Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief

436 Pages·2004·2.829 MB·English

by  Mark Feeney

Nixon at the Movies

NIXON
MOVIES
E
H
T
T
A
Mark Feeney
A B O O K A B O U T B E L I E F
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago + London
mark feeneyis a staff writer for the Boston Globe.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
©2004by The University of Chicago Press
All rights reserved. Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 2 3 4 5
isbn: 0-226-23968-3
Feeney, Mark.
Nixon at the movies : a book about belief / Mark Feeney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-226-23968-3(alk. paper)
1. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913– 2. Nixon, Richard M.
(Richard Milhous), 1913– —Views on motion pictures. 3. Nixon, Richard M.
(Richard Milhous), 1913– —Psychology. 4. Presidents—United States—
Biography. 5. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States. 6. Motion
pictures—United States—Psychological aspects. 7. Motion pictures—
United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
e856.f435 2004
973.924'092—dc22 2004004964
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
A portion of chapter 8 appeared in The American Scholar70,no.1(Winter
2001).
Photo on page 2is courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research.
for
Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips
:: :: ::
What this pair does together is less important than the fact that they
do whatever it is together, that they know how to spend time together,
even that they would rather waste time together than do anything
else—except that no time they are together could be wasted.
stanley cavell,Pursuits of Happiness

Contents
Introduction ix
1 :: Dark Victory 3
2 :: Double Indemnity 31
3 :: Patton/Mister Roberts 65
4 :: Advise and Consent 97
5 :: Sweet Smell of Success 129
6 :: Two Rode Together 153
7 :: American Madness 183
8 :: “Suspicious Minds” 217
9 :: All the President’s Men 245
10 :: Nixon at the Movies 275
11 :: The Conversation 297
Epilogue: Nixon in the Movies 327
Acknowledgments 335
Appendix: What the President Saw and When He Saw It 339
Notes 357 Bibliography 379 Index 399
. . . He will not feed the people on movie-star daydreams . . .
garry wills, Nixon Agonistes
:: :: ::
Despite all the polls and all the rest, I think there are still a hell of a
lot of people out there, and from what I’ve seen they’re—you know,
they, they want to believe, that’s the point, isn’t it?
richard nixon to h. r. haldeman, april 25, 1973
Introduction
He would have made a fantastic tragic figure in a Bergman film, if only he were a
better actor. liv ullmann, after sitting near richard nixon at a state
dinner
In1956, when [Tricia Nixon] was ten years old, she was taking piano lessons and I
was trying not too successfully to convince her how important it was to practice. She
finally turned to me and said, “Daddy, you should have practiced more when you
were a little boy. If you had, you might have become famous and gone to Hollywood
and they would have buried you in a special place.” richard nixon,In the Arena
In a century of celebrity, it was inevitable that the most powerful
man in the world and the most alluring medium of mass commu-
nication should find themselves frequently intertwined. William
McKinley was the first president to be filmed. Woodrow Wilson gave
The Birth of a Nation(1915) what remains the most memorable blurb
any motion picture has ever received—“It is like writing history with
Lightning,” he allegedly said—an endorsement D. W. Griffith him-
self couldn’t have bettered. In 1928the nation’s First Family, the
Coolidges, had the nation’s First Couple, Mary Pickford and Doug-
las Fairbanks, to lunch at the White House.Louis B. Mayer, the sec-
ond “M” in MGM, cherished a friendship with Herbert Hoover.
They “are practically sleeping in the same bed,” Marie Dressler, one
of Mayer’s most popular stars, complained when he forbade any-
one on the studio’s payroll from attending a rally for Franklin D.
Roosevelt at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1932.
Mayer may have loved Hoover, but it was Roosevelt the rest of
Hollywood loved. FDR loved Hollywood right back, and they were
IX
a perfect match. As he once told Orson Welles, “You and I are the two
best actors in America.” Harry Truman didn’t much like movies—though
he was such a big fan of Frank Capra’s State of the Union (1948) that a Hol-
lywood trade paper called him “a one-man sales-staff” for the political
comedy—and Dwight Eisenhower cared only for Westerns. John F.
Kennedy changed the equation even more than FDR had. He was the
biggest star in America. The son of a man who bankrolled studios and
slept with movie stars, he was the first candidate to explicitly utilize star
power, both his own and that of such friends as Frank Sinatra. Other pres-
idents have had their movie connections. Two decades after posing for a
Hollywood studio portraitist, Lyndon Johnson saw his trusted aide Jack
Valenti become president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Gerald Ford included among his Palm Springs golf partners Capra and
Bob Hope. Bill Clinton was so starstruck he sat through Air Force One
(1997) twice. Looking in the mirror the morning after, did he see Harri-
son Ford? As for George W. Bush, he did his best Tom Cruise imitation
landing in that navy carrier jet on theUSS Abraham Lincoln.Kennedy’s
special genius, though, was to have the movies associate with him. Only
Ronald Reagan, of course, has surpassed him in this regard—Reagan ac-
tuallywasa movie star and owed his political career to his association with
Hollywood.
When Jack Warner heard that his former contract player was going to
run against Pat Brown, the mogul is said to have reacted with consterna-
tion. “No, no: Jimmy Stewart for governor—Ronnie Reagan for best
friend!” So, too, with the title of this book: Nixon at the movies rather
than Reagan or any of the rest? The casting seems all wrong. Nixon’s is
far from the first name that comes to mind for the protagonist of a book
that refracts themes and incidents in a president’s life through various
films and film genres (and vice versa). Yet that it should be Nixonat the
movies rather than Reagan or any of the rest let there be no doubt.
It is the fundamental premise of this book that no other political
figure so well typifies what Stanley Cavell has referred to as “America’s
special involvement in film, from the talent drawn to Hollywood in mak-
ing them to the participation of society as a whole in viewing them.”1The
phrase “at the movies” pertains, after all, to those watching the screen
rather than those appearing on it. The moviegoer’s fundamental yearn-
ing and loneliness—why else sit for two hours in the dark if not in pursuit
of yearning’s fulfillment and loneliness’ abolition?—find an unmistak-
able embodiment in Nixon. Growing up hard by Hollywood as Holly-
wood itself grew up, he added a particularly vivid strand to the pattern of
X :: Introduction