United Artists. Director Franklin J. Schaffner; Producer Stuart Millar, Lawrence Turman; Screenplay Gore Vidal; Camera Haskell Wexler; Editor Robert E. Swink; Music Mort Lindsey; Art Director Lyle R. Wheeler
Henry Fonda
Cliff Robertson
Edie Adams
Margaret Leighton
Shelley Berman
Lee Tracy
Gore Vidal's provocative drama of political infighting on the national level has been skillfully converted to film. Although not an especially fresh or profound piece of work, it is certainly a worthwhile, lucid and engaging dramatization of a behind-the-scenes party power struggle that accompanies a contest for presidential nomination.
Vidal's straightforward, sharply-drawn scenario describes the bitter struggle for a party's presidential nomination between an ambitious self-righteous character assassin (many will see him as a Nixon-McCarthy composite) and a scrupulous intellectual (of Stevensonian essence) who, ultimately faced with a choice of resorting to his opponent's smear tactics or bowing out of the race gracefully, decides he'd rather be right than president - leading to a somewhat pat and convenient conclusive development.
Between these two antagonists, portrayed with conviction and sensitivity by Cliff Robertson and Henry Fonda respectively, stands the imposing figure of the mortally ill but still politically virile expresident, a character likely to be associated with Harry S. Truman. Lee Tracy repeats his Broadway characterization in the role and just about steals the show with his expressive, colorful portrayal.
1964: Nomination: Best Supp. Actor (Lee Tracy)
(B&W) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1964. Running time: 102 MIN.
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