylor, Melvyn Douglas, James Stewart and Franchot Tone as various lovers and husbands, Lionel Barrymore as Jackson, and Beulah Bondi in an Oscar-nominated performance as Rachel Jackson. Sidney Toler has his best pre-Charlie Chan role as Daniel Webster. For another take on the Andrew and Rachel Jackson story, see Henry Levin’s 1953 film The President’s Lady with Charlton Heston as the 8th President and Susan Hayward as his pipe-smoking backwoods wife.

In the midst of World War II, Darryl F. Zanuck produced what he considered the most important film of his life, Henry King’s 1944 epic Wilson about the life and times of the man who was President during the previous World War. Focusing equally on the great events of the day, the backstabbing politics of the time and Wilson’s family life, Zanuck spared no expense in the production that included 12,000 players in 200 scenes. The film was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Actor, Alexander Knox. Equally impressionable are Ruth Nelson as Wilson’s socially conscious first wife and Geraldine Fitzgerald as his politically astute second wife who may or may not have made decisions of State in his name while he recovered from a stroke.

The early life of Dolly Madison is explored in Frank Borzage’s 1946 film Magnificent Doll in which the future First Lady is forced into an arranged marriage by her late-life-Quaker-convert father; loses her father, husband and son in the Plague; has a long standing affair with Aaron Burr; and then marries James Madison and serves as hostess in the White House to widowed Thomas Jefferson while her husband serves as his Secretary of State. It’s all presented rather matter-of-factly so if you don’t know your history, you may not follow all of the events covered by the film, but it is an interesting look at a slice of Americana not often covered by Hollywood. Ginger Rogers as Dolly, David Niven as Burr, Burgess Meredith as Madison, Peggy Wood as Dolly’s mother, and Stephen McNally as her first husband have the principal roles.

A fictitious bid for the 1948 Republican Presidential candidacy is the subject of Frank Capra’s 1948 film State of the Union starring Spencer Tracy as the idealistic businessman being corrupted by the crooked politicos including his mistress, newspaper magnate Angela Lansbury in a role eerily reminiscent of her later performance in The Manchurian Candidate.

Claudette Colbert was originally cast as Tracy’s wife but had to leave the production for health reasons and was replaced by Katharine Hepburn who, having helped Tracy rehearse his role, knew all the character’s lines. The two are terrific together as usual, with Hepburn’s drunk scene near the end the comic highlight of a more serious than usual Capra film. Adolphe Menjou as a party power broker, Van Johnson as a newspaperman-turned-speech writer-turned-campaign manager and Margaret Hamilton as Menjou’s charming housekeeper head a fine supporting cast.

The life and death of demagogueWillie Stark, a thinly disguised version of Louisiana’s notorious governor Huey Long, is the subject of Robert Rossen’s 1949 film, All the King’s Men. Based on Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film was nominated for seven Oscars and won three for Best Picture, Actor (Broderick Crawford in a career high performance as Stark) and Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge as his acid-tongued secretary and sometimes mistress). The cast includes John Ireland in an Oscar nominated performance as the newspaperman-turned-investigator through whose eyes the story is told, Joanne Dru as Ireland’s one-time fiancée and Crawford’s latest mistress, Shepperd Strudwick as her brother, John Derek as Crawford’s irresponsible son, and Anne Seymour as his noble wife.

A thinly veiled biography of James Curley, the four-time mayor of Boston and one-time governor of Massachusetts, John Ford’s 1958 film The Last Hurrah from Edwin O’Connor’s bestseller stars Spencer Tracy in one of his best performances as the loveable old rogue. The politics are more about working class Irish Catholics vs. Protestant bluebloods than Democrats vs. Republicans, but no matter, the dirty dealing and bickering is palpable just the same. Jeffrey Hunter is Tracy’s newspaperman nephew given a rare inside look at the workings of big city elections. Dianne Foster is Hunter’s Protestant wife; Pat O’Brien, James Gleason and Edward Brophy are Tracy’s cronies; Donald Crisp is a Cardinal; Jane Darwell plays an elderly charmer who lives to go to funerals; Basil Rathbone and John Carradine are the chief villains; Wallace Ford and Frank McHugh appear as a couple of dumb politicos; and Basil Ruysdael is Foster’s clergyman father whose “I’ll bet if he had to live his life over he’d do things differently” gets to set up Tracy’s famous last line: “the hell I would!” The film is both cynical and sentimental like all the great Ford films.

Congressional shenanigans behind the scenes as the Senate gets ready to vote on the President’s choice for Secretary of State is the juicy plot device that drives Otto Preminger’s 1962 film of Allen Drury’s long-time bestseller, Advise & Consent. Henry Fonda is the candidate under scrutiny, Walter Pidgeon the Majority Leader, Charles Laughton the wily Southern Senator who bucks his own party, Franchot Tone the President, and Lew Ayres the Vice President. Don Murray, Geroge Grizzard and Burgess Meredith figure heavily in a sub-plot that leads to the screen’s first scene in a NYC gay bar and Gene Tierney shows up as the Washington hostess with the mostest.

One of the most unsettling political thrillers of all time, John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film ofRichard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate has lost none of its fascination. Numerous imitators, including a star-studded remake, have come and gone, but nothing comes close to the impact of the original when you discover who the voice on the phone is that is egging unwitting assassin Laurence Harvey on. Frank Sinatra as his Korean War buddy and numerous supporting players are fine, but the film belongs to Angela Lansbury in one of the most withering portrayals of lopsided mother love ever committed to film.

Burt Lancaster is a self-righteous U.S. Army General plotting to take over the country in John Frankenheimer’s 1964 film of Fletcher Knebel and Charles F. Bailey’s bestseller Seven Days in May. Kirk Douglas is an underling who uncovers the plot and informs the President, a stalwart Fredric March in one of his last great roles. An equally fine Edmund O’Brien was Oscar nominated as a congressman who is loyal to the President. March, O’Brien and Frankenheimer were all nominated for Golden Globes along with composer Jerry Goldsmith for this, one of the best of the cold war dramas.

Sidney Lumet’s 1964 film, Fail-Safe has had an odd history. The film, based on a novel about nuclear annihilation, was completed in 1963, but Stanley Kubrick and Columbia Pictures brought a nuisance suit against it claiming it plagiarized their Dr. Strangelove, which was based on another novel. It didn’t. The two college professors who had written the bestselling Fail-Safe had never heard of the more obscure novel upon which the Kubrick film was based, but similarities were enough to allow Columbia to forebear in a settlement whereby they obtained rights to the film intending not to release it. They finally did release it ten months after Strangelove had become a box office sensation.

Fail-Safe was not a huge success. Audiences theorized that there was no sense in spending good money to see a straight drama they had already seen satirized. Strangelove may be the superior film artistically, but Fail-Safe is the one that will send chills up and down your spine. Henry Fonda as the President, Dan O’Herlihy as the conflicted General and Walter Matthau as the “we can survive a nuclear war” theorist head the impeccable cast. Scenes of people going through the motions of their everyday lives as the bomb drops on New York is as eerily unsettling post-9/11 as it was watching the film in a darkened theater in New York City in 1964, not being quite sure what you would find when you exited into the daylight.

Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1964 film of Gore Vidal’s play The Best Man is a provocative study of the in-fighting at a nearly-deadlocked Presidential convention. Henry Fonda (again!) is the upright candidate patterned after Adlai Stevenson, Cliff Robertson is the sleazy politician patterned after Richard Nixon, and Lee Tracy is the crafty former president patterned after Harry Truman. Ann Sothern is a professional party giver who steals the little of the film that is left to steal after Tracy gets through with it. The indomitable Tracy was justly nominated for an Oscar for his return to films after a thirty years absence.

It’s back to the beginning with Peter H. Hunt’s jubilant film of Sherman Edwards’ musical 1776 in which the Nation’s founding fathers attempt to agree on the Declaration of Independence. William Daniels as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin and Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams delightfully reprise their Broadway roles while a young Blythe Danner takes over for Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson. Despite the musicalization, it’s a fairly accurate and deft reproduction of the actual events.

Unfolding pretty much as the actual events did, Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 film of Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men is remarkable in that it keeps the suspense at full throttle even though audiences, then as now, knew the outcome. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are uncanny as the intrepid reporters and Jason Robards is a wonder in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. Stand-outs among the rest of the cast include Jack Warden and Martin Balsam as other editors, John Randolph as John Mitchell, Stephen Collins as Hugh Sloan, Oscar nominee Jane Alexander as a whistle blowing bookkeeper, and of course Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat.

One of the most acclaimed miniseries from the Golden Age of the miniseries, the 1970s, 1979’s Backstairs at the White House is based on the memoirs of Lillian Rogers Parks (1897-1997) who, along with her mother Maggie Rogers, served a total of eight first families from the Tafts to the Eisenhowers. Nominated for 11 Emmys and winner of one (for Best Make-up), its acting nominees included Olivia Cole as Maggie, Louis Gossett Jr. as the White House’s head butler, Ed Flanders as Calvin Coolidge, Robert Vaughn as Woodrow Wilson, Eileen Heckart as Eleanor Roosevelt and Celeste Holm as Florence Harding.

Awards watchers will observe that there are eight Oscar winners and seven other Hollywood veterans who were nominated for Oscars at least once in the outstanding cast. Among the winners are Gosset, Heckart, Holm, Kim Hunter (Ellen Wilson), George Kennedy (Warren Harding), Lee Grant (Grace Coolidge), Estelle Parsons (Bess Truman) and Cloris Leachman (housekeeper Mrs. Jaffray). The nominees include Vaughn, Paul Winfield (Maggie’s husband), Victor Buono (William Howard Taft), Julie Harris (Helen “Nellie” Taft), Jan Sterling (Lou Hoover), Barbara Barrie (Mamie Eisenhower) and Jack Kruschen (Alexander Woolcott). Tony and Emmy winner (for other roles) Leslie Uggmas has the lead as Lillian.

A relic of the Clinton Administration, Rob Reiner’s 1995 film The American President is an absolute charmer with Michael Douglas playing the widowed Clintonesque President who woos and wins lobbyist Annette Bening. Martin Sheen and Michael J. Fox are his loyal supporters and Richard Dreyfuss is his hiss-able opposing candidate.

There are others, of course, but these are the ones I find myself thinking about and returning to most often.

-Peter J. Patrick (November 4, 2008)