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Politics | Presidential Election
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1964 | Franklin J.
Best Actor in a Supporting Role | 1965 | Lee
Best Written American Drama | 1965 | Gore
Best Film | 1964 | Franklin J.
The later Republican American President Ronald Reagan, who was a Hollywood B-movie actor at the time, was rejected for a role in this film, because a studio executive at United Artists didn't think he had "that presidential look".
Screenwriter and the film's source playwright Gore Vidal cheerfully admitted that he meant the character of William Russell (Henry Fonda) to remind people of Adlai Stevenson and that Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson) was based on Richard Nixon. Stevenson and Nixon were, of course, in different American political parties, Democrat and Republican respectively. Similarly, the character of former President Art Hockstader played by Lee Tracy, bore resemblances to both former Republican U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and former Democrat U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
Once close to the Kennedy family, and an actual genetic cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy, the release of this movie caused Gore Vidal's friendship with the Kennedy family to cool off.
Writer Gore Vidal did indeed base William Russell (Henry Fonda) on Democrat Adlai Stevenson but although he partially based Joseph Cantwell (Cliff Robertson) on Richard Nixon, he also based Cantwell on Joseph McCarthy, and the two Kennedy brothers, Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, both of whom Vidal allegedly despised.
One of the filming locations was the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated there after addressing supporters on his victory in California's Democratic presidential primary, which had put him in a solid position to win the party's nomination at the national convention in Chicago that summer. The building is now demolished.
"Joe Cantwell: I don't understand you. William Russell: I know you don't. Because you have no sense of responsibility toward anybody or anything. And that is a tragedy in a man, and it is a disaster in a president."
"President Art Hockstader: Y'know, it's not that I object to your being a bastard, don't get me wrong there. It's your being such a stupid bastard that I object to."
