Nixon at the Movies : A Book About Belief

Was it an omen? Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913. As Mark Feeney relates in this unusual and unusually absorbing book, Nixon and the movies have shared a long and complex history. Some of that history—the president's multiple screenings of Patton before and during the invasion of Cambodia, or Oliver Stone's Nixon —is well known. Yet much more is not. How many are aware, for example, that Nixon was an enthusiastic filmgoer who watched more than five hundred movies during his presidency? Nixon at the Movies takes a new and often revelatory approach to looking at Nixon's career—and Hollywood's. From the obvious ( All the President's Men ) to the less so (Elvis Presley movies and Nixon's relationship to '60s youth culture) to several onscreen "alternate" Nixons (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity , Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success , Gene Hackman in The Conversation ), Feeney sees aspects of Nixon's character, and the nation's, refracted and reimagined in film. Conversely, Feeney argues that Nixon can help us see the movies in a new light, making a strong case for Nixon as the movies' tutelary deity during the early '70s, playing a role in Hollywood's Silver Age comparable to FDR's during its Golden Age. Stylishly written and bracingly eclectic, Nixon at the Movies draws on biography, politics, cultural history, and film criticism to show just how deeply in the twentieth-century American grain lies the pair of seemingly incongruous nouns in its title. As Nixon once remarked to Garry Wills: "Isn't that a hell of a thing, that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?"

Was it an omen? Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913. As Mark Feeney relates in this unusual and unusually absorbing book, Nixon and the movies have shared a long and complex history. Some of that history—the president's multiple screenings of Patton before and during the invasion of Cambodia, or Oliver Stone's Nixon—is well known. Yet much more is not. How many are aware, for example, that Nixon was an enthusiastic filmgoer who watched more than five hundred movies during his presidency?

Nixon at the Movies takes a new and often revelatory approach to looking at Nixon's career—and Hollywood's. From the obvious (All the President's Men) to the less so (Elvis Presley movies and Nixon's relationship to '60s youth culture) to several onscreen "alternate" Nixons (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success, Gene Hackman in The Conversation), Feeney sees aspects of Nixon's character, and the nation's, refracted and reimagined in film. Conversely, Feeney argues that Nixon can help us see the movies in a new light, making a strong case for Nixon as the movies' tutelary deity during the early '70s, playing a role in Hollywood's Silver Age comparable to FDR's during its Golden Age.

Stylishly written and bracingly eclectic, Nixon at the Movies draws on biography, politics, cultural history, and film criticism to show just how deeply in the twentieth-century American grain lies the pair of seemingly incongruous nouns in its title. As Nixon once remarked to Garry Wills: "Isn't that a hell of a thing, that the fate of agreat country can depend on camera angles?"

The New York Times - Barry Gewen

Feeney, a writer and editor at The Boston Globe, offers up formidably intelligent analyses of some key episodes and themes from Richard Nixon's life. His choices are willfully idiosyncratic; he is on the lookout for topics with aura, with resonance, so Nixon's predawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial at the height of the Vietnam War receives more attention than the Alger Hiss case. Yet what's most idiosyncratic here is the way Feeney wraps everything in celluloid. Almost all the chapters take their titles from the names of movies -- ''Dark Victory,'' ''Sweet Smell of Success'' -- and these movies serve as symbols, springboards or simply excuses for Feeney's ruminations.

“People will be arguing over Nixon at the Movies as much as, for more than half a century, the country at large has been arguing about Nixon.”—Greil Marcus Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913, and they shared a long and complex history. The president screened Patton multiple times before and during the invasion of Cambodia, for example. In this unique blend of political biography, cultural history, and film criticism, Mark Feeney recounts in detail Nixon’s enthusiastic viewing habits during his presidency, and takes a new and often revelatory approach to Nixon’s career and Hollywood’s, seeing aspects of Nixon’s character, and the nation’s, refracted and reimagined in film. Nixon at the Movies is a “virtuosic” examination of a man, a culture, and a country in a time of tumult ( Slate ). “By Feeney's count, Nixon, an unabashed film buff, watched more than 500 movies during the 67 months of his presidency, all carefully listed in an appendix titled ‘What the President Saw and When He Saw It.’ Nixon concentrated intently on whatever was on the screen; he refused to leave even if the picture was a dud and everyone around him was restless. He was omnivorous, would watch anything, though he did have his preferences...Only rarely did he watch R-rated or foreign films. He liked happy endings. Movies were obviously a means of escape for him, and as the Watergate noose tightened, he spent ever more time in the screening room.”— The New York Times Was it an omen? Richard Nixon and the film industry arrived in Southern California in the same year, 1913. As Mark Feeney relates in this unusual and unusually absorbing book, Nixon and the movies have shared a long and complex history. Some of that history—the president's multiple screenings of before and during the invasion of Cambodia, or Oliver Stone's —is well known. Yet much more is not. How many are aware, for example, that Nixon was an enthusiastic filmgoer who watched more than five hundred movies during his presidency?__Nixon at the Movies____All the President's Men____Double Indemnity____The Sweet Smell of Success____The Conversation__Stylishly written and bracingly eclectic, draws on biography, politics, cultural history, and film criticism to show just how deeply in the twentieth-century American grain lies the pair of seemingly incongruous nouns in its title. As Nixon once remarked to Garry Wills: "Isn't that a hell of a thing, that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?" An in-depth examination of Richard Nixon's career draws on biography, politics, cultural history, and film criticism to show how Nixon's character, and the nation's, is refracted and reimagined in film.