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| The Tuscaloosa News |
Since it's November and some of us still remember when they killed the President, it seems like a good time to combine that with our monthly focus on Old TV Guys, and look at the best and worst JFKs through the years.
The IMDB has a list of 23, but it's not complete. And because his wife was a historic character in her own right, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (perhaps our most show-biz president) has a couple dozen+ portrayals popping up here and there.
I can't pretend to have seen most of them. But I am a lifelong fan, both of Old TV Guys and JFK, so without further ado, here's the ones I have seen.
Sam Groom, Blood Feud (1983)
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| 20th Century Fox TV |
Strictly two-dimensional. In the championship bout between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Groom's sing-songy lightweight won't even enter the ring. "But Bobby- what will Dad say?" He'll say, forget it.
Cliff Robertson, PT 109 (1963)
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| Warner Bros |
Robertson's genial Shafty seems off-hand, but he captures Kennedy's essential opacity, hidden as it is beneath the charming veneer. He really was a detached kind of person. The interesting thing about this film is the legend that it was shot in the Caribbean while the anti-Castro Cubans were practicing their invasion.
William Jordan, King (1978)
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| Filmways Television |
They don't give him much to do except sit in his rocking chair and look Presidential. But Jordan's pretty good at sitting there like a trustworthy authority of some kind, deputy sheriff, president, whatever.
(To put a finer point on this post, he and Gordon Pinsent are the only actors on this page I'd consider in the Old TV Guy group- the rest are just stars.)
Martin Sheen, Kennedy (1983)
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| Alan Landsburg Productions |
He was President Bartlet, and Bobby in The Missiles of October (mentioned below). Sheen played the big guy himself in this 3-part epic, hitting all the Cliff's Notes, and throwing in a lot of color- I didn't know J Edgar Hoover made him wiretap Martin Luther King by threatening to expose Kennedy's extramarital affairs. That's pretty frank.
But the genius casting in this film is Blair Brown's note-perfect Jackie.
Also, Vincent Gardenia as J Edgar Hoover, who goes around with a
Sinister Light shining up into his face, in a satisfactorily scary way. "Both men pursued the Swedish woman...the father and the son!"
Speaking of Jackie, there were two bios of her in 1981, which gives you an idea of the demand for JFK as a supporting character. The Presidential hubbies (to use a word of the era) were James Franciscus-
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| ABC Circle Films |
(Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, with Jaclyn Smith)
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| Lester Persky Productions |
-and Stephen Collins.
(A Woman Named Jackie, with Roma Downey)
These are two films I have not seen, so I don't know how they were in the role. But they seem appropriately Kennedyesque; Franciscus was even one of the clean-cut Kennedy-Looking Guys running around Hollywood in the late 50s-early 60s, with Roberts Redford & Culp, Tab Hunter, Doug McClure, etc.
William Devane, The Missiles of October (1974)
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| Maljack/Viacom Productions | | | |
Devane's best and strongest feature is his close resemblance to Herblock's JFK.
I have a problem sitting through this one, even though it's loaded with Those Guys- John Dehner as Dean Acheson, James Hong as U Thant, Howard da Silva as Khrushchev, even perennial military-guy Andrew Duggan as General Maxwell Taylor.
I should love it. But Martin Sheen seems to think RFK was perpetually angry, with a hair-trigger temper (when it was actually RFK's calm suggestion that solved the crisis). He really needs to take a Miltown or something.
Gordon Pinsent as "The President", Colossus, the Forbin Project (1970)
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| Universal Pictures |
My personal favorite, even though he's not exactly JFK- but who is?
Pinsent's commanding squint, his ability to project a steely (though misinformed) calm, resonates well with memory. In fact, the eerie resemblance gives this film an alternate-history sort of vibe; what if there'd been no Dallas? Would Fate have found a more suitable trap for the New Frontier?
The road not taken, and all that. Lost but for image, and falling flakes of sound.
