{"id":56925,"date":"2024-11-05T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T14:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=56925"},"modified":"2024-11-05T03:33:16","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T08:33:16","slug":"our-election-day-pick-the-great-man-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=56925","title":{"rendered":"Our Election Day Pick: The Great Man Votes<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Happy Election Day, everyone. I’m on my way to the polling place now (I hope you’re doing or have done the same), but I’d like to take just a moment to suggest that–once you’ve fulfilled your Constitutional privilege–you might consider checking out the 1939 RKO drama The Great Man Votes<\/em><\/a>, starring the legendary John Barrymore<\/a> in one of the last notable performances of his tempestuous screen career.<\/p>\n

Directed by Garson Kanin<\/a> (who also contributed to the screenplay by John Twist), the film features Barrymore as Gregory Vance, a one-time Harvard history professor who, following the death of his wife, fell into alcoholism and now works as a night watchman, hitching wagon rides with the milkman who he also buys his booze from. At the same time Vance struggles to raise his two grade-school-age children, Donald (Peter Holden) and Joan (Virginia Weidler<\/a>), supplementing their education with lessons on Shakespeare and reading Latin. When crooked town party boss “Iron Hat” McCarthy (Donald MacBride) discovers that Gregory represents the tie-breaking vote in a key city ward for the upcoming race for mayor, he attempts to buy the ex-academician’s vote with a cushy municipal position. As he struggles with whether to accept McCarthy’s corrupt bargain, Vance is faced with another crisis when his wife’s parents threaten to take Donald and Joan away from him in order to give them a more “suitable” home life.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Great Man Votes<\/em> is a fine and heartfelt little story of Vance trying to climb his way out of the bottle and regain the self-respect he drank away in the wake of a tragic loss while he seeks to hold on to his one link to the person he once was, his beloved children. Ironically, star Barrymore would only make five more movies of varying quality before passing away, at age 60, in 1942 from cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure. Writers Kanin and Twist adapted a short story by Gordon Malherbe Hillman and added elements of 1930s political satire to the domestic drama (look for William Demarest<\/a> as a cynical campaign promoter). And let’s face it: in an election year like this one, where all the experts are saying the race for the White House is a dead heat that probably won’t be decided tonight, the idea of a single man’s ballot making the difference doesn’t seem all that far-fetched, does it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Election Day, everyone. I’m on my way to the polling place now (I hope you’re doing or have done the same), but I’d like to take just a moment to suggest that–once you’ve fulfilled your Constitutional privilege–you might consider…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9748,"featured_media":56926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[9305,5495,1672],"coauthors":[11329],"class_list":["post-56925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-articles","tag-classic-hollywood","tag-john-barrymore","tag-political-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nOur Election Day Pick: The Great Man Votes - MovieFanFare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For Election Day, MovieFanFare suggests that you check out the timely 1939 RKO drama "The Great Man Votes," starring John Barrymore.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=56925\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our Election Day Pick: The Great Man Votes - 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