Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Jon Stewart’s Irresistible headed for home-viewing platforms—and with November 3 on the horizon—we’re looking back at other films about elections or political campaigns.
State Of The Union (1948)
Frank Capra always sided with the everyman, the hard-working guy in the street, the quintessential American. Even when he traded the salt-of-the-earth types of You Can’t Take It With You or It’s A Wonderful Life for politics in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington or Meet John Doe, there was still an honorable character at the center played by somebody like Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. Which makes Capra’s Wonderful Life follow-up, State Of The Union, an outlier. The movie pulls back the curtain on the most important race in the country—a presidential campaign—to expose a candidate who’s flawed from the get-go. This only makes it easier for him to be seduced, both literally and figuratively, into tossing his ideals aside on his ambitious climb to the White House.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1945 play, State Of The Union quickly introduces Spencer Tracy’s Grant Matthews, a self-made aircraft tycoon who’s far from an everyman. Nevertheless, he’s described by his mistress, the conniving newspaper heiress Kaye Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury), as having the ideal “combination of sincerity and drive that the common herd will go for. They think he’s one of them. He thinks he’s one of them.” Thanks to Kaye’s fierce ambition, the noble yet adulterous Grant is soon lured into a political career, even though it means reconciling with his estranged wife, Mary (played by Tracy’s frequent co-star and longtime romantic partner Katharine Hepburn), to present a united front on a speaking tour.
Grant stays away from the smoke-filled rooms where his ambitious candidacy is plotted by hatless men in rolled-up shirtsleeves swapping favors and counting delegates. Capra shows how a nobody citizen can be turned into a somebody candidate. In 1948, with a then-unpopular Harry Truman in the Oval Office and the Democrats recently losing the House for the first time in years, Grant is gunning for the Republican candidacy. Kaye is ready to wage her entire press empire to get him elected, warning her editors to keep Dewey et al. at each others’ throats to let this “dark horse candidate” through, à la the election efforts of presidential hopeful Wendell Willkie. (The then-23-year-old Lansbury is stunning, holding her own against veteran stars like Tracy and Hepburn. Also great: heartthrob Van Johnson in a rare character role as a wise-cracking journalist.)
While Grant starts out with big ideas/ideals, he soon learns that he’s not going to be able to please all of the people all of the time. When he gets some harsh reviews from either side, he runs straight to the safe, less controversial middle, to the delight of his manipulative handlers and the horror of his honest wife. As Capra favorite Charles Lane’s character comments after reading one of Grant’s speeches, “He must be bowlegged from straddling.” That’s the moral quandary inherent in a candidacy: Is it worth doing whatever it takes to get elected, even if you drop some scruples along the way? If everyone has to make all these deals just to get their name on the ballot, do we ever elect anyone really honorable? “Don’t you want Grant to be a good president?” Hepburn’s Mary asks Adolphe Menjou, playing the main political operative behind her husband’s campaign. “Mary, a good president is one who gets elected,” he replies.
This being a Capra film, Grant doesn’t stay on the dark side long. Although temporarily blinded by the White House gleam, he eventually realizes his campaign is preying on hatred and fear, playing to the lowest common denominator—a sentiment that sounds way too familiar today. Tracy’s Grant offers some platitudes that are difficult to hear given the current political climate, especially when he says, “I forgot how quickly Americans smell out the double-dealers and the crooks.” Well, we used to, anyway. Capra’s films always held up a lofty black-and-white mirror to the way America should be (he doesn’t hold anything back here, blasting “America The Beautiful” over the opening credits), with the ultimate power hopefully belonging to the people (George Bailey) and not the corrupt fat cats (Mr. Potter). It’s an ideal we took a horrible turn from in the last election, which makes State Of The Union a valuable if dated reminder of what this country is supposed to stand for.
Availability: State Of The Union is available to purchase digitally from Amazon, VUDU, and Fandango.
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with the ultimate power hopefully belonging to the people (George Bailey) and not the corrupt fat cats (Mr. Potter)
In “Mr. Smith Goes the Washington” the plucky boyscouts behind Smith try to take on the political establishment and get wrecked. It’s a crisis of conscience on the part of an antagonist over how badly Smith is getting beaten that finally makes a difference.
Truman wasn’t a strong influence on the character of Grant Matthews — he was never a big tycoon — but there are still some strong parallels. He was seen as a lightweight stooge and a front for backroom pols when the play came out in 1945. He was chosen as VP for FDR in 1944 because he was trusted to be a steady fence straddler compared to FDR’s previous liberal VP, Henry Wallace. The 1948 election to a great extent involved Truman arguing that he had broken from the grip of the Pendergast machine and moved to being a man of the people.
This is one of the two Hepburn/Tracy movies I haven’t seen yet. I really need to get to those. The other – Pat & Mike – is on HBO Max.
Been ages since I’ve seen it but light and fun. Ruth Gordon/Garson Canin screenplay
Compared to “Desk Set” these last two will be revelations.
Angela Lansbury lookin’ like a snack! Mmm-Mm!
I thought Spencer Tracy was Mackelmore for a second in that title graphic.
She really does look gorgeous there. It’s so easy to forget what a beautiful young starlet she was.
I used to watch the hell out of Murder She Wrote. I always liked Lansbury’s demeanor and acting style. She seemed to take roles that allowed her to be elegant and a spit fire at the same time.
The thing is she looked older than her age (23 in “State of the Union”) back then but then paradoxically looked younger than she was when older. Even in this photo you can definitely recognize her even if you only knew her from “Murder, She Wrote”. Not many actors would be recognizable as the same person at 70 as at 23.
Cabot Cove: the most dangerous town in the world!
It’s the small town equivalent of Hudson University in the L&O universe. Only parents who actively want their children killed or raped send them there.
It’s because she always looked mature, with an intelligent gleam in her eye. Even in that pic MyKinja posted down there of her looking sultry, she has a look that says you better watch your step.But yeah, for people like me who first encountered her on MSW as kids, seeing what she looked like in her 20s was jarring.
OG Mrs Lovett making some secret ingredient snacks.
The secret is out! :p
I can’t recommend prime Capra enough and this is a great one. Thanks, Gwen. A nice write up as always. Sadly Capra wasn’t the New Dealer his films make him out to be but reportedly a reactionary and lifelong Republican who hated Roosevelt and was just being career savvy for his era (not unlike Ronald Reagan, who applied for membership in the American Communist party three times only to be repeatedly rejected due to his transparent opportunism.) Capra’s own autobiography, while bring cagey about his politics, is flat out crazy-uncle-at-the-Thanksgiving-table ugly in places. It was his writers, all hardcore progressives, who really were the voice of his films. That doesn’t take anything away from the movies, though, which are brilliantly directed and absolutely wonderful. You are right about Lansbury too. She was terrific in her heyday (and phenomenal as the scheming, incestuous mother in “The Manchurian Candidate. It’s a pity most people now remember her as either Jessica Fletcher or an animated teapot.I can think of a couple of great companion flicks if anyone is in the mood:“The Last Hurrah”-1958 John Ford film also starring Spencer Tracy, about a once grand, now somewhat dodgey veteran politician in his twilight days.“The Best Man”(1964)-An absorbing, cynical look at two candidates vying for their party’s presidential nomination. The screenplay was by Gore Vidal (from his play) with Henry Fonda playing a politician modeled after Adlai Stevenson.
Sturges’ The Great McGinty is also in this vein. and a film I can recommend highly.
Because of his populist championship of the guy-on-the-street Everyman, it’s assumed that Capra was a hard-core New Dealer, like ahem, Ro
Because of his populist championship of the guy-on-the-street Everyman, it’s assumed that Capra was a hard-core New Dealer like, ahem, Screen Actors’ Guild president Ronald Reagan. He was in fact a Republican who despised Roosevelt. So the link between populism and the GOP was alive even back then.
The only actor or anyone associated with making the movie, Gone with the Wind in 1939 that’s still alive turns 104 years old today. She must have great stories to tell.