The misanthrope's corner - old movies that reflect current politicians

National Review, May 6, 1996 by Florence King

I HAVE figured out a painless way to follow Campaign '96. Instead of suffering through CNN and C-SPAN, I watch old movies. The current politicos turn up in them like figures from Greek mythology who assumed different forms.

Anything starring Miriam Hopkins also stars Hillary Rodham Clinton, especially Becky Sharp. The symbol-rich love scenes between Garbo and Gilbert in Queen Christina feature a cameo appearance by George Stephanopoulos as the grape. Al Gore plays the title in Raintree County, as well as the romantic lead in post-war flicks starring the Great Stone Stone of the late Forties, Guy Madison.

The late Forties were also the years of the Rat, the character actor who always made the woman sitting in the row behind you whisper, "I don't like his face." Rats came in three types. The Handsome Rat was Zachary Scott, the two-timing chiseler in Mildred Pierce, but sadly, he has no counterpart on today's hustings. He was too slimy for even the most disaster-prone campaign, so unequivocally feral that Bob Dole would take one look at him and say, "He's the only thing about America that America isn't about."

The other two Rat types are well-represented in Campaign '96. The Obnoxious Rat was played by nasal, prematurely balding Dan Duryea, the silver screen's ubiquitous cocksure nephew; his heir is nasal, prematurely balding James Carville, who plays the cocksure nephew in The Little Foxes.

Arthur Kennedy was the Weak Rat, a part he owned after playing Branwell Bront -- in 1946's Devotion. He spent thirty years making Weak Rat movies, all starring White House press secretary Mike McCurry, whose washed-out blondness and unsteady gaze make him an Arthur Kennedy lookalike.

Bill Clinton? Remember Sonny Tufts? He was the big bashful lug who operated on the principle that the way to a woman's bed is through her maternal instinct. However, limiting Clinton to Tufts's light comedies overlooks the great tragic role he was born for.

In Letter from an Unknown Woman, Louis Jourdan plays Stefan Brandt, a celebrated Viennese pianist and dedicated roue who seduces the young Joan Fontaine and leaves her pregnant. She eventually marries a rich, kindly older man and resigns herself to a passionless life. Fifteen years pass. Suddenly, Stefan turns up again and she is promptly consumed by passion. So is he, but when she goes to his room she makes a shattering discovery: the dissolute Stefan has had so many women that he doesn't remember her and proceeds to seduce her from scratch.

The mother of all Campaign '96 movies, as I discovered the other night, is Come Back, Little Sheba, with Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster. Doc Delaney is a well-bred man whose life has been ruined by a shotgun marriage to his social inferior, the slovenly Lola. Forced to quit medical school, he is now a chiropractor and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Though outwardly neat, polite, scholarly, and well-spoken, he is one drink away from mayhem.

Trouble starts when Lola rents a room to Marie, an art student and her opposite in every way: young, slim, energetic, fastidious, and an early riser. Doc idealizes Marie as a symbol of his own youthful promise until he sees her in a compromising situation with Turk, a crude jock intent on giving her the old lock-and-load. Mistakenly thinking that Marie has yielded to this male version of Lola, Doc goes on a bender, busts up the house, and tries to stab his wife.

Why did this seem so familiar to me? I had seen the movie many times before, of course, but that wasn't why. This was another kind of familiarity. . . .

Suddenly, it hit me. Grabbing pen and paper, I scribbled furiously, intent on capturing the inchoate associations tumbling through my mind before they slipped back into the misty subconscious regions they had occupied ever since the New Hampshire primary.

Doc Buchanan is a well-bred man with a fatal addiction: campaigning. A columnist by profession, he has put aside writing and thinking to follow his new ambitions, and now he is an unrecovered candidate. Though his friends attest that he is neat, polite, scholarly, and well-spoken, he is one caucus away from mayhem.

The measure of his addiction is what it has done to his wife. She's starting to look like Shirley Booth: the same full, fleshy face, the same expression of tired sweetness, the same lingering traces of the pertness she must have had once, but has no more.

HOW could she be pert? She's been standing in high heels ever since Doc Buchanan went on his bender. Even Pat Nixon was allowed to sit down while she gazed in adoration at her speechifying husband, but poor Shelley has to stand up.

Every woman who has worn high heels can interpret the look on Shelley Buchanan's face. It's subtly different from the other female "look" that signals menstrual cramps. That one contains a glimmer of hope because we know we will have a nice flat stomach the next day. The high-heels look is one of unmitigated despair because we know our feet will be swollen the next day. Hopelessness of this magnitude conjures up Shirley Booth's Lola Delaney, flopping down the stairs in her bathrobe, eyes at half-mast and tired all over.