The 1957 movie " A Face In The Crowd" was on Turner Classic Movies last night. It could have been a biopic of Bill Clinton. The movie was based on Budd Schulberg's short story " The Arkansas Traveler". The lead character " Lonesome Rhodes" was the hard drinking huckster who by chance gets into radio and TV . He develops and a uses his natural folksy character to further his selfish and malicious goals. Andy Griffith played a reviting "Lonsome" in his screen debut. The movie was masterfully directed by Elia Kazan. He got the most out of a suppoting cast that included, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick in her screen debut. They were all backed up by solid character actors.
Real life characters like Bill Clinton mostly attract people of low self esteem. And so "Lonesome Rhodes" character attracted people who could pass for Friends Of Bill in our real world. The movie characters that reminded of real world players included the MacDougals, Jennifer Flowers, Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky and James Carville. Of course the setting in Arkansas was right on.
In the end the character came undone. He was exposed as the charlatan and phony that he truly was. The final scenes had " Lonesome" making speeches in his empty penthouse while the Carville look alike was operating an applause/canned laughter machine on cue. To be fair, " Lonsome" gets the worst of the comparison to our delinquent Bill. " Lonesome" didn't take polls before he spoke with his faithful.
No comments:
Post a Comment