A FACE IN THE CROWD

 

A Face In the Crowd is a 1957 movie, back when movies were still filmed in black & white, and stars legendary actor the late Andy Griffith, who's, of course, best known for his roles in such beloved TV series such as Matlock and ever-favorite The Andy Griffith Show. In fact, it was reportedly his role in this film that led to him being case in his own show despite the fact that the character Griffith plays in THIS film is the total opposite of the beloved character he played on The Andy Griffith Show (Griffith was actually pretty good at playing bastards). In the movie, Griffith plays a drifter from my own homestate of Arkansas who ends up becoming the country's most popular political pundit known as Lonesome Rhodes. The character was reportedly based on an actual popular TV personality named Arthur Godfrey who was a popular radio and TV personality of the forties and fifties until he threw a temper-tantrum on live TV--as shows were usually filmed back then--and fired a popular singer on his show named Julius LaRosa and viewers got to see that his public persona was NOT the same as his private persona, which is (spoiler alert!) what happens to Lonesome Rhodes in the movie. What I found most interesting about the movie is how, while it was supposed to be based--at least somewhat so--on Godfrey, it could easily be a commentary of the political pundits of today and their inexplicable influence on politics nowadays (and, yes, that includes Jon Stewart!). For instance, in one scene, Lonesome Rhodes is meeting with a Presidential candidate who wants Rhodes to back him and Rhodes begins advising him on how stupid and/or easily-manipulated the American public is and tells him how he has to dumb himself down to appeal to the "stupid" masses. Taking his advice, said Presidential candidate appears on Lonesome Rhodes' TV show where he's shown going hunting with Rhodes--even though said candidate has never been hunting a day in his life--and talks on his show about people being "coddled" through things like Social Security while he has a dip of snuff in his mouth. I ask, does ANY of this sound familiar? I mean, couldn't you imagine the exact same scenario being played out with, say, Sarah Palin? A sidenote: Legendary filmmaker Elia Kazan directed this movie and also directed actors like Marlon Brando is such classic films like On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire. Kazan courted controversy when he testified at the House Un-American House Activities Committee as a "friendly witness" and offered names of his colleagues within the entertainment industry to the Committee as suspected Communists a few years before directing A Face In the Crowd. When Kazan was given the Lifetime Achievement Award during the Oscars in 1999, his past came back to haunt him and controversy erupted around him once again and a number of entertainers threatened to walk out when he was given said award (but, of course, they didn't) in spite of the fact that Kazan had long since expressed his regret over his testimony at the HUAC (which was eventually abolished in the mid-seventies). Kazan died back in 2003, leaving people to decide for themselves what his true legacy will be.