Hollywood and the White House

Actors have endorsed presidential candidates. Harry Belafonte backed JFK. Ronald Reagan made a famous speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater.Actors have run for president. Ronald Reagan usually played good guys, but in his last role, he played a villain.

Movies and TV shows portray real and fictional presidents, presidential candidates, and officials:

• Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• The Best Man (1964)
• Frost/Nixon (2008)
• Nixon (1995)  -- the fictional last press conference.  Compare to the real one.
• All the President's Men (1976) -- an iconic but made-up line.
• W (2008)
• J. Edgar (2011)

Movies supply insights into attitudes of their time. Did Americans think about military matters and nuclear war in the years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis? See scenes from three 1964 movies:

• Seven Days in May (military coup)
• Fail-Safe (scary accidental attack)
• Dr. Strangelove (funny accidental attack)
  

Did a conspiracy kill JFK? Most Americans think so. And so Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) found an audience despite its lack of relationship to reality. A famous scene included Wayne Knight. Though a few years later, he was in a sendup on Seinfeld.