Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 12, 1994 TAG: 9408120064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MALCOLM L. JOHNSON THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This chief executive, one Edward Bennett portrayed by Donald Moffat, is one of the lowest specimens thrown into the White House by a movie industry grown suspicious, even contemptuous, of the highest elective office in the land.
On top of all that Ford's Jack Ryan has been through - after inheriting a top CIA post from a dying, beloved superior, he has been nearly killed and is now threatened with public disgrace - this Oval Office wheeler-dealer wants him to indulge in yet another cover-up. He clubbily calls it the ``Potomac two-step.'' Sorry, snaps Jack, he doesn't dance.
Gone are the days of D.W. Griffith's ``Abraham Lincoln,'' Darryl F. Zanuck's ``Wilson'' and such inspiring tales of the making of presidents as ``Sunrise at Campobello,'' Dore Schary's reverent account of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's battle against polio, and ``PT 109,'' whose filming was prompted, it is said, by none other than the sitting president, John F. Kennedy.
Of late, we have seen the chief executive played as a buffoon (``Hot Shots! Part Deux''), a cold figure estranged from his beautiful wife (``Dave''), a dog-loving dope (``The Pelican Brief'') and a glad-handing neo-Babbitt (``In the Line of Fire'').
Now ``Clear and Present Danger'' portrays Edward Bennett as a man careless with power, bent on avenging the murder of a boyhood buddy, even if it means committing troops to a secret little war. Questioned by an aide as to why he is so incensed by a killing of an American civilian, this Great Statesman explodes: ``It's the first time it was a friend of mine.'' President Bennett is a venal, amoral dolt.
Since the founding of the republic, political cartoonists and pundits have freely ridiculed and skewered presidents. But the American movie establishment, fearing government intervention, prizing top-level contacts and generally imbued with good old-fashioned patriotism, long took the most reverent positions on the men who had risen to the summit of political power.
Abraham Lincoln was always the most hallowed figure, whether as a rising lawyer-debater or a troubled martyr-to-be. Besides Griffith's failed early sound effort, ``Abraham Lincoln,'' the Honest Abe classics include John Ford's ``Young Mr. Lincoln,'' with the always presidential Henry Fonda, and John Cromwell's ``Abe Lincoln of Illinois,'' with Raymond Massey repeating the role he originated in Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
But Zanuck threw everything Twentieth Century Fox could muster behind his sprawling bio-pic of Woodrow Wilson, and thought it should have won an Oscar. Schary, after his eight years as chief of production at MGM, turned to play writing, canonizing FDR in ``Sunrise at Campobello,'' which his production company also filmed.
In the '50s, even as that beloved father figure and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower radiated peace and goodwill from the White House, the tide began to change. The theater business often moves faster than the movie industry, and Ike was barely out of office when then-enfant terrible Gore Vidal sent his ``The Best Man'' to Broadway.
In 1964 ``The Best Man'' was filmed by Franklin Schaffner, with Henry Fonda as the good guy and Cliff Robertson as the witch hunter. (This was only a year after Robertson's young Jack Kennedy in ``PT 109''). Lee Tracy reprised his Broadway role as the ex-president.
On stage off-Broadway, playwright Barbara Garson's ``McBird'' as much as accused Lyndon Baines Johnson of a Macbeth-like plot to seize power from Kennedy. Hollywood never went that far; before his assassination, in fact, Kennedy even cooperated in the filming of ``Seven Days in May,'' which focused on a planned military coup d'etat after the president (played by Fredric March) signed a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. The driving drama, directed by John Frankenheimer, was released in 1964 after the assassination. (Frankenheimer had previously filmed ``The Manchurian Candidate,'' Richard Condon's tale of a brainwashed presidential assassin.)
As the war escalated, the military was taking the heat. Crazed officers named ``Buck'' Turgidson and Jack D. Ripper captured the paranoic spirit of the day in Stanley Kubrick's ``Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'' (1964). Peter Sellers had a triple role: Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, the ex-Nazi Strangelove and the president, the utterly ineffectual Merkin Muffley.
LBJ, though a liberal domestically, became anathema because of the undeclared war in Southeast Asia. And after Richard Milhous Nixon, considered out of contention forever after his ignoble defeat in 1960 by Kennedy, returned to power, negative attitudes toward the presidency became entrenched. The cinematic culmination came in 1976 with ``All the President's Men,'' which centered on the Washington Post investigation into the Watergate break-in. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford played reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
With LBJ and Nixon back to back, and more and more allegations seeping about concerning the illicit dalliances of the martyred king of Camelot, the image of the presidency became increasingly tarnished. ``Saturday Night Live'' sketched Gerald Ford as a clumsy lunkhead, and despite his noble efforts, Jimmy Carter emerged as bumbler in the public eye.
Then came the Great Communicator. Because he was one of their own, Hollywood left Ronald Reagan pretty much alone. But as the Decade of Greed ended, with the uncharismatic George Bush in the White House, the time was ripe for the movies to ridicule or attack the commander in chief.
The odd thing is, however, that when it has done so, it has attacked faceless figures. The recent presidents seen on film are rarely recognizable - except in the ``Naked Gun'' movies, which have used lookalikes for George and Barbara Bush (in ``21/2'') and for Bill Clinton (``33''). Ivan Reitman's 1993 ``Dave,'' the most focused portrait of the presidency (it even used real U.S. senators in cameos), revolved around a mean-spirited, humorless type - a totally unsympathetic variation on Bush, replaced by his good, Everyman twin. Kevin Kline was terrific in both roles, with Sigourney Weaver as the First Lady estranged from the real president, but drawn to the genteel fake.
In the Ramboesque sequel to ``Hot Shots!'' the fool has become president. But Lloyd Bridges, as a formerly loony admiral with mad, glazed eyes, is not playing any identifiable president. The movie suggests only that any idiot, the dumber the better, can become chief executive.
More realistic presidents were on view in last summer's ``In the Line of Fire'' and ``The Pelican Brief.'' The man in the White House played by Jim Curley was a jovial macho man who is all bluff facade, shrugging off the assassination plot but groveling and terrified at the moment of truth, when it is necessary for Clint Eastwood to step in and take the hit. The president in ``The Pelican Brief,'' finely satirized by Robert Culp, cares about little except his prize pooch - even though Surpreme Court justices are being murdered.
by CNB