Pity the Poor First Husband: Kisses for My President

Contrary to whatever impression the recent Hillary Clinton campaign might have given you, Hollywood hasn't made all that many movies about a female President in the White House. Indeed, apart from the 1964 movie Kisses for My President, it's difficult for me to think of one. And even Kisses for My President leaves more than a bit to be desired on the cinematic front.

For what it was worth, Polly Bergen made a fine impression as Leslie Harrison McCloud, the first woman president of the United States. But sadly the movie wasn't really about her. It was about her husband Thad (played by Fred MacMurray).

Thad used to be a big industrialist before his wife got elected, but now she was in the White House, he was just another First Spouse with little to do save for keeping out of trouble and attending meaningless social events -- a situation which was just fine for previous presidential spouses but not for Thad. Because he was a guy, you know. And according to the dogma of 1964 Hollywood, guy problems were much more important than woman problems.

Eventually he did get into trouble -- first when he was entertaining a conniving Latin American dictator named Raphael Valdez Jr. (played by Eli Wallach) and then again when he was almost seduced by a job offer from an ex-girlfriend named Doris Weaver (played by Arlene Dahl). For that matter, the children had issues too but the movie was not as interested in those issues as it was in the plight of poor Tad.

In any event, the movie was not a complete loss. Despite all the attention focused on Fred MacMurray, Polly Bergen managed to do a good job of convincingly portraying a female president, especially in the scenes in which she stood up to a patronizing U.S. senator (played by Edward Andrews) and Raphael Valdez Jr. Nor did Ms. Bergen have a monopoly on good roles. Wallach managed to play his role in a memorable fashion and it didn't hurt that he had a few good scenes with John Banner, an actor best known for playing Sgt. Schultz on the TV series Hogan's Heroes but seen in this film playing the role of the Soviet Ambassador.

Unfortunately, by turning the fictional story of the first female president into a romantic comedy and focusing primarily on male issues, the movie eventually undermined itself to the point that it's no surprise that it rarely seems to be mentioned in movie buff circles. If I had to pick the worst part of the film, it would be the ending which was the setup for a really bad one-liner by Mr. MacMurray that has not improved with age. Of course, Kisses for My President would not be the last Hollywood film to reflect a dubious attitude towards the Women's Liberation Movement. But it is one of the most obvious ones.

Merry Meredith and Goddard the Goddess

Burgess Meredith, you sly old dog. If I had been a producer in the 1940s, I probably would have done my best to arrange it so that I, too, could end up playing the spouse of a devoted Paulette Goddard -- even if I was not fortunate enough to be one of Ms. Goddard’s real-life spouses like you. After all, Ms. Goddard was quite the dish in her day -- not only managing to hold her own against her boyfriend Charlie Chaplin in the 1936 comedy Modern Times but also stealing the show away from even her most famous co-stars in the 1939 film The Women. There was just something about her personality which said, “I’m a fun girl to be with” and it was no doubt that very something which made her so watchable on the big screen even when there was little else watchable.

If nothing else, Goddard’s presence in the 1948 movie On Our Merry Way as Martha, the artistic spouse of Meredith’s character Oliver M. Pease, explains why Oliver is so devoted to pleasing his bride of seven months. Who wouldn’t want to please a woman like Ms. Goddard? And yet as the movie progresses, it becomes obvious that Oliver’s attempts to please Martha have had their dark side. Oliver has lied to her about his real job on the local newspaper, bought her furniture with borrowed money he cannot repay and lost money he could not afford to lose trying to make up for his financial shortcomings at the local track. In other words, he has lived beyond his means -- which is certainly not something anyone in the 21th Century can possibly relate to.

But seriously, folks.

On Our Merry Way is an interesting movie which is never quite as funny as the list of famous co-stars (James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Dorothy Lamour, Fred MacMurray and old Preston Sturges regular William Demarest) may indicate but it has its moments. Of course, most of these occur when Mr. Meredith or Ms. Goddard are on-screen but the others get to have good scenes too. Ms. Lamour gets a nifty song-and-dance number which gently mocks her island girl image; Mr. Stewart and Mr. Fonda get to portray two down-on-their-luck jazz musicians who end up auditioning a scantily-clad Dorothy Ford; and Mr. MacMurray and Mr. Demarest get to re-enact for the umpteenth time O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief.”

The main plot begins with Oliver attempting to please Martha by bluffing his way into the editor’s office and passing himself off as a roving reporter handpicked by a conveniently unreachable publisher to replace the current roving reporter. (Oliver had been telling Martha all along that he was the writer of the roving reporter's column but actually he just took phone calls for the want ads department.) Throughout the rest of the movie, Oliver poses as a journalist and interviews his more famous co-stars which at the same time dodging a collections representative for a local bookie. His goal is to come up with an article so good that the editor will have no choice but to promote him to the roving reporter beat for real but the odds are against him. Can he make it? And what happens if he does not and his wife finds out?

For the answer to these questions and more, you will simply have to see the movie. As long as Ms. Goddard or Mr. Meredith are on-screen, that is hardly the worst thing you could be doing. As for the rest of the movie, well, that is the chance you will have to take. Then again Meredith and Goddard never played a married couple again after this movie so perhaps it is better to describe this film as an acquired taste some of you old movie buffs may not wish to acquire. Anyway, I liked it but then I liked it best when Mr. Meredith and Ms. Goddard were in view.

Stealing across the Borderline

There’s something sad about watching old movies about Mexico at the same time the local news is just full of stories depicting that country as being more and more overrun by drug dealers.

Perhaps it is because so many of the movies made in the 1940s and 1950s had such a sunny, optimistic view of Mexican life. Granted, it seemed a lot easier to appreciate Mexican life in the 1940s and 1950s if you were a visiting American tourist than if you were an actual Mexican citizen. Mexico was all too often depicted back then as a worry-free paradise full of colorful dancers, beggars, cab drivers and bartenders whose sole function seemed to be waiting on visiting American tourists. The idea that Mexicans could have lives that did not center around visiting foreigners was all too often a quaint notion that Hollywood had little time for.

And to be fair, the image more modern Hollywood movies often paint is not much of an improvement. In some ways, I would almost prefer a downbeat movie like Traffic or El Norte which at least tries to deal seriously with the issues which still affect modern Mexico than yet another movie like 10 or the recent Heartbreak Kid remake which depict Mexicans as little more than background characters in their own country.

In any event, I recently watched two movies about Mexico: 1950’s Borderline and 1949’s The Big Steal.

Borderline was not quite forgettable but not really worth devoting a lot of time to. The film basically involves Claire Trevor going undercover to expose a big drug ring run by Raymond Burr, only to stumble across the path of a mysterious character (played by Fred MacMurray) who may or may not be on the same side. Along the way she sings a really awful Spanish song which serves as her way of establishing her credentials as a song-and-dance girl and gets wooed by one of Burr‘s assistants. MacMurray butts in, Burr gets wise, Trevor and MacMurray are forced to flee for their lives and the chase is on.

Along the way Trevor and MacMurray get a few good lines but nothing particularly memorable. None of the Mexican characters are depicted as being as evil as the American characters -- indeed, the film‘s absence of a conventional Latin villain is perhaps the best part of this flick. Then again none of the American characters are depicted as being as backward as a local Mexican lawman who shows up halfway through the picture. The guy is depicted as a well-meaning sort who nevertheless had the potential to prove a formidable adversary had his wife not been using as a clothesline the phone line with which he communicated with other Mexican lawmen. How truthful this depiction was, I do not know, but I doubt it was much appreciated by the local Mexican Chamber of Commerce.


1949’s The Big Steal is a big improvement on Borderline. As much as I liked MacMurray and Trevor, there is no denying that the pairing of Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in this movie was truly inspired -- or at least as inspired as one can expect after seeing the same team-up in 1947’s Out of the Past. Indeed, The Big Steal seems very much a reverse version of Out of the Past.

Both viewed Mexico as a sanctuary for tourists fleeing the hecticness of American life and both films hint at disaster if certain characters were to make a premature return to the States. As most movie buffs know, Out of the Past ends on a more downbeat note than The Big Steal and is famous for being one of the more well-known examples of the film noir genre. The Big Steal is too upbeat to make for a good film noir and too full of car chases and gunshots to make for a good romantic comedy. And yet I found it just as memorable in its way as Out of the Past and even the presence of William Bendix as a very unlikely military officer did not change my mind about it.

Especially memorable in The Big Steal was Ramon Navarro’s performance as a local police Inspector General who used his poor English to disguise a cleverness that Columbo would envy. Navarro’s character might not always seem like he knew anything that was going on but he was a whole lot more smarter than any of the American characters ever realized and his commentary on the events that unfolded in this movie was often a joy to hear. If nothing else, I certainly found it refreshing to see a Mexican police officer in an American movie who never once fussed with telephone lines nor complained about not needing any stinking badges.

If only more Mexican policemen in Hollywood movies were like him. For that matter, I would not mind seeing more people like him in the real-life Mexico. But, alas, I fear that such an individual would not have a very long lifespan.

¡Qué lástima!