No debate about it: Here are the best political movies of all time
With the elections less than two months away and the highly anticipated debate between former President Donald Trump and current vice president Kamala Harris on Sept 10, it’s time to revisit classic political movies. TCM is currently presenting a nine-week series “Making Change: The Most Significant Political Films of All Time.” Political films run the gamut from thrillers (“The Manchurian Candidate,” “The Parallax View”), to dramas (“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”), to the historical (“All the President’s Men,” “JFK”), to satirical comedies (“Idiocracy,” “Dave,” “The Candidate”).
Speaking of satires, Preston Sturges received his one and only Oscar for his screenplay for 1940’s “The Great McGinty,” his smart, funny comedy about a hobo (Brian Donlevy) who rises to governor only to lose it all. Sturges had originally written a piece “The Story of Man” in 1933 with Spencer Tracy in mind. Tracy had just starred in 1933’s “The Power and the Glory,” which marked Sturges’ first film script. He attempted to sell it to Universal which also turned the story down; so, did the Saturday Evening Post in 1938.
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Sturges, who had written such hits as “The Good Fairy’ and “Easy Living,” sold it to Paramount for $1 if he would be allowed to direct. For years, Sturges had complained about the directors who shot his scripts most notably Mitchell Leisen who helmed the acclaimed 1937 “Easy Living” and 1940’s “Remember the Night.” Of the latter movie Sturges said: “At the studio, writing ‘Remember the Night’ for my new producer, Al Lewis almost caused me to commit hara-kiri several times, but I postponed it for some later assignment…As it turned out, the picture had quite a lot of schmaltz, a good of schmerz and just enough schmutz to make it box office.”
And “The Great McGinty” kicked off Sturges’ four-year output of comedy masterpieces including 1941’s “The Lady Eve” and “Sullivan’s Travels,” 1942’s “The Palm Beach Story,” 1944’s “The Miracle of Morgan Creek” and “Hail the Conquering Hero.”
Sturges sets up “The Great McGinty” in his prologue: “This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute. They both had to get out of the country.”
We first meet Dan McGinty working as a bartender in some South American town. When one of his patrons, a former bank employee tries to commit suicide because he stolen money from the bank, McGinty regales him about his political career which began when the town’s powerful Boss (Akim Tamiroff) has him vote at various polling places for the mayoral candidate. Good with his fists, he becomes an alderman and then a “reform” mayor but not before marries the Boss’ secretary (Muriel Angelus, channeling Irene Dunne), a lovely woman with two young children. Though the marriage initially is in name only, the two fall in love and by the time McGinty wins governor, he had turned into a veritable Tim Walz which doesn’t sit well with the Boss. So McGinty takes a big fall.
The New York Times described “The Great McGinty” as a sleeper, a picture that comes “drifting in without benefit of much publicity and which turns out delightful surprises,” adding that Sturges had written and directed with a “course and racy wit, a superior acceleration of action and a flavor as pungent and infectious as the fumes of a red-fire torch.”
Frank Capra never shied away from political movies. His enduring 1939 drama “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” starring Jimmy Stewart as an idealist young senator who discovers corruption in D.C., earned 11 Oscar nomination winning one. Two years later, Gary Cooper was Capra’s “Everyman” in the drama “Meet John Doe” also starring Barbara Stanwyck.
And in 1948, he returned to politics with “State of the Union,” starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn (her name is spelled wrong in the credits!), Van Johnson and Angela Lansbury. “State of the Union” opened on Broadway in 1945; penned by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse of “Life with Father” fame, the dark satire won the Pulitzer Prize.
Just as “The Great McGinty,” the film looks at the underbelly of politics. And the underbelly is represented by Kay Thorndyke (Lansbury) who is the head of a newspaper conglomerate and intent on finding a dark horse Republican candidate. She’ll make the decisions; her choice will be more of a mouthpiece. Lansbury was all of 22 when she played the fortysomething Thorndyke. One can’t help watching her in this film and thinking about her chilling Oscar-nominated performance in 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate” as Eleanor Iselin, the villainous mother of a former Korean War POW (Laurence Harvey) who had been brainwashed by the Communists to be an assassin. She also happens to be married to a rabid anti-communist with his sites on the White House. Though Kay doesn’t have assassination on her mind, these women are cut from the same cloth
Kay’s choice for the Republican candidate is Grant Matthews (Tracy), an idealistic self-made aircraft tycoon who also happens to be her lover. Who better to manipulate and do her bidding if he becomes president? To test the waters, Matthews agrees to go a speaking tour; he reunites with his estranged wife Mary (Hepburn) who knows about the affair but feels that her husband will appeal to ordinary folk. His initial speeches appeal to the ordinary, everyday American. But Thorndyke and her team aren’t happy, and she ends up giving him a speech where he praises big business. Soon Matthews becomes obsessed with becoming president and begins to make deals with high-powered donors and other wheeler dealers much to the chagrin of Mary. Will Grant see the error of his ways, or has he gone to the dark side of the political force?
The film is very prescient to this year’s elections. Just check out Matthews’ initial ideas for the country and the world: “I’m going to tell them that the wealthiest nation in the world is a failure unless it’s also the healthiest nation in the world. That means the highest medical care for the lowest income groups… And I’m going to tell them the American dream is not making money. It is the wellbeing and the freedom of the individual throughout the world, from Patagonia to Detroit… And I’m going to tell them there’s only one government which is capable of handling the atomic control, world disarmament, world employment, world peace, and that’s a world government. The people of 13 states started the United States of America. Well, I think the people of that many nations are now ready to start a United States of the World, and I mean a UNITED states of the World, with one bill of rights, one international law, one international currency, one international citizenship, and I’m going to tell them that the brotherhood of man is not just an idealistic dream, but a practical necessity if man is going to survive.”
Though it didn’t hit the top ten moneymakers that year, “State of the Union” performed well, making over $3.5 million. And though Republican Thomas Dewey was predicted to win the presidency, Harry S Truman triumphed keeping the Democrats in power for another four years.
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