I can’t remember where I heard it, but I heard somewhere that this was an incredibly insightful way-ahead-of-its-time film. So I set it up on Tivo and it was recorded months ago. I finally got around to watching it, and I’m about halfway through.
This film was made in 1957 and stars Andy Griffith as a n’er do well plucked from obscurity who becomes, well… a combination of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Elvis Presley and Elmer Gantry.
The amazing thing about this film is how intelligent, savvy, and prescient it is about celebrity, TV, advertising, influence… I can’t recall seeing a film from this era that was quite so smart and aware. And I can totally understand why it failed - the audiences at the time probably found it unbelievable.
Has anyone else seen it?
Don’t give away too much - I just watched the scene after he gets married…it’s a long film, by the way, and for anyone who has never seen Andy Griffith as anything but Mayberry’s sheriff and Barnaby: this is a revelation.
This was the film debut of Lee Remick, and also features Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, and Tony Franciosa.
Accoring to Wiki (I didn’t spoil myself by reading the plot!) it also has: Bennett Cerf, Faye Emerson, Betty Furness, Virginia Graham, Burl Ives, Mitch Miller, John Cameron Swayze, Mike Wallace, Earl Wilson, and Walter Winchell in cameo appearances as themselves.
IMO, AFITC may be the most underrated film there is.
Incredibly prescient about the intermingling of politics, entertainment and commerce. I think part of the reason it wasn’t more popular initially was it was simply too far ahead of its time.
Griffith’s performance in the climactic scene is for the ages. I’ll certainly never look at him as “Andy Taylor” again. In the documentary on the DVD, Griffith (who had previously done mostly light comedy) says that right before they filmed that scene, Kazan pulled him aside and said, “OK, Andy. Today we’re going to find out if you can act.”
I have another comment that I will withold until you’ve seen the whole thing.
Well, yeah. I watched it on the old-fashioned regular TV probably before you were born, and yes, it was (and is) a great movie, a movie I can’t help but stop and watch when channel surfing. Great performances! And some funny bits, in a twisted way.
Amazing how quickly he went from that role to being ‘good ol’ Andy’. While TAGS made him rich and famous it did typecast him; I’d love to have seen him take on some other heavy duty roles. I always wondered if the episode where Rafe Hollister sings Lonesome Road was a wink.
A difference between the movie and reality: unlike with Rush Limbaugh’s drug problems, when Lonesome Rhodes fell from grace, his audience deserted him.
So even though AFITC was too far ahead for people to accept it, it wasn’t far enough.
To paraphrase the quote from scientist John Sanderson Haldane: "The (future) may not just be (more strange) than we imagine it to be, it may be (more strange) than we are capable of imagining it to be.
Sampiro, I’ve never thought of that! Look down, that lonesome road, before, you travel on…
Well, Shakes, there is a big difference between Rush and Lonesome’s “falls”- Rush was a drug addict, that’s a private personal struggle. Lonesome was heard directly dissing his audience. Completely different.
Yes, it’s a great movie. So why does no one ever mention the writer? You think the actors just make this stuff up? (Not a pet peeve. A huge major carnivorous slavering beast peeve.)
Anyway, the writer was Budd Schulberg. That name should mean something to every movie buff. He wrote the novel that On the Waterfront was based on. And the movie screenplay. He wrote the novel that The Harder They Fall was based on. He wrote What Made Sammy Run, one of the most important novels about Hollywood ever. (Never made into a movie. They hated him in Hollywood for this brutal portrayal.) He wrote a novel about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sad latter drunken years called The Disinherited, which is as major a novel as anything Fitzgerald himself wrote except for Gatsby.
Like Kazan he had named names in front of HUAC, making them both outcasts in Hollywood. Yet both equally hated what they saw as fascistic social forces in 50s America, and the ease with which those claiming to be speaking for ordinary Americans could manipulate the masses. That’s what led to this movie.
It’s overly broad and heavy-handed at times, but most films were in that era. The ending is a “happy” one, in that the bad guy gets his comeuppance, and that was also necessary for its era. For our era too, except for the artiest art films. Griffith gives that old cliché, the performance of his life. Most sources state that Rhodes was loosely based on the career of Arthur Godfrey, and the best thing anyone can say about that is that Godfrey is almost totally forgotten today. That may be the most hopeful parallel to today’s world about the movie. Every other way to look at it leads to total despair.
If you like this movie, you should pair it with Sweet Smell of Success, written by two greats: Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman. The other great cynic of the era was Billy Wilder and his 1951 Ace in the Hole was a forerunner of this movie, a thumb to the nose tribute to the power of the media and its manipulation of the public.
When he was heard dissing his following, Lonesome was just as addicted (to his drug of choice) as Rush, for a lot longer.
Rush’s history of incessantly calling for jailing drug users was in stark contrast to his behavior after getting addicted. It quit being private when he got shills to buy for him.
I will happily bet a week’s salary that Rush won’t lose his radio contract if he’s ever heard dissing his audience/following ala LR.
I hesitate to bring up these political issues in CS, but, goddammit, they’re related to what makes AFITC a great film.
Andy Griffith’s best performance ever? Definitely.
Prescient and insightful? Hardly.
There has NEVER been a TV entertainer in a position to make or break any political candidate. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have the power to energize people who ALREADY agree with them, but they have no power to sway people who don’t. Lest we forget, in 2008, John McCain was Rush Limbaugh’s least favorite Republican. Did Limbaugh have any luck stopping McCain from getting the Republican nomination? Nope.
NO single entertainer has ever had much political clout. Even in the Fifties, people would have SCOFFED if Ed Sullivan or Jackie Gleason had tried to use his show as a political platform for ANY cause, liberal OR conservative.
Limbaugh likely had some influence in denying McCain the nomination in 2000. Things were different in 2008 - the eight years of disillusionment with the Bush administration made the more moderate and electable McCain harder to stop. Great influence doesn’t mean infinite influence.
The fact that entertainers like Beck and Limbaugh today have more political influence than Sullivan or Gleason did back then is why AFITC was prescient, IMO.
Again, not my intention to go all GD in CS. But the topic sort of requires it.
But again, Rush Limbaugh CAN’T influence anybody who doesn’t ALREADY think like him.
“A Face in the Crowd” paints the American public as a bunch of dumb sheep who do whatever the man on TV tells them to. That’s both condescending and stupid. NOBODY does ANYTHING because Limbaugh or Beck tells them to. Just the opposite- a chosen few seek out Beck and Limbaugh because they’re saying precisely what those people already believe.
In the same way, Jon Stewart doesn’t MAKE his audience liberal- his audience is ALREADY liberal, and seeks him out because he tells them exactly what they want to hear.
If Limbaugh came out as PRO-abortion, you think his fans would blindly say, “Yes, Rush… we are now pro-abortion”? NO! They’d turn him off.
In the same way, Lonesome RHodes could NEVER sway people who didn’t already think his way.
Our current President, considered a laughable longshot by most people when he started out, due to his youth, inexperience, and skin color, was resoundingly endorsed by the single most powerful and influential television entertainer in the history of the medium, who had never previously endorsed any candidate for office.
Maybe I’m one of the sheep, but if someone whose opinion I respect thinks differently than me on an issue, I might rethink my position.
The thing about Lonesome is that he swayed people to do something (the collection). Maybe it was something they’d have done on their own, but probably not.
As for Lonesome being finished at the end of the movie – Americans get some pleasure in seeing their heroes fall, but we also like stories of redemption, comebacks. There might have been a comeback in Lonesome’s future.