I've completed the second White House-oriented audio commentary, this time for the movie The American President, starring Michael Douglas as a widowed top exec wooing Annette Bening. It's over on my other website. The filmmakers managed several visits to the WH to get the details right. One of the things I note is the really beautiful blue watered silk wall-covering they chose for the president's bedroom and the elegant, yet girlish, patterned wallpaper for the first daughter's bedroom—really well done.
Also, Patrick P has contributed a detailed analysis of the film Wilson, which I put on the Movies page. Thanks, Patrick!
Update: Dennis points out that the French PM state dinner was modeled closely after the Yeltsin dinner, as depicted in the Inside the White House documentary. I've altered the page descriptions, but I think I'll rerecord that part. Thanks for the tip, Dennis!
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The sets on "The American President" are pretty amazing. There are a few little gaffes, but by and large, you really feel like you are "there". There are a couple of scenes where they pan around and show the interior of the President's Dining Room, upstairs - but it's so quick you really can't see the level of detail - surely they wouldn't have gone to the great expense of re-creating that room just for a quick glimpse like that. I'll have to get out my DVD and freeze that frame and see... It's just nice to know that they cared enough to meke it look "real". And hey, if it convinces the guys who post on THIS blog, it must be pretty good, right?! It's a tough room...
ReplyDeleteI listened to your audio commentary on "The American President" this afternoon. I didn't have the movie on because I was at the office, but I've seen it on TV so many times that I knew what you were talking about.
ReplyDeleteYou might find it very helpful to get your hands on the National Geographic video "Inside the White House," done during the Clinton adminstration, showing all of the details going in to a State Dinner. The video shows a State Dinner in honor of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Much of what "The American President" depicts during the State Dinner for the French President fits with the Yeltsin State Dinner.
I have that one, altho I didn't review it again before doing the commentary. The state dinner scene didn't interest me very much; it seemed kind of silly. Did I say something inaccurate about the scripting of things, like who dances when? Or do you mean that the Yeltsins were hammered?
ReplyDeleteThat blue watered silk (an embossed moire print, maybe for cost's sake?) is really beautiful. It looks blue in the "day" scenes and green in the "night" scenes. If that really is watered silk, they spent a boatload of money on these sets. I looked again and the "Scenic America" wallpaper in the President's Dining Room really does look pretty convincing. I wonder (since Clinton did give Rob Reiner amazing access to the White House during the filming) - if it might possibly be a photo mural of the existing paper - OR - was that paper even exposed to view in 1995, when the film was being made...? Wasn't it already covered over with the light green silk...?
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing about the movie... It sure looks like they used one of the two specially altered Cadillac Limousines in the White House fleet. I have a "thing" for presidential limousines and know those cars pretty well and it would be VERY expensive to alter a standard Cadillac just for a 5 minute scene. It sure looked like the real thing to me. This movie just gets more and more impressive as you look into it.
Ok, I'm really NOT obsessing (sp?) about this - really - no, really... I was just looking at "The American President" again -while eating my soup and sandwich... The Master Bedroom IS blue and the "Living Room" seems to be green (day and night). I *wondered* why there was a projecting chimney breast in the Master Bedroom... and of course it's really the "Living Room"... Dang, these guys did their homework...
ReplyDeleteOk, I'm gonna think about real life for a while... it's just that I DO think about stuff like this in my real life... : )
Maybe it's not too late to learn to drive an 18-wheeler?
I was thinking about the number of photographers both inside and outside of the White House for the Yeltsin state dinner. Also, C-Span was positioned in the East Wing Visitors Foyer interviewing the guests as they entered the ground floor hall. Finally, when we saw the Yeltsins and Clintons upstairs there were a number of people up there with them in the President's Study before the flag procession downstairs.
ReplyDeleteThe Yeltsin Dinner was held in the State Dining Room, unlike the French dinner in the movie. I think the movie probably placed the dinner in the East Room so that they would not have to build a state dining room set. As you say, there is precedence for a dinner in the East Room and it allowed scenes both at table and on the dance floor while using only one set. As far as who dances with whom, I don't know. I do remember seeing pictures of President Ford dancing with QEII and Betty Ford dancing with PP at the State Dinner for them in 1976.
It would seem to me that protocol would dictate that the first dance partner of the President would have been the wife of the French president.
The movie raises the whole issue of who is "official hostess" for the President when there is no First Lady. That has been a real issue during some administrations like Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland and Arthur. Usually, the President's sister or daughter or daughter-in-law would fill that role. Or, sometimes the wife of the Vice-President or Secretary of State. Check out Jefferson for the "Merry Affair."
One more thing - I doubt that the President's date for a state dinner would be allowed to walk downstairs in the flag procession, even if escorted away immediately. The President's date would probably have been taken down in the elevator with other staff members to meet up again with him after the formal receiving line.
ReplyDeleteI think the movie stretches it here because it is only their first date, they don't even have a relationship at this time. Having her come down the stairs could even be seen as a breach of protocol.
And who could ever forget the beautiful Harriet Lane, niece and official hostess of James Buchanan, our only bachelor president.
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not obsessing, either.
Horrible tornados swept through New Orleans last night - major damage to a city that hardly needs more problems. Through the grace of God, I'm OK. Amazingly, only one person in town was killed. About 20 injured.
ReplyDeleteMy (almost totally complete) collection of White House guidebooks - and all the other W.H. books are OK. and, even more important (?) - all my research on Latrobe's and Dolley Madison's Oval Room is OK.
Ok, I think it's time to head to Cincinnati and house hunt...
Harriet Lane and Lou Henry Hoover - the most underrated First Ladies in White House history, in my humble opinion. Lou Hoover did lots of pioneering research on the White House - and apparently set a swell table to boot!
ReplyDeleteJohn in nola,
ReplyDeleteGlad your okay! What guidebooks are you missing? Also, do you have the 1965 article Benjamin Latrobe and Dolley Madison Decorate the White House by Margaret Brown klapthor? It was published by the Smithsonian Institution. If not, I'll figure out a way to get a copy to you.
Mimlog -
ReplyDeleteThanks! At least it was a pretty day here - 76 degrees! So much snow and ice elsewhere!
As far as I know, the only edition of the White House Guidebook I'm missing is the very First Edition (1962). I do have a 2nd edition (also 1962). I have a friend who has a First edition and I have compared - page by page - and the 2nd edition seems to be absolutely identical to the 1st - appparently they just sold out and had to print some more. This edition shows the Blue Room in the Truman wallcovering, with the Bellange pier table and some of the bellange chairs. I also have a 3rd edition (also 1962) that shows a different rug in the Green Room and other small changes in the State rooms - and also shows the Truman wallcovering in the Blue Room, but includes a double page spread of the window wall, anticipating the final Kennedy edition (1963) that shows the room in the same page format, but redecorated with the pale blue and the cloth ceiling border. So I essentially have all three Kennedy editions, although technically there were 4 JFK editions.
And I may be missing a LBJ edition, although I'd have to go through and "check off the editions" to see which one.
If there is any interest I can scan some of the more interesting pages from the early Kennedy editions and send them to Derek, if he would be agreeable to that.
I do have a copy of the excellent "Dolley and the Great Little Madison", by Margaret Klapthor, about the Latrobe/Madison Oval Room, but it is extremely kind of you to offer to copy it for me. Thnaks so much!
Mimlog, it sounds like you also have an interest in this room. The Latrobe overmantle mirror and the klismos chairs that he designed for the "Oval Saloon" that were shown in those early Kennedy guidebooks really made an impression on me as a kid. I was "hooked" and still am...
I have a number of the White House guidebooks, but definitely not all of them. The first one I ever purchased was at a bookstore when I was a kid. It was a hardbound edition of the Kennedy restoration showing all the rooms in their final Kennedy form. Noticeably absent were the China and Vermeil Rooms which had not yet been done over.
ReplyDeleteI also have a National Geographic Magazine from January 1961 showing the White House as it appeared at the end of the Eisenhower administration, anticipating the Kennedys. It is very interesting and written with a room description that is based soley on the history of the room while ignoring any historic furniture or details. It does say that "Yellow Flowers" are always used in the Blue Room. And that the White House Library at one point didn't even have a Bible, so now (1961) it has Bibles in many languages for foreign visitors.
I wonder if JBK ever read the part that said that while the upstairs could be decorated to their tastes, the main floor state rooms were required by law to remain as they were.
This National Geographic is significant for me because it was in my elementary school library that I first picked one up, opening it to the Green Room. This youngster was so fascinated by the Green Room photo and the others that it began a lifelong interest/obsession with the White House. Luckily, I was able to get my own copy many years later.
Dennis -
ReplyDeleteI had that same January 1961 National Geographic - My family subscribed (we still have a bazillion old Geographics in the attic at my brother's house) - and I was absolutely facinated by that issue. I'm afraid I read it o over and over and over - so much that I almost wore the thing out and had to tape the "cut-away" White House fold out - several times... old brittle clear scotch tape! I was completely facinated by the feature in the front of that issue that showed the little model White House that the Geographic artists had built to construct the double page cut-away painting. I wonder if it still exists somewhere in a storeroom at the Grographic headquarters?! Of course now it would all be done on computer...
And yes, my local library had the 1963 White House guidebook - and I think my elementary school library did too. I think I ordered my first one from the White House Historical Association in 1969 (?). It was the "old" Nixon edition,(still had the "Kennedy" covers) before they re-vamped the look of the guidebook.
What I've read over the years suggests that Jackie Kennedy did indeed use the January 1961 Geographic as a basis for the book that eventually became the guidebook - even the format of that article - beginning with Mamie Eisenhower's "Letter" that introduces it - and the fold-out White House cutaway illustration - wound up in Jackie's guidebook.
Library re-sale shops are a good place to find copies of this issue. And used book stores that have old Geographics.
As to whether Jackie read the part about the State Floor having to remain the same by law... well... (grin...)
As a kid, I also had a little paperbound book entitled "The White House, Today and Yesterday, A Dazzling Photographic Excursion", by "Washington Newspaperwoman", Isabelle Shelton (Fawcett Publications, October 1962). Cost a whopping 60 cents,new, on the newstand. About 130 pages. Vaguely patterned after the White House guidebook, it's a pretty amazing little book with LOTS of color and b&w pictures and a section on "Jacqueline Kennedy's White House. I recently checked on Amazon and (www.abebooks.com) and it's still available, much to my astonishment! Certainly worth a few bucks. I DID wear out my first copy of that book, but managed to find another at a used book sale.
Funny, the things like this that set us on a lifetime interest/passion.
I like to think that every now and then, Jackie would take down her copies of the White House Guidebook and thumb through them with satisfaction - and think - "I did this... I really made a difference..." Maybe some kids somewhere got hold of this book and ran with it..."
Indeed,I hope she did.
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