History of US Presidents in Cinema: Part 2

America has spoken and it is going to get a 46th president - or at least it will once the 44th man to hold the office has had his day in court. While we wait for the lawyers to do their darnedest, 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 second survey, we shall look at the men (as they have all been male) who have been held the office since 1933.

The focus in these articles is very much on the way in which America's historical presidents have been played on the big screen. However, these figures have also featured in dozens of television shows, the most significant of which is Tom Hooper's mini-series, John Adams (2008), which scooped a record 13 Emmys. Scripted by Kirk Ellis from a book by David McCullough, this seven-part account of the early days of the republic starred Paul Giamatti as John Adams, David Morse as George Washington, Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as John Quincy Adams, while Tom Wilkinson and Rufus Sewell also appeared as two of the most celebrated Americans not to hold the highest office, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton.

Everyone Loves a Bogus POTUS

The small screen has also given us some of the most memorable fictional presidents, most notably Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet (Martin Sheen), Glenn Allen Walken (John Goodman) and Matthew Vincente Santos (Jimmy Smits) in The West Wing (1999-2006), David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert and Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) in 24 (2002-10), Fitzgerald Grant III (Tony Goldwyn) in Scandal (2012-16), Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) in House of Cards (2013-18), and Tom Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) in Designated Survivor (2017-).

However, there have also been a handful of female presidents on TV, including Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) in 24, Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) in Commander in Chief (2005-06), Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) in Homeland (2011-), Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Laura P. Montez (Andrea Savage) in Veep (2012-19), Elizabeth Adams McCord (Téa Leoni) in Madam Secretary (2014-19), and Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) in House of Cards.

Although there has yet to be female incumbent, Hollywood has been placing women in the Oval Office since the 1920s. Cartoon characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl also preceded Ernestine Barrier, who became the first live-action female president of the talkie era when she appeared in Robert Talmadge's Project Moonbase (1953), Following in the wake of Loretta Switt in Tom Bussmann's Whoops Apocalypse (1986) and Joan Rivers in George Miller's Les Patterson Saves the World (1987), the nuclear codes have since been in the possession of Christina Applegate in Jim Abrahama's Mafia! (1998), Stephanie Paul in Timo Vuorensola's Iron Sky (2012), Penny Johnson Jerald in Sam Liu's Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015), Sela Ward in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), Caroline Goodall in Donovan Marsh's Hunter Killer (2018), and Charlize Theron in Jonathan Levine's Long Shot (2019).

As it often reflects wider society, American cinema doesn't have a great track record when it comes to black presidents. A seven year-old Sammy Davis, Jr. seems to have been the first to reach the White House in Roy Mack's 1933 Vitaphone musical short, Rufus Jones For President. James Earl Jones's Douglass Dillman became the first African-American to be fictionally elected president in Joseph Sargent's adaptation of Irving Wallace's The Man (1972), a Rod Serling-scripted teleplay that was released in cinemas after ABC considered it too provocative to broadcast.

Indeed, a quarter of a century was to pass before Luc Besson cast Tom Lister, Jr. as President Lindberg in The Fifth Element (1997). But not even the reassuring presence of Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck in Mimi Leder's Deep Impact (1998) convinced Hollywood that American audiences were ready for a black POTUS. Chris Rock sought to satirise the situation, as the writer, director and star of Head of State (2003), but the critics were far from impressed and similar questions about who the jokes were intended to amuse were also levelled at Mike Judge's Idiocracy (2006), which featured onetime American footballer Terry Alan Crews as wrestling porn star president, Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

Oscar winner Louis Gossett, Jr. became the first black actor to play the president twice, in Craig R. Baxley's Left Behind: World At War (2005) and Paul Ziller's Solar Attack (2006). But it was only after Barack Obama became commander in chief in 2008 that Hollywood caught up with the times. Danny Glover became the first African-American president after Obama's inauguration in Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009), although four years were to elapse before he was followed by Jamie Foxx in the same director's White House Down (2013).

After Samuel L. Jackson had assumed power in Jalmari Helander's Big Game (2014), Alfre Woodard became the first black female president in the TV series, State of Affairs (2014-15). The canniest rise to power, however, saw Morgan Freeman's Allan Trumbull steer himself from being Speaker of the House in Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen (2013) to the vice-presidency in Babak Najafi's London Has Fallen (2016) before he landed the top job in Ric Roman Waugh's Angel Has Fallen (2019).

While we're still in the realm of make believe, let's namecheck a few more fictional presidents who have made their mark on cinematic history. Several of them have appeared in action-led genre movies, including the anonymous POTUS (EG Marshall) in Richard Lester's Superman II (1980), Jack Cahill (Cliff Robertson) in John Carpenter's Escape From LA (1996), James Marshall (Harrison Ford) in Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One (1997), President Fowler (James Cromwell) in Phil Alden Robinson's The Sum of All Fears (2002), President Ashton (William Hurt) in Pete Travis's Vantage Point (2007), President Rathcock (Charlie Sheen) in Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills (2013), and Marcus Robbins (Mark Cuban) in Anthony C. Ferrante's Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015).

Others have found themselves dealing with alien invasions, such as Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman) in Roland Emmerich'sIndependence Day, James Dale (Jack Nicholson) in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (both 1996) and Will Cooper (Kevin James) in Chris Columbus's Pixels (2015). However, the threat came from a foe on the other side of the planet in a number of Cold War thrillers that tested the mettle of the unnamed president (Henry Fonda) in Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe, Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) in John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (both 1964) and David T. Stevens (Charles Durning) in Robert Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977).

In adapting Peter George's novel, Red Alert, Stanley Kubrick gleefully satirised this doomsday scenario in Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which saw Peter Sellers play the title character and RAF flier Lionel Mandrake, as well as President Merkin Muffley, who famously took exception to fighting in the War Room. The mood was more sombre, however, during the tenures of Jack Neil (Ronny Cox) in Dwight H. Little's Murder At 1600, Allen Richmond (Gene Hackman) in Clint Eastwood's Absolute Power (both 1997) and Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) in Rod Lurie's The Contender (2000). But the lighter side shone through on Bobby Roberts (Jack Warden) in Hal Ashby's Being There (1979), Bill Mitchell and Dave Kovic (both Kevin Kline) in Ivan Reitman's Dave (1993), Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) in Rob Reiner's The American President (1995), the hissable unnamed president (Billy Bob Thornton) in Richard Curtis's Love Actually (2003), and President Mackenzie (Michael Keaton) in Forest Whitaker's First Daughter (2004).

The Four-Time Victor

Such was the concern in the corridors of power that Hollywood might shape political opinion, the financiers who bankrolled the studios left them in no doubt that partisan pictures would be frowned upon, whether they leant towards the Republicans or the Democrats. The 1934 Production Code would reinforce this cautionary approach, which makes Walter Huston's appearance as President Judson C. Hammond in Gregory La Cava's Gabriel Over the White House (1933) all the more intriguing. With the country in the depths of the Great Depression and the New Deal policies of new president Franklin Delano Roosevelt dividing opinion, there was little appetite for films that sought to win hearts and minds.

As FDR was also suffering from a paralytic illness that confined him to a wheelchair away from the public gaze, film-makers were wary of depictions that undermined his authority. Besides, the president's weekly 'Fireside Chats' on the radio had endeared him to millions and the people so rallied around Roosevelt after the United States declared war on Japan that he was able to become the first and only person to be elected to the White House on four separate occasions. The speech delivered on 7 December 1941 claiming that the raid on the US naval base in Hawaii made it 'a day that will live in infamy' has been heard of dozens of films over the last eight decades, including John Ford's potent documentary, December 7th (1943). The events were also recreated by Fred Zinnemann in his Oscar-winning version of James Jones's blockbusting novel, From Here to Eternity (1953), but they were more spectacularly restaged by Michael Bay in Pearl Harbor (2001), which features a standout turn as FDR by Jon Voight.

Yet, while Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin have frequently been represented on screen, Roosevelt has been less conspicuous since Jack Young played him in three Michael Curtiz pictures: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mission to Moscow and This Is the Army (both 1943). Of course, FDR was a familiar figure from the newsreels and that footage has been recycled in countless documentaries about the Second World War, including Frank Capra's seven-strong Why We Fight series (1942-45). He didn't live to enjoy the trappings of victory, however, as he died on 12 April 1945 to be succeeded by Vice-President Harry S. Truman. Such was Roosevelt's contribution to the vanquishing of Fascism, however, that he was celebrated in a number of Soviet features, most notably by Oleg Frelikh in Mikhail Chiaurelli's The Fall of Berlin (1949) and Innokenty Smoktunovsky in Igor Talankin's Take Aim (1974).

Hollywood had a shorter memory, however, and with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee busy investigating Communism in the movies in the immediate postwar period. Roosevelt's New Deal policies made him seem to many on the Right like a dangerous radical. Consequently, he was mostly seen in guest slots by the likes of Dick Nelson in Gene Fowler's Bob Hope comedy, Beau James (1957), although Vincent J. Donohue's adaptation of former MGM chief Dore Schary's Tony-winning play, Sunrise At Campobello (1960), focused in more detail on the efforts made in the early 1920s by Franklin (Ralph Bellamy) and his wife, Eleanor (Greer Garson), to minimise the impact on his political aspirations of the debilitating condition that was believed at the time to be polio. This same period would come under further scrutiny with Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon as the devoted couple in Joseph Sargent's Warm Springs (2005).

Edward Herrmann did much to rehabilitate Roosevelt with his performances opposite Jane Alexander in the multi-Emmy-winning Donald Petrie mini-series, Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977). Herrmann also showed to advantage as FDR in John Huston's priceless take on Charles Strouse's hit musical, Annie (1982), while Dan O'Herlihy came across as an effective war leader in Joseph Sargent's MacArthur (1977), which starred Gregory Peck as General Douglas MacArthur and featured Ed Flanders as Truman. Christian Rodska would take this role in George Clooney's Monuments Men (2014), which also saw Michael Dalton play Roosevelt.

He would be voiced by David Strathairn in telephone conversations with Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's Darkest Hour (2017), which enabled Gary Oldman to join George Arliss (Disraeli, 1929) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, 2011) in winning an Academy Award for playing a British prime minister. Some felt Bill Murray merited a nomination for his portrayal of FDR in Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), which explored his relationships with wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) and sixth cousin Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney) against the backdrop of the spring 1938 visit to the United States by King George VI (Samuel West) and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman). Colman, of course, would also play Elizabeth II in Peter Morgan's The Crown (2016-), which would find room for two American presidents, John F. Kennedy (Michael C. Hall) and Lyndon B. Johnson (Clancy Brown).

On the Road to Camelot

Military victory might have been in sight for the 34th president when he assumed power, but Harry S Truman still had to take the difficult decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The story of the Manhattan Project was retold in Roland Joffé's The Shadow Makers (1989), while Clint Eastwood examined the Battle of Iwo Jima from the Japanese and US perspectives in Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers (2006), which saw David Patrick Kelly play Truman.

The Washington Tribune famously ran the erroneous headline 'Dewey Defeats Truman' during the 1948 election that prompted Frank Capra to adapt Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, State of the Union (1948), which saw newspaper magnate Angela Lansbury back a bid by aircraft manufacturer Spencer Tracy to defeat Thomas E. Dewey at the Republican National Convention. Robert Vaughan played Truman in an earlier episode from his political career in Jack Smight's The Man From Independence (1974), while James Whitmore became the first actor to earn an Oscar nomination for a performance in a filmed record of a stage play for his iconic turn as Truman in Steve Binder and Peter H. Hunt's Give 'Em Hell, Harry! (1975). Gary Sinise did an equally good job of depicting the pugnacious Missourian in Frank Pierson's Truman (1995), an Emmy-winning reconstruction of the transition of power in 1945 that also featured Lee Richardson as Roosevelt and earned Sinise the Golden Globe for Best Actor.

At the time of these events, Dwight D. Eisenhower was serving as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and he was portrayed by Henry Grace and Tom Selleck in two contrasting studies of his military exploits, Ken Annakin and Andrew Marton's The Longest Day (1962) and Robert Harmon's Ike: Countdown to D-Day (2004). During the early stages of Eisenhower's presidency, John Ford recalled his first days in uniform in a flagwaving tribute to the West Point academy, The Long Gray Line (1955).

Yet, while America enjoyed unprecedented prosperity during the postwar period, Ike was content to keep a steadying hand on the tiller, as the country negotiated the tricky Cold War waters. Consequently, he has often been seen as placidly avuncular in comedies like Jonathan R. Betuel's My Science Project (1985) and Fred Schepisi's IQ (1994), in which he was respectively played by Robert Breer and Keene Curtis. Breer made a stronger impact in Philip Kaufman's thrilling adaptation of Tom Wolfe's account of the postwar American space programme, The Right Stuff (1983), which also featured newsreel footage of John F. Kennedy and a cameo by Donald Moffat as Lyndon B. Johnson, who realised his predecessor's dream to put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. This same trio were played by Robin Williams, James Marsden and Liev Schreiber in Lee Daniels's The Butler (2013), which was adapted from a Wil Haygood Washington Post article about the long-serving White House butler, Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), and also cast John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan and Orlando Eric Street as Barack Obama.

If Roosevelt preferred to keep out of the limelight, John Fitzgerald Kennedy positively revelled in it. During the course of his own chequered career, his father, Joseph Kennedy, had played a crucial role in founding the RKO studio that would produce Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's seminal creature feature, King Kong (1933), Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals like Mark Sandrich's Top Hat (1935), and the finest directorial debut in screen history, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941). Kennedy also had a liaison with silent star Gloria Swanson and footage from their ill-fated collaboration with Erich von Stroheim on Queen Kelly (1928) is projected by the pair during Billy Wilder's lowering Hollywood exposé, Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Kennedy used his Hollywood clout to ensure that his son's naval record was presented to the best advantage in Leslie Martinson's PT 109 (1963), in which JFK was played by Cliff Robertson after Jacqueline Kennedy had tried to persuade Warren Beatty to play her dashing husband. The clan dynamics are laid bare in Jon Cassar's Emmy-winning eight-part mini-series, The Kennedys (2011), which cast Tom Wilkinson as Joseph, Greg Kinnear as JFK, Katie Holmes as Jackie, and Barry Pepper as Robert F. Kennedy, who served as his brother's Attorney General.

Rumours have long circulated that the Kennedy bid to eradicate organised crime led to the assassination in Dallas in November 1963. It has also been suggested that the crusade cost the Kennedys the friendship of Frank Sinatra, a vocal champion of the family who was brilliantly profiled in his own words in Alex Gibney's documentary, Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing (2015). The crooner was also played by Ray Liotta in Rob Cohen's The Rat Pack (1998), which featured William Petersen as JFK, whose bid for the Democratic nomination over Hubert Humphrey was famously recorded in Robert Drew's Primary (1960), a record of the Wisconsin primary election that launched the careers of documentarists Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock and DA Pennebaker and established the method of Direct Cinema that is still in vogue today.

As Hollywood's Production Code grew increasingly lenient, political chicanery became a popular theme in pictures like Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962) and Franklin J. Schaffner's The Best Man (1964). Yet, the handsome young president and his glamorous wife cast a spell over Americans, who regarded their White House as a latterday equivalent of Camelot. However, domestic and foreign crises beset the Kennedy administration, with the Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 seemingly bringing the world to the brink of nuclear conflagration. Roger Donaldson provides a compelling insight into the options facting JFK (Bruce Greenwood) and Bobby (Steven Culp) in Thirteen Days (2000), which co-starred Kevin Costner as White House aide Kenneth P. O'Donnell.

Costner would also essay New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's JFK (1993), a controversial eight-time Oscar-nominated dissection of the Warren Commission's account of the Dallas shooting that went so far as to accuse Vice-President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Howard) of being party to a coup. Ironically, Frank Sinatra had played a killer targeting the US president in Lewis Allen's Suddenly (1954) and documentarist Sheldon Renan would later question national attitudes towards violence in The Killing of America (1981), which proved so contentious that it has never been screened in the United States. It is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, however, along with such moving recreations of the period of mourning and trauma that America experienced in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's death as Jonathan Kaplan's Love Field (1991), Peter Landesman's Parkland (2013) and Pablo Larraín's Jackie (2017).

The latter earned Natalie Portman an Oscar nomination, alongside Caspar Phillipson as JFK and John Carroll Lynch as LBJ. Peter Sarsgaard took the role of RFK that was taken by Dave Fraunces in Emilio Estevez's Bobby (2006), which made deft use of news footage to convey the hopes that Americans invested in Kennedy after his sibling's demise. But he would also be gunned down, as Shane O'Sullivan chronicles in the rivetting documentary, RFK Must Die (2007). A year after he lost his brother, Edward Kennedy's chances of reaching the Oval Office sank with the car he drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, as John Curran recalls in The Senator (2017), which stars Jason Clarke and Kate Mara as Mary Jo Kopechne, who was drowned in the accident.

Numerous dramas and documentaries have been made about the curse of the Kennedys and this indelible legacy can be explored via Cinema Paradiso by simply typing John F. Kennedy into the search line. Indeed, he even played his part in smashing the detestable blacklist that had existed in Hollywood since the HUAC witch-hunt, as Jay Roach demonstrates by having JFK (Rick Kelly) praise Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) in Trumbo (2015), which earned Bryan Cranston an Oscar nomination for his performance as victimised screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo.

There have been lighter depictions of JFK, however, with Brett Stimely taking the role in Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009) and Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), which also respectively featured Robert Wisden and John H. Tobin as Richard Nixon. Jim Meskimen also voiced the president in Sam Liu's animation, Superman: Red Son (2020). But the most scurrilous portrayal remains Chriss Anglin's in David Zucker's irreverent history of the United States, Big Fat Important Movie (2008), which also sees Jon Voight relishing the chance to lampoon George Washington.

Dark Days

Few presidents have assumed office under such difficult circumstances. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the fourth man to take power after an assassination, but he was the first to do so in the television age when every gesture and expression would be scrutinised. He also inherited problems with the Civil Rights movement and the escalating war in South-East Asia. Ava DuVernay examines the relationship between Johnson (Tom Wilknson) and Martin Luther King. Jr. (David Oyelowo) in Selma (2014), while John Frankenheimer traces the causes of the conflict in Vietnam in Path to War (2002), in which Johnson is played by Michael Gambon.

Such was Johnson's no-win status on the world stage that Cuban Santiago Álvarez' tore into him in LBJ (1968), a documentary short that played a crucial part in the emergence of Third Cinema in Latin America. It's the kind of film that really should be available on disc in the UK, as should three biopics in which the pressures facing the 36th president are cannily conveyed by Randy Quaid (LBJ: The Early Years, 1987), Bryan Cranston (All the Way, 2016) and Woody Harrelson (LBJ). In many ways, it was hardly surprising that the Texan opted against running in 1968 after poor showings in the early primaries. But the murder of Bobby Kennedy left the Democrats without a candidate capable of defeating Richard M. Nixon, the two-time vice-president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been soundly beaten by JFK in 1960 after voters had been put off by the sweat on his upper lip during a televised debate.

This negative image of 'Tricky Dicky' haunted him for the rest of his life. His domestic achievements and foreign policy initiatives will forever be overshadowed by the Watergate Scandal that Alan J. Pakula showed being scooped by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) in All the President's Men (1976). Even during his lifetime, director Robert Altman and actor Philip Baker Hall found Nixon wanting in Secret Honor (1984), while Richard Pearce and Lane Smith similarly assesses his mindset as he reached the decision to resign rather than face impeachment in The Final Days (1989).

Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen received Oscar nominations for their performances as the President and First Lady in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995), which details the cover-up designed to distance the 37th POTUS from the break-in at the Watergate Building in 1972. The same events formed the core of the televised conversation between Nixon (Frank Langella) and David Frost (Michael Sheen) in Ron Howard's adaptation of Peter Morgan's play, Frost/Nixon (2008), which earned both Langella and Howard Oscar nominations. The acting is just as notable in two accounts of the President's encounter with the King of Rock'n'Roll, as Bob Gunton and Rick Peters exchange compliments in Alan Arkush's Elvis Meets Nixon (1997) and Kevin Spacey and Michael Shannon chew the right-wing fat in Liza Johnson's Elvis & Nixon (2016).

Nixon's enduring hissability has made him a natural for pictures like Scott Saunders's blaxploitation romp, Black Dynamite (2009), and Bryan Singer's Marvel spin-off, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), in which Nixon was respectively played by James McManus and Mark Camacho. However, the most amusing depiction came from Dan Hedaya in Andrew Fleming's Dick (1999), in which Nixon makes Betsy Jobs (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene Lorenzo (Michelle Williams) Official White House Dog Walkers after they wander off limits during a school visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

With Nixon skulking off in disgrace, the Oval Office was offered to Vice-President Gerald Ford, who promptly gave his predecessor an official pardon. He oversaw the US withdrawal from Vietnam and the first steps towards detente with the Soviet Union. But Ford's domestic policies were disastrous and he was depicted as a figure of fun in the guise of Dick Crockett in Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Larry Lindsay in Jim Abrahams's Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), which also featured Ed Beheler as Jimmy Carter, Jay Koch as Ronald Reagan and Daniel T. Healy as George H.W. Bush.

In 1983, Ford became the first former president to appear as himself in a film or TV programme, when he and wife Betty shook hands with Blake (John Forsythe) and Crystal Carrington (Linda Evans) at the Carousel Ball in Denver in an episode of Dynasty (1981-88). In the same show, Alexis (Joan Collins) got to flirt with Ford's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. A decade later, Jimmy Carter would guest opposite Tim Allen in the sitcom, Home Improvement (1991-94). As played by Ed Beheler, the Georgia peanut farmer has been ridiculed by Mae West and her co-stars in Ken Hughes's Sextette (1978). But Carter's fate as a one-shot president was sealed by the Iran hostage crisis, which was recreated to Oscar-winning effect by Ben Affleck in Argo (2012), in which the president is seen soley in archive footage.

The Celebsidents

Nobody was better suited to the demands of the presidency in the mass media age than former actor Ronald Reagan. Having held his own alongside Bette Davis in Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory (1939) and Errol Flynn in Michael Curtiz's Santa Fe Trail (1940), his star began to wane, although he remained busy opposite Richard Todd in Vincent Sherman's The Hasty Heart (1949). He was famously uptaged by a chimpanzee in Frederick De Cordova's Bedtime For Bonzo (1951), but the President of the Screen Actors Guild remained an influential figure during the Hollywood witch-hunt and beyond.

During the 1950s, Reagan teamed with Dorothy Malone in Nathan Juran's Law and Order (1953). Barbara Stanwyck in Allan Dwan's Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), John Payne in the same director's Tennessee's Partner (1955), and with his wife, Nancy Davis, in Juran's Hellcats of the Navy (1957), But he impressed most in a rare villainous role opposite Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in Don Siegel's The Killers (1964). However, by the time he appeared in Bob Rafelson's trippy Monkees romp, Head (1968), Reagan was the Governor of California and starting to plot his course for the top job.

Almost as soon as he took office, Reagan became the butt of jokes, with Rip Torn roasting him in Ken Finkelman's Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), while the writers on the savage ITV puppet show, Spitting Imag (1984-96), showed no mercy to Reagan or his smitten British ally, Margaret Thatcher. As played by Reginald Green and the Oscar-winning Meryl Streep, they shared a scene in Phyllida Law's The Iron Lady (2011). But Reagan was played most frequently by Jay Koch, who popped up in both Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Melvin Van Peebles's Panther (1995).

A quick search of the Cinema Paradiso database will bring up the dozens of features in which footage of Reagan is used to tell a story, while there are just as many documentaris to choose from. The options are more limited when it comes to Reagan's veep, George Herbert Walker Bush, who joined the one-term club after being ribbed in the form of John Roarke in David Zucker's The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991). In fact, the 41st POTUS has little to do beside announce that the country's energy policy would be shaped by Dr Albert Meinheimer (Richard Griffiths) and it's First Lady Barbara Bush (Margery Ross), who gets to joust with the bungling Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) and a giant lobster.

As played by Scott Herriot and Pat Rick, Bill Clinton was similarly on the receiving end in Peter Segal's Naked Gun 33?: The Final Insult and Ezio Greggio's The Silence of the Hams (both 1994). However, he popped up as himself alongside teenage terror Brock Pierce in David M. Evans's First Kid (1996) before he was knowingly voiced by Dale Reeves in Mike Judge's enduringly hilarious animation, Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996). In 2007, Seth MacFarlane did the honours after Clinton declined to voice himself in the 'Bill & Peter's Bogus Journey' episode of Family Guy (1999-).

In Mike Nichols's Primary Colours, Jack (John Travolta) and Susan Stanton (Emma Thompson) were modelled on the Clintons by journalist Joe Klein in his initially anonymous account of the 1992 presidential campaign. The ensuing years saw Clinton's tenure besmirched by the impeachment proceedings that were sparked by the Monica Lewinsky affair. But, while he cropped up in the guise of Craig Barnett in Bob Hoge's The Godson (1998), Damian Mason in Allen A. Goldstein's 2001: A Space Travesty (2000) and Timothy Watters in Stephen Herek's Life or Something Like It (2002), it was only in Richard Loncraine's The Special Relationship (2010) that screenwriter Peter Morgan and actor Dennis Quaid were able to flesh out the president's character opposite Michael Sheen's Tony Blair.

Now known for his environmental documentaries, Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk's BAFTA-nominatedAn Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017), Vice-President Al Gore fell victim to some hanging chads in Florida to lose the 2000 election to George Walker Bush. Nickmamed 'Dubya', Bush was an easy target for satirists when played by Timothy Bottoms in John Stainton's Steve Irwin vehicle, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course (2002), Bruce Mendenhall in Uwe Boll's Postal (2007), James Adomian in Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg's Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008), and Connor Trinneer in Doug Liman's American Made (2017).

However, the aerial assaut on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001 occurred on Bush's watch and inspired such recreations as Paul Greengrass's United 93 and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (both 2006), as well as such scathing actualities like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which became the first documentary since Louis Malle and Jacques-Yves Cousteau's The Silent World (1956) to win the Palme d'or at Cannes. Amusingly, Bush also won Worst Actor and Worst Couple (with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice) at the Golden Raspberry Awards, where Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld took the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor.

There was no doubting the quality of the performances, however, as James Brolin proved inspired casting in Oliver Stone's W. (2008), which also featured Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush and James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn as the president's parents. The following year, Will Ferrell expanded his Saturday Night Live impersonation into a razor-sharp one-man show in You're Welcome, America (2009), while Sam Rockwell and Christian Bale both landed Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for their double act as Dubya and veep Dick Cheyney in Adam McKay's Vice (2018), which also saw Bill Camp guest as Gerald Ford.

With brother Jeb failing to secure the Republican nomination, any hopes of continuing the Bush dynasty were dashed. But, while the Bushes emulated the Adams family in being able to boast father-son presidents, Barack Obama made history of an even more spectacular fashion when he became the first African-American president of the USA on 20 January 2009. His achievement was commended in documentaries like Pearl Jr's Barack Obama: The Power of Change (2008) and Amy Rice's By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (2009), while he would later get a focus-stealing walk-on in Becoming (2020), Nadira Hallgren's profile of First Lady Michelle Obama.

As is often the case, Donald Trump has been largely immune from movie depiction since taking office in January 2017. The property tycoon turned teleceleb via his hiring-and-firing show, The Apprentice (2004-17). But he has never exactly been camera shy and holds the record among presidents for the number of on-screen cameos. Among his TV guest slots are a two-episode stint in Douglas Hickox and Richard Michaels's take on Judith Krantz's bestseller, I'll Take Manhattan (1987); a house-hunting expedition in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1990-96); a 1998 lecture on writing a book in the Michael J. Fox vehicle, Spin City (1996-2002); and a brief flirtation with Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) in the 1999 'The Man, the Myth, the Viagra' episode of Sex and the City (1998-2003).

He's not particularly fond of the way he comes across in such documenaries as Anthony Baxter's You've Been Trumped (2011), A Dangerous Game (2014) and You've Been Trumped Too (2016), as well as Lauren Greenfield's Generation Wealth, Laura Poitras's Risk (both 2016), Jack Bryan's Active Measures, and Julie Cohen and Betsy West's RBG (both 2018). But, when it comes to fictional features, Trump has always enjoyed hogging the limelight.

He has twice co-starred with Whoopi Goldberg in Steve Rash's Eddie and Donald Petrie's The Associate (both 1996). Moreover, in addition to playing Waldo's dad in Penelope Spheeris's The Little Rascals (1994) and a guest patron in Mark Christopher's 54 (1998), the Donald has also popped up alongside Anthony Quinn and Bo Derek in John Derek's Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), Macaulay Culkin in Chris Columbus's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Kenneth Branagh in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), Ben Stiller in the actor's fashion comedy, Zoolander (2001), Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock in Marc Lawrence's Two Weeks Notice (2002), and Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010).

Whatever happens as a result of the ballots cast on 3 November 2020, we've certainly not seen the last of Donald J. Trump. As for the President Elect, let's just say, we're Biden our time, although he has already built up an impressive roster of impersonators on Saturday Night Live, with Kevin Nealon being joined by Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson, John Mulaney and Jim Carrey. The Delawarean has also been played by Grey Kinnear in Rick Famuyiwa's Confirmation (2016), an HBO drama about the accusations of sexual misconduct levelled by Anita Hill (Kerry Washington) against Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas (Wendell Pierce).