As America waits to discover whether it is going to get a 47th president or a sequel starring the 45th man to hold the office, Cinema Paradiso consults the history books to gauge how the historical commanders in chief of the United States have been portrayed on the big screen. In our first article, we shall look at the men (as they have all been male) who have been held the office between 1789-1933.
If you're wondering about the apparent numerical discrepancy in the opening paragraph, comeback kid Grover Cleveland is unique in being both the 22nd and the 24th POTUS, as he is the only president to regain the office after being defeated at the polls. This makes him pretty cool in presidential terms, although Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter could point to the fact that their masks were worn by Patrick Swayze, James LeGros, John Philbin and Bojesse Christopher in the daring robbery sequence in Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break (1991).
But what about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, whose effigies are literally set in stone in the famous monument created between 1927-41 by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln, at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota? During their bonding jaunt in Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013), Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) tells son David (Will Forte) that the figures look unfinished. But they're lucky to see them at all after the pounding they have taken in other movies over the years.
In Richard Lester's Superman II (1980), for example, General Zod (Terence Stamp) and sidekicks Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O'Halloran) destroy Lincoln and assume the positions of the remaining trio, although the scene itself was replaced in the 2006 director's cut with an assault on the Washington Monument. The mischievous aliens in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996) use a laser beam to immortalise themselves in an audacious makeover, while White House incumbent Maya Gilliam (Chris Rock) has himself added to the display in Head of State (2003). More subversively, the memorial is blown to smithereens when documentarist Michael Moore infiltrates the secret headquarters constructed behind the rock face while on a suicide bombing mission in Trey Parker's anarchic puppet classic, Team America: World Police (2004).
In Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (2007), Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) discovers that the memorial granite was carved to hide clues to the whereabouts of the golden city of Cibola. But Mount Rushmore's move famous movie moment comes in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959). The home of the villainous Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) is close by and Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) and Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) decide to escape by climbing across the presidential visages. They are pursued by the menacing Leonard (Martin Landau). although Eve is left hanging by her fingernails after he is shot by a National Park ranger. This iconic sequence was amusingly parodied in the 2005 'North By North Quahog' episode of Family Guy (1999-), which sees Lois Griffen clinging to Washington's lips after she and Peter steal the rushes of Mel Gibson's latest film. The Passion of the Christ 2: Crucify This.
The Founding Fathers
The United States of America was still a relatively young country when motion pictures first began to flicker in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope peepshows in 1894. Indeed, the events respectively chronicled by documentarists Ken Burns and Steven Ives in The American Civil War (1990) and The West (1996) were still in living memory when William McKinley became the first president to be filmed by a motion picture camera. Sadly, he was also the third of the four presidents to be assassinated and it was Theodore Roosevelt who became the first occupant of the Oval Office to exploit the new medium to shape his image with the electorate.
As it's estimated that over 90% of all films made in the USA before 1929 have been lost forever, there's no knowing how many presidential performances were committed to celluloid during the silent era. We do know, however, that Joseph Kilgour was among the first actors to portray George Washington on numerous occasions. J. Stuart Blackton cast him in both Washington Under the American Flag (1909) and The Battle Cry of Peace (1915), while he also co-starred with the much-maligned Marion Davies in E. Mason Hopper's Janice Meredith (1924), which also featured Lionel Adams as Thomas Jefferson.
Alan Mowbray became the first Washington of the talkie era in John G. Adolphi's Alexander Hamilton (1931), which starred Oscar-winning British thespian George Arliss, alongside Montagu Love as Jefferson and Morgan Wallace as 5th president, James Monroe. The life of this influential First Secretary of the Treasury also inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash Broadway hit, Hamilton, which was filmed in 2020 by Thomas Kail with Miranda in the title role and Christopher Jackson and Daweed Diggs respectively playing Washington and Jefferson, while Okieriete Onaodowan figured as Monroe's predecessor, James Madison
Mowbray reprised the role of Washington in Gregory Ratoff's Where Do We Go from Here? (1945), a time-travelling comedy with songs by Kurt Weil and Ira Gershwin that has much in common with Rob Minkoff's animated history lesson, Mr Peabody & Sherman (2014), which has Jess Harnell providing the voices of Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. Events unfold in an equally lighthearted manner in David Zucker's spoof trawl through the national archives, Big Fat Important Movie (2008), which sees Jon Voight tackle Washington and Chriss Anglin step into the shoes of John F. Kennedy.
On a more serious note, Washington (Richard Gaines) is still a colonel in the Virginia Regiment when Captain Christopher Holden (Gary Cooper) seeks to keep freed slave Abby Hale (Paulette Goddard) out of the clutches of the cruel Martin Garth in Cecil B. DeMille's typically flamboyant 1760s saga, Unconquered (1947). However, he is very much a warrior seeking to drive the detested British out of the Thirteen Colonies when played by Frank Windsor and Terry Layman in Hugh Hudson's Revolution (1985) and Roland Emmerich's The Patriot (2000), a pair of historically fanciful adventures in which the Redcoats feel the wrath of freedom fighters Al Pacino and Mel Gibson.
Unfortunately, the current unavailability of Peter H. Hunt's Bicentennial musical, 1776 (1972), means that Cinema Paradiso users are deprived of the chance of seeing William Daniels and Ken Howard respectively essaying John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. But the 3rd POTUS was memorably played by Nick Nolte in James Ivory's Jefferson in Paris (1995). Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and produced by Ismail Merchant, this meticulous melodrama is set in pre-revolutionary France and shows how the American ambassador was torn between artist's wife Maria Cosway (Greta Scacchi) and his daughter's slave maid, Sally Hemmings (Thandie Newton).
Thanks to Jefferson (Ronald McAdams) and the other Founding Fathers, Nicolas Cage starts following the clues provided by a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence in Jon Turteltaub's National Treasure (2004), Grandon Rhodes took the role of Jefferson in Frank Borzage's Magnificent Doll (1946), which also features Burgess Meredith as James Madison in an adaptation of Irving Stone's novel about the romantic triangle involving the 4th president, political rival Aaron Burr (David Niven) and socialite Dolley Payne (Ginger Rogers), who did much to shape the office of First Lady and redecorate the White House after it caught fire during a British raid during the War of 1812.
The Shapers of a Manifest Destiny
The year is 1839 in Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) and President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) is seeking re-election. However, an uprising led by Joseph Cinqué (Djimon Hounsou) aboard a ship carrying slaves from the Spanish colony of Cuba sparks a legal dispute over who owns the human cargo. As the case becomes more complex and threatens his prospects at the ballot box, Van Buren seeks the advice of lawyer predecessor John Quincy Adams, who is played by the Oscar-nominated Anthony Hopkins.
Charles Trowbridge had played Van Buren in Clarence Brown's The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), which starred Joan Crawford as Washington socialite Peggy O'Neill cosying up to President Andrew Jackson. Lionel Barrymore would reprise this role opposite Clark Gable in Vincent Sherman's Lone Star (1952), but the 7th POTUS is still best known for the indelible line sung by Groucho Marx in 'Lydia the Tattooed Lady' in Edward Buzzell's At the Circus (1938): 'When her muscles start relaxin', up the hill goes Andrew Jackson.'
Brian Donlevy starred as Jackson in Stuart Heisler's The Remarkable Andrew (1942), which was written by Dalton Trumbo, who was so superbly played by the Oscar-nominated Bryan Cranston in Jay Roach's Trumbo (2015). Edward Ellis took the role in George Nichols, Jr.'s Man of Conquest (1939), a frontier yarn that covers much of the same territory as Norman Foster's Disney adventure, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955), which cast Fess Parker in the title role and Basil Ruysdael as Jackson.
He was succeeded by Charlton Heston, who played the character twice, opposite Susan Hayward as Rachel Donalson in Henry Levin's take on Irving Stone's The President's Lady (1953) and in The Buccaneer (1958), a rousing rumination on the role that pirate Jean Lafitte (Yul Brynner) played in the War of 1812 that was directed by Anthony Quinn, the son-in-law of Cecil B. DeMille, who was too ill to remake the 1938 monochrome version, in which Jackson had been played by Hugh Sothern.
No one has yet found a way of incorporating John Tyler (10) or Millard Fillmore (13) in a Hollywood feature. But glimpses of William Henry Harrison (Douglass Dumbrille) and Zachary Taylor (Robert Barrat) can be seen in Henry Hathaway's Ten Gentlemen From West Point (1942) and Raoul Walsh's Distant Drums (1951), which stars Gary Cooper and should really be available on disc in this country. As should John Farrow's California (1947), which teams Ray Milland and Barbara Stanwyck and features Ian Wolfe as President James K. Polk.
The 11th POTUS had also been played by Edward Earle in Frank Ryan's Can't Help Singing (1944), which stars Deanna Durbin as the daughter of a senator at the time of the California Gold Rush. Writer-director Preston Sturges celebrates an even more vital discovery in The Great Moment (1944), which tells the story of William Morton (Joel McCrea), whose status as the inventor of an effective anaesthetic is jeopardised by a piece of legal advice given him by President Franklin Pierce (Porter Hall). Of course, Sturges was better known for his comedies and he may well have approved of the offbeat plot of Bruce Dellis's Raising Buchanan (2019), which afforded René Auberjonois his final role, as the ghost of James Buchanan, who haunts the desperate Amanda Melby after she digs up his corpse in the hope of landing a sizeable ransom.
The Healers of a Divided Nation
The fissures that still exist in modern America largely date from the war between states, which broke out a few weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Slavery was a key issue between the supporters of the Union and the Confederacy, whose seven secessionist states were led by Jefferson Davis. The causes of the combatants have inspired hundreds of Hollywood pictures, most famously Victor Fleming's racially problematic adaptation of Margaret Hamilton's blockbuster novel. Gone With the Wind (1939). But we shall stick to those featuring the 16th president.
Future director Joseph Henabery took the role of Honest Abe in DW Griffith's incalculably influential, but morally repugnant epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which also saw Donald Crisp play Unionist commander and future president, Ulysses S. Grant. The occupant of the White House at the time of the picture's release, Woodrow Wilson, claimed it was like 'writing history with lightning' and Griffith would return to topic when he made his talkie bow with Abraham Lincoln (1930), which cast Walter Huston in the title role alongside Una Merkel and Kay Hammond as Ann Rutledge and Mary Todd. However, Griffith's film-making technique had not moved with the times and he was soon supplanted by the likes of John Ford, who had featured Charles Edward Bull as Lincoln in his masterly silent railroad saga, The Iron Horse (1924).
Charles Middleton, who remains best known for playing Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (1936) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940), had the imposing presence to play Lincoln alongside Alan Mowbray's Washington in The Silent President (1932), which marked the screen debut of vaudevillian George M. Cohan, whom James Cagney would portray in an Oscar-winning turn in Michael Curtiz's Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). But the most prolific Lincoln impersonator in the Golden Age of Hollywood was Frank McGlynn, Sr., who stood tall alongside Shirley Temple in David Butler's The Littlest Rebel (1935), was felled in Ford's Theatre in John Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island, set the scene for the exploits of Wild Bill Hickock (Gary Cooper), Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur) and Buffalo Bill Cody (James Ellison) in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (both 1936), and entrusted a gold shipment to overland express agent Joel McCrea in Frank Lloyd's Wells Fargo (1937).
After Percy Parsons took a walk-on as Lincoln opposite Anna Neagle in Victor Saville's Victoria the Great (1937) and John Carradine extolled the virtues of father and son Walter Huston and James Stewart in Clarence Brown's divided family drams, Of Human Hearts (1938), the latter's onetime roommate, Henry Fonda, captured the intensity and decency of the rail-splitter-turned-lawyer in John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln (1939), which earned screenwriter Lamar Trotti an Oscar nomination for his account of the future president's exploits in 1830s New Salem and Springfield. The same period was also covered by John Cromwell in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), which earned an Oscar nomination for Raymond Massey, who would reprise the role in John Ford's Civil War segment of How the West Was Won (1962), a Cinerama epic that also saw Harry Morgan play Ulysses S. Grant.
Curiously, Lincoln rather vanished from the screen after Victor Kilian and Leslie Kimmell had respectively essayed him in Michael Curtiz's Virginia City (1940), which had paired Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart, and in Anthony Mann's The Tall Target (1951), in which government agent Dick Powell had tried to protect the president from a murderous plot. When Lincoln did return to pictures, however, it was in a string of offbeat romps.
In Stephen Herek's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), Robert V. Barron takes to the high school stage to commend Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves and urge their classmates to 'be excellent to each other' and 'party on, dude!' Brendan Fraser turns into Lincoln during his misguided attempts to impress Elizabeth Hurley in Harold Ramis's Bedazzled (2000), while Glenn Beck's president is followed to Ford's Theatre by assassin John Wilkes Booth (Christian Camargo) in National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007).
By contrast, Benjamin Walker is the one doing the slaying in Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), an adaptation of the Seth Grahame-Smith novel that sees Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) persuade 5000 year-old Louisiana plantation owner Adam (Rufus Sewell) to swell the Confederate ranks with the undead. The mood is more sombre in Sean McNamara's Battlefield of Lost Souls (2014), which confines Michael Krebs to a bit part as Lincoln, while Tom Skerritt is more prominent as Grant in a recreation of the heroics performed by some Virginia cadets in the Battle of New Market in 1864.
Gilbert Gottfried's Lincoln takes a walk on the lighter side in Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), as he pops up during a drug trip. Will Forte also had fun with the role of the Master Builder with a jet-powered chair in Phil Lord's The Lego Movie (2014) and Mike Mitchell's The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019). But the standout performance came from Daniel Day-Lewis, who took over a part originally intended for Liam Neeson to become the first actor to win an Academy Award for playing an American president in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012). Covering the last four months of Lincoln's life, the action centres on the political machinations required to pass the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and featured Jared Harris as part of an exceptional ensemble as Lieutenant General Grant.
Curiously, there's no sign in Spielberg's sincere, if occasionally inaccurate drama of Andrew Johnson, who would take up the reins of power following Lincoln's death in 1865. He had been played by Van Heflin in William Dieterle's Tennessee Johnson (1942), which had overlooked the president's notorious racism, which makes him an increasingly problematical figure to depict on screen. Consequently, as played by Dennis Clark, he is consigned to the margins in Robert Redford's The Conspirator (2010), which casts Gerald Bestrom as Lincoln in an account of the court case against those who had backed actor-turned-assassin John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbel).
Having led the Unionist forces to victory, Ulysses S. Grant entered the White House in 1869 and remained for the next eight years. Actor Joseph Crehan must have been glad he did, as he got to play Grant four times during his Hollywood heyday. In addition to teaming with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea in Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1939) and with Frederick March in Irving Rapper's The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944), Crehan also played Grant opposite Errol Flynn's General George Custer in Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and made a sufficiently good impression to reunite with Flynn and Walsh in the lesser-seen Silver River (1948).
As the frontier was extended westwards during Grant's presidency, he has frequently cropped up in Westerns. John Hamilton took the role in Sidney Salkow's Sitting Bull (1954), while Stan Jones took over for John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959) and for the same director's contribution to How the West Was Won. The baton was passed to Jason Robards for William A, Fraker's The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), which pitted John Reid (Klinton Spilsbury) and his Comanche pal, Tonto (Michael Horse), against the evil Butch Cavendish (Christopher Lloyd). In Kenneth Branagh's Wild Wild West (1999), Kevin Kline sends himself on a mission in the company of Captain James T. West (Will Smith), as he doubles up as both President Grant and US Marshal Artemus Gordon in taking over the roles played by Robert Conrad and Ross Martin in the popular CBS TV series, The Wild Wild West (1965-69). A DC Comic provided the inspiration for Jimmy Hayward's Jonah Hex (2010), which sees Grant (Aidan Quinn) hire the eponymous bounty hunter (Josh Brolin) to prevent his former Civil War commander, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), from causing a terrorist outrage on 4 July 1876.
The Holders of the Fort
Steady hands were required in the post-vellum decades and such dependables rarely make compelling movie characters. Nevertheless, William A. Wellman gave us a glimpse of John Dilson as Rutherford B. Hayes in Buffalo Bill (1944), although few will remember catching sight of Francis Sayles as James A. Garfield (who was shot just six months into his term in 1881) in the Three Mesquiteers oater, The Night Riders (1939), which is just the kind of assignment discussed in the 1989 documentary, John Wayne: The Early Years.
Among the other minor POTUSes, Emmett Corrigan got to play as Chester A. Arthur opposite Edward G. Robinson in Alfred E. Green's Silver Dollar (1932). Similarly, the Grover Cleveland played by Stuart Holmes, William Davidson and Pat McCormick mixed with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in Lloyd Bacon's The Oklahoma Kid (1939), Alice Faye in Irving Cummings's Lillian Russell (1940) and Paul Newman in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976). All three films should be on disc in the UK, as should Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), Henry Koster's biopic of fabled composer John Philip Souza (Clifton Webb) biopic that featured Roy Gordon as President Benjamin Harrison, and George Marshall's A Message to Garcia (1936), which paired Barbara Stanwyck and Wallace Beery alongside Del Henderson as the ill-fated William McKinley.
By contrast, film-makers haven't been able to get enough of Theodore Roosevelt, the ebullient 26th president, who helped the United States confirm its emergence as a world power. Having been played by EJ Ratcliffe opposite Edward G. Robinson in Alfred E. Green's I Loved a Woman (1933), Teddy became the preserve of Sidney Blackmer, who would eventually become better known as the devil-worshipping Roman Castevet in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968). In addition to William A. Seiter's This Is My Affair (1937), Albert S. Rogell's In Old California (1943) and Elliott Nugent's My Girl Tisa (1948), Blackmer also played Roosevelt in the aforementioned Buffalo Bill and in Ray Enright's Teddy the Rough Rider (1940), which won the Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short.
Look out for the man waving a hat on the campaign trail with Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles's masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), as it's Thomas A. Curran making an uncredited appearance as Teddy Roosevelt. He would next be played by Wallis Clark in a pair of admirable biopics, Michael Curtiz's Yankeee Doodle Dandy (see above) and Alfred Santell's Jack London (1943). The following year, he would be parodied in a barnstormingly bully manner by John Alexander as the barking 'Teddy Roosevelt' Brewser in Frank Capra's madcap black comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Amusingly, George Marshall would cast Alexander as the president himself opposite Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in Fancy Pants (50).
Ed Cassidy would rise to the occasion in two colourful pieces of Americana, Busby Berkeley's Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), which teamed Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as a couple of baseball players, and Arthur Lubin's The First Traveling Saleslady (1956), which drolly paired Ginger Rogers and Carol Channing. Both films really should be available on disc in this country. Thankfully, Cinema Paradiso users can appreciate Brian Keith's scheming turn as the electioneering president seeking to exploit a kidnapping in Morocco to demonstrate his foreign policy prowess in John Milius's The Wind and the Lion (1975). They can also spot Robert Boyd's fleeting appearance in Miloš Forman's adaptation of EL Doctorow's Ragtime (1981), which contains the final screen outings of those fast-talking sparring partners, James Cagney and Pat O'Brien.
David James Alexander is only seen in passing in Newsies (1992), Kenny Ortega's musical account of the 1899 New York Newsboys' Strike, although Ray Geer gets to share a meaningful scene with Joseph Runningfox as the eponymous Apache leader in Walter Hill's 1993 teleplay, Geronimo. Ed Metzger looks suitably presidential at the unveiling of the New Orleans clock that runs backwards in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). But most modern audience will think of Robin Williams when they hear the name Teddy Roosevelt, as he is on fine form as the animated waxwork who takes night security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) under his wing in the triptych of Shawn Levy movies spun off from Milan Trenc's children's faourite: Night At the Museum (2006), Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Night At the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014).
William Howard Taft has the dual distinction of being the last American president to sport facial hair and the first to play golf. So Walter Massey should be readily identifiable in Bill Paxton's The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), which recreates the battle at the 1913 US Open between British veterans Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane) and Ted Ray (Stephen Marcus) and the American amateur, Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBeouf). Backed by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson defeated Taft in 1912 and spent the next few years trying to keep Isolationist America out of the Great War. He was played with laudable dignity by Alexander Knox in Henry King's Wilson (1944), which drew five Oscar nominations at the height of the Second World War.
Under the guise of Frank Forsyth, Wilson's role in the 1914-18 conflict was satirised in the debuting Richard Attenborough's inventive adaptation of Joan Littlewood's stage hit, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), while Wilson's reluctance to support the cause of female suffrage is captured with old-world obduracy by Bob Gunton in Katja von Garnier's Iron Jawed Angels (2004), as the president is slow-walked to reform by campaigners Alice Paul (Hilary Swank), Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor), Inez Milholland (Julia Ormond) and Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston).
A stroke meant that Wilson spent much of his later presidency out of the limelight and there was much optimism when he was replaced at the start of the Jazz Age by Warren G. Harding. He was played by Harry Dean Stanton in Delbert Mann's TV-movie, The Legendary Curse of the Hope Diamond (1975), which touches upon the Teapot Dome scandal that ruined Harding's reputation. An account of the episode entitled Black Gold was announced in 2010, but it never came to fruition, although it cast a shadow over Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007), which was based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, Oil, and brought Daniel Day-Lewis the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance as Daniel Plainview.
Played by Ian Wolfe in Cecil B. DeMille'sThe Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) and Bruce McGill in Dean Wright's Mexican independence recreation, Outlaws (2012), Calvin Coolidge did much to restore public faith in the highest office in the land. He became the first US president to make a talking picture, when sound pioneer Lee De Forest used his Phonofilm apparatus to record a speech about taxation in the 1924 short, President Coolidge, Taken on the White House Grounds. But successor Herbert Hoover had the misfortune to arrive in the Oval Office shortly before the Wall Street Crash in the autumn of 1929. The 31st president is played by Thomas Peacocke in Robert Ellis Miller's teleplay, The Angel of Pennsylvania Avenue (1996), which sees unemployed Detroit worker Robert Urich make his way to Washington to appeal to the president in person. This is one of numerous dramas made during and after the Great Depression, which Hoover proved unable to resolve. However, he did repeal the 1919 Volstead Act, which had introduced Prohibition and launched the Warner Bros gangster cycle that had given the talkies some much-needed edge and energy in the early 1930s.
