The Most Powerful Movie Theatre in the World

Being the President of the United States has many perks, such as being able to drop nukes or to have buildings named after you, but perhaps one of the greatest rewards for being the leader of the free world is the White House movie theatre. Here the President can schmooze with foreign dignitaries, and he is just about the only person on the planet who nobody will shush if he talks during a movie. We can learn a lot by finding out what movies these men were interested in. We see the narcissistic nature of LBJ by knowing that his favorite movie was a short biopic of himself, and many Americans were able to connect to President Reagan by watching the movies he had starred in.

Movies like Bedtime for Bonzo .

In 1915 Woodrow Wilson became the first President to screen a film in the White House, showing The Birth of a Nation . The film is a piece of revisionist history that was created to romanticize the American South and to portray blacks as menaces to society. Supposedly Wilson, the first Southern President since the Civil War, stated that the film was like “history written with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” In 2012, with a black president, it is hard to imagine a President praising a film that portrays the Ku Klux Klan as America’s saviors, but in 1915 Wilson’s position was not a very controversial one – Birth of a Nation was a very popular film in the silent era, despite the protests that occurred in reaction to it. A permanent movie theatre wasn’t built into the White House until the Second World War, and it wasn’t until President Eisenhower that a true cinephile began ordering films. Eisenhower was a big Western buff, and his favorite was the 1952 Gary Cooper film High Noon. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, two men who would not agree on much, also both listed High Noon as their favorite film. It has caught the attention of more Presidents than any other film, and it’s not hard to see why. The film tells the story of a retiring Sheriff named Kane who catches news that an old nemesis is returning to town for a showdown. Kane goes around town and pleads with the townsfolk to stand with him to take down this crook, and although the entire town loves and respects him, they cannot be motivated to stand with him. In the end, Kane has to meet this crook and his men alone.

Although the film has had the endorsement of several Presidents, John Wayne hated it and called it completely un-American. He saw it as a veiled nod at the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the committee responsible for the Hollywood blacklist. Wayne was a supporter of the committee, and he saw High Noon as a story about how many people agreed with the victims of the blacklist but were too afraid to stand with them. The creators of High Noon denied this message, but soon thereafter John Wayne starred in Rio Bravo, which is in many ways the antithesis of High Noon. In 1960, President-Elect Kennedy showed where he stood on the blacklist issue when he crossed picket lines to see Spartacus, which had been written by blacklisted writer Dolton Trumbo. Set in the Roman Republic, the movie makes several poignant allusions to the red scare and McCarthyism, and by publicly watching it he was repudiating the blacklist. Kennedy named Spartacus his favorite film, and would go on to screen it again in the White House movie theatre.

As that example shows, knowledge on Presidential film preferences is not trivial, it is in fact a great insight into the minds of these leaders. Nixon would cite Patton as a guide to how to win in Vietnam, and Reagan announced before a speech that he would send Rambo in to fight the next war. I am not going to wade into discussion about our current president, but you can draw your own conclusions from his favorite movies: The Godfather I & II, Casablanca, and Lawrence of Arabia.