Lonesome Rhodes is Alive and Well

In 2000, I read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which led me to "What Makes Sammy Run?" Both stories are about impoverished Jewish boys born in New York who find a way out of poverty by writing. In Kavalier & Clay, they're writing comic books; in Sammy Run, he's writing screenplays. Both are based on real people. Second-generation Jewish Americans wrote both. Second-generation Jewish writers have much to do with how people my age and twenty years older define themselves.

Like his father, who inspired Sammy in "What Makes Sammy Run," Budd Schulberg began writing screenplays. I used to order scripts from a company that photocopied final shooting scrips, punched three holes, and bound them with round-head brass clips, the industry standard for screenplays. I ordered a copy of "On The Waterfront" and dozens of others from them. I’m pretty sure every order was a massive copyright violation. Nobody but weirdos like me read shooting scripts, so they let it slide.

Elia Kazan directed "On The Waterfront." It won eight Academy Awards in 1954, including Best Picture and Best Director. Kazan cooperated with the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and identified eight writers who had been practicing communists in the twenties and thirties. Doing so split Hollywood's opinion on Kazan to this day. Recognized for his brilliance, the idea that he betrayed his friends and ruined their lives is an aspect no one will ever forget about him.

Following up on the Schulberg/Kazan collaborations, I ordered "A Face In The Crowd" next. When I moved back to Jackson from the reservoir, I donated some thirty boxes of books and scripts to St. Andrews Episcopal School. Somewhere in their library, they remain. I’ve had some good friends make the drama department at St. Andrews a part of their career. I recommend the school if you have an arty child.

Kazan was somebody I talked to Lance Goss about a great deal. Both were known for directing plays by Tennessee Williams. A Turk, Kazan was fascinated by the American South. Goss was actually a product of the American South, the same part of the American South that produced Wiliams in the first place. I'll always believe Lance directing Williams brought out aspects of the plays that Kazan, not being from here, probably never noticed.

When I read "A Face In The Crowd," I realized I'd seen the film on TBS before it became Turner Classic Movies. It starred Andy Griffith in what was his only serious dramatic performance. Griffith had a love/hate relationship with the ultra-benevolent Andy Taylor character, but it made him so much money that he never had much luck escaping him, even turning him into a seersucker-wearing lawyer later in life.

Based on the lives and works of Will Rogers Jr., Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Arthur Godfrey, "A Face in the Crowd" is a brutal criticism of American Politics. Questions about whether Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes was meant to be conservative or liberal have always followed the film. I'm pretty sure Schulberg and Kazan left that question up to the viewer's interpretation.

Lonesome Rhodes rises to power by convincing his listeners that he's a simple, pure American, just like them, only he secretly despises them. Rhodes says:

"Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind me!"

"Fuller" in this context is the character of Senator Worthington Fuller, who runs for president and rides on the back of Rhodes' success.

The climax of "A Face In The Crowd" is devastating. I won't spoil it if you've never seen it. While "On The Waterfront" was nominated for almost every Academy Award, A Face in the Crowd was nominated for none. I blame all the Southern accents and the fact that Hollywood was still pretty pissed off at Kazan. Lance, Brent, and I had long conversations about whether we, too, should be pissed off at Kazan toward the end of the twentieth century. Having teachers who became your friends with whom you can discuss these things is one of the smartest things I have ever done.

People used to compare Rush Limbaugh to Lonesome Rhodes. I never thought it was a very complete comparison. I was pretty sure Limbaugh secretly despised his listeners like Rhodes. He wasn't ever known for fake humility, which was a key to the Lonesome Rhodes character.

I watched "Hillbilly Elegy" because I heard that Vance was a Republican dissenter at a time when the GOP was crucifying dissenters. The value of dissenters was never more clear than when big factions in the DNC began saying Joe Biden should step down for his own good and for the good of the party. There were a lot of people who absolutely hated them for it, but they were right. You should always argue with dissenters, but you should always keep them. They’re more valuable than the forever faithful.

As a director, I like Ron Howard an awful lot. I'd watch him direct a weather report. His child is pretty talented, too. After watching "Hillbilly Elegy" on Netflix, I picked up the book. The thing you didn't get from the movie that was really clear in the book was that this guy was Lonesome Rhodes come to life.

I wasn't surprised when I heard that he had abandoned his "never Trump" stance without a breath of explanation. I don't know how you go from calling a guy Hitler one day to being his running mate the next without some justification for the switch, but that's the state of American politics.

I don't hate JD Vance; I just know what he is. False humility is a common strategy in the South. I don't hate Elia Kazan. While I have very strong feelings about the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (that was prosecuting Americans for having a perfectly legal political opinion), I can't say that I understand why Kazan did what he did. I can't say I understand why Disney did the same thing.

I'll forever believe that Joseph McCarthy and, in particular, Roy Cohn took advantage of sensitive, creative people by threatening them on the one hand and holding out "Don't you want to be a good American" on the other. Of course, they wanted to be good Americans; it's not their fault that people always try to twist that idea into something it's not.

A lot of people won't watch "A Face In The Crowd" because it's a black-and-white socio-political drama. That kind of stuff is my bread and butter, but I'm pretty weird. Beware false humility in politics. Both parties do it. Genuine humility is more valuable than gold in that setting, though.

I love this shot from “A Face In The Crowd.” Like Lance Goss, Kazan really knew how to pose an actor.