According to several very authentic-looking news sites, this is a presidential election year in America. And as often happens at this time, movie buffs are trotting out their quadrennial lists of favorite cinematic chief executives. From the real-life (Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln) to the fictitious (Harrison Ford in Air Force One), a diverse gallery of men—and women (Polly Bergen in Kisses for My President)—have occupied the Hollywood White House. One intriguing oddity from this genre that’s never been on home video offered audiences a look at the first black President of the United States a quarter-century before Barack Obama, while also giving actor James Earl Jones one of his first leading roles. That film was the 1972 ABC Circle/Lorimar drama The Man.
Based on Irving Wallace’s 1965 novel of the same name and boasting a script by Rod Serling, The Man opens with a White House correspondents’ dinner hosted by Jack Benny (playing himself in his final film role). When a (off-screen) building collapse during a visit to Germany kills both the president and Speaker of the House, an ailing vice president (Lew Ayres), recovering from a stroke, declines assuming the office. The job of Commander-in-Chief thus goes to the Senate President Pro Tempore, little-known Senator Douglass Dillman (Jones) of New Hampshire.
News of Dillman’s rise to the Oval Office heightens tensions on both sides of the political divide. While his college student daughter Wanda (Janet MacLachlan, only two years younger than Jones) and members of the African-American community look to him to bring about real reforms, Secretary of State Arthur Eaton (William Windom), who feels the job should have been his, and bigoted Southern senator Watson (Burgess Meredith) look for ways to undermine his White House tenure. An opportunity arises when an African-American student (Georg Stanford Brown) is accused to trying to assassinate the defense minister of South Africa and the country’s apartheid regime demands his extradition. Meanwhile, Watson introduces a bill to help the ambitious Eaton which would prevent dismissal of any cabinet member without Congress okaying the move (similar to the 1860s Tenure of Office Act which led to president Andrew Johnson’s impeachment). Dillman must find a way to manage these dual crises as he considers seeking a full term and trying to win his party’s nomination.
It’s interesting now to look at The Man–which was originally planned to air as an ABC Movie of the Week but was bought by Paramount and given a theatrical release in the troubled election year of 1972 (Watergate, anyone?)–through a half-century of changes to the country’s political landscape. While the most obvious comparison is to Obama’s election in 2008, the film also predated the country’s first non-elected president, Gerald Ford, by just two years. And the Nixon-era machinations that would come to light in the mid-’70s were paralleled in this film’s depiction of Dillman’s enemies seeking his downfall. “For whatever it’s worth, Mr. President,” White House staffer Jim Talley (Martin Balsam) tells him, “You may have come into the White House through the back door, but they’re trying to get in through the plumbing” (an eerie precursor of Watergate’s “plumbers”?). Rod Serling’s screenplay at times threatens to hit you over the head with its earnestness and relevancy, but does a good job in depicting DC’s behind-the-scenes power struggles, a la Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing 25 years later. The Man is also aided by a top-notch cast, headlined by Jones and his ability to show Dillman as a good man who finds himself in a situation he never imagined, but who manages to rise to the occasion (“Mr. Jones Goes to Washington,” perhaps?).
“I have misgivings about that one,” Jones once lamented in an interview about the film. “It was done as a TV special. Had we known it was to be released as a motion picture, we would have asked for more time and more production money. I regret that.” There really was nothing for the iconic actor to regret about his time in the Oval Office, and perhaps by the time 2028 rolls around, whatever legal or copyright issues have kept this compelling political tale from a home media release will have been resolved.