It’s a cliché to cite some decades-old book, movie or TV show and say, “This is as relevant today as it was back then.”
That said, one 1957 film satire is possibly more relevant today than when it was first released to movie theaters.
“A Face in the Crowd,” directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg based on his own short story, is startling in how it predicts the rise of a new type of American public personality. Years before “Network,” “A Face in the Crowd” eerily portrays the fusion of show business and politics.
There have been a lot of political thrillers about demagogues rising to the top. “All the King’s Men,” released in 1949, does an expert job of telling this story. And besides “Network,” a handful of thrillers looking at the excesses of the media have made us think twice about what we watch and read. The 1976 film’s conceit of a network putting insincere, unbalanced and downright dishonest people on the airwaves seems quaint now. Of course, networks and cable channels would do that, we think: They do so every day.
But I can’t think of a movie that does a better job than “A Face in the Crowd” of marrying politics and media to tell the story of a poisonously dishonest man in a prominent position of trust and, yes, adoration, by the American people.
You don’t have to use your imagination to see that the dire predictions made by “A Face in the Crowd” more than 60 years ago have become reality. We all know the “news” channels that would readily make a spot on their schedules for the folksy and totally insincere central character of the film. You know the political candidates who have refined this character into a platform, persona and rallying cry.
That “A Face in the Crowd” still has so much dramatic and social impact all these decades later is extraordinary.
A face in the jail
When we meet Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, as played by Andy Griffith just three years before the 1960 debut of “The Andy Griffith Show,” he is in an Arkansas jail. An ambitious radio reporter, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) is there to audio record an episode of her “A Face in the Crowd” program. She turns the mic over to Rhodes – dubbed “Lonesome” – who quickly shakes off his hangover and amps up his performance, strumming his guitar, growling and howling his vocals and generally “acting the fool,” as my family would say.
(I should note here that Griffith’s performance as Rhodes has always reminded me of an older relative of mine who was a real loose cannon. I loved him dearly but when he was drinking you could never tell what he might do. One day he was trying to nap in a spare bedroom at our house. My cousin and I annoyed him until he got out of bed, whipped out a knife and chased us. We were laughing and scared. I fell down a flight of stairs in my hurry to get away from him. My mom was not amused at any of us.)
The key to Rhodes as a powerful character is his unpredictability – but also just how predictable he is once you figure him out. He’s loud and blustering and threatening and at other points quiet and insinuating and absolutely charming. Those around him know he’s a performer putting on an act – at least until a taste of power goes to his head and he thinks he can get away with anything.
Rhodes – Kazan and Schulberg, of course – foreshadows the type of powerful political and media figures we’ve seen come to life in the past 40 years. Rhodes is in the DNA of everyone from former talk show host Jerry Springer to former talk show host Tucker Carlson to former reality show host Donald Trump.
Story to film
Schulberg’s short story introducing Rhodes, “Your Arkansas Traveler,” from his 1954 collection “Some Faces in the Crowd,” is quick to demonstrate how Rhodes is appealing but also a little frightening. As some point, the narrator – the Neal character, basically – notes that on his radio show, Rhodes tells “funny stories, family anecdotes, homilies, recipes for pineapple upside-down cake the way his Maw made it in Riddle, Arkansas, and anything else that popped into his cagey, folksy, screwball mind.”
Just as quickly as Lonesome Rhodes becomes a homespun, southern-tinged radio show host in the film, he finds that role even more quickly in the original story.
In the movie, he’s compared to Will Rogers, the homespun philosopher and writer, and the same comparison is in Schulberg’s short story too, along with a Time profile that called Rhodes “a younger, fatter, coarser Will Rogers in the American grain of tobacco-chewing, cracker barrel, comic philosophers, a caricature of the folk hero who has been able to make Americans nod their heads and grin and say, ‘Yep, that fella ain’t so dumb as he looks.’”
There’s no shortage of wit in the story. Schulberg writes that after Jeffries fields an offer for Rhodes of $500 a week for a national radio show, she goes to tell Rhodes and finds him asleep with a half-empty bottle nearby.
“Get up, you slob. Destiny is calling.”
“Collect?” Rhodes manages to reply.
The story details the tactics Rhodes would use on his enemies, particularly celebrities who didn’t contribute to the charities he solicited donations for. “He would do everything from questioning the legitimacy of their birth to hinting at their involvement in the latest Communist spy ring.”
It seems like modern-day political and media demagogues based their shtick on ol’ Lonesome.
Rhodes in Schulberg’s story would fit right in with today’s racist pundits. He criticizes China for its involvement in the Korean War, a stance apparently motivated after he got sick from eating bad shrimp at a Chinese restaurant.
(By the way, in the short story and at several points in the movie, Rhodes pronounces himself an “influence,” stopping just a letter away from the modern-day claim of a celebrity being an influencer.)
It was only a couple of years after director Kazan and writer Schulberg had collaborated on the gritty film classic “On the Waterfront” that the two turned “Your Arkansas Traveler” into “A Face in the Crowd.”
‘Mad Men’ and mad man
In his radio show, Rhodes fictionalizes everything about his past, from his hometown to his folksy uncles and friends. He speaks directly to the down-home people who listen to his show, talking about funny old-timers he knew and workaday realities.
It’s not long before he plunges into politics and controversy. He dips a toe in, at first, with a literal dog whistle, encouraging people to bring their dogs to the yard of a local politician. He flexes his muscle – the adoration of his audience – by encouraging a boycott of his show’s sponsor, a mattress company, and by bringing out on stage a Black woman whose house has burned down. Rhodes asks viewers to send in 50 cents to help her. His audience sends in more than $18,000.
As Rhodes’ star continues to rise, we see how Madison Avenue advertising companies and makers of a Viagra-type pill try to harness his power. Shades of “Mad Men.”
Ultimately, Rhodes’ growing reputation as a kingmaker leads to courting by political consultants who think he can get their candidates elected. One stick-in-the-mud presidential candidate lets Rhodes nickname him “Curly” and appears, acting like a down-home fella, on Rhodes’ “Cracker Barrel” program. (When Curly appears on Rhodes’ show, their first target is Social Security.)
The newly rechristened Curly, acting like the salt of the earth that he is decidedly not, sees his approval numbers rise. Predictably, the success goes to Rhodes’ head and he imagines himself not only as an adviser to a president but a member of the cabinet. A battleship is named after Rhodes, as is a mountain. He headlines telethons to raise money for disabled children.
And not a moment of his public life is sincere.
All the while, Rhodes is becoming increasingly incautious in his personal life, marrying a 17-year-old drum majorette (Lee Remick in an early role) and disillusioning Jeffries, who has become his handler, partner and supposed love interest. She finds a sympathetic ear in the jaded and cynical writer Mel Miller, wonderfully played by Walter Matthau.
“It’s me, big me, the king!” Rhodes yells upon entering his luxurious New York City apartment.
Spoilers ahead for a 60-plus-year-old movie and short story.
Falls from grace
The finale of “A Face in the Crowd,” in which Rhodes gets his comeuppance, is one of the most famous in film history. It is improbable, no doubt. So is Norman Bates keeping his mother’s mummified remains in his cellar. But such scenes make for a riveting film.
In Schulberg’s story, which lends so much to his screenplay for “A Face in the Crowd,” Rhodes’ fall from grace is a literal fall, as the drunken media personality, feeling Jeffries slip away from him, literally takes a fall down a flight of stairs and dies. He’s dead but his legacy as an influencer is intact and his funeral is marked by much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The film, however, gives Rhodes a downfall for the ages. Jeffries, disillusioned and angry at herself for ever falling for Rhodes’ act, is in the control room for his latest, live show. As the credits roll, she manipulates the soundboard to let viewers hear what Rhodes is saying on the set rather than having his rant covered up by his show’s end title music.
“Those morons out there?” Rhodes says, referring to his viewing audience. “I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to ‘em as caviar. I could make ‘em eat dog food and they’d think it’s steak. I got ‘em like this. (Making a fist.) You know what the public’s like? A cage full of guinea pigs. Good night, you stupid idiots. Good night, you miserable slobs. They’re a lot of trained seals. I toss ‘em a dead fish and they’ll flap their flippers.”
Viewers turn on Rhodes with sudden ferocity. From their homes and their bars, those “miserable slobs” jam the network’s switchboards with complaints. Sponsors turn on him. Network executives sour on him. And his handlers already have their next Lonesome Rhodes on standby.
In the time it takes for Rhodes to descend via elevator to the lobby of the TV network headquarters, his reign is over.
Rhodes realizes what happened and is devastated. It’s Miller who tells Rhodes, speaking realistically, that he is destined to be back on television, albeit in a much less exalted position. In a matter of time, he’ll be forgotten by his one-time fans.
“Whatever happened to what’s his name?”
Rhodes’ fall from grace forecasts the firing of media personality Tucker Carlson in the wake of a lawsuit that revealed how false faced he was. That’s how prescient “A Face in the Crowd” is.
By making “A Face in the Crowd” sound like a movie that’s assigned for viewing by political science and media professors, I’ve probably done it a disservice. The movie’s accurate and dizzying predictions of our messed up future society is worth the price of admission.
But the film is also the brilliant story of a cynical manipulator and the people in his circle. It just turns out we’re all in the circle of some of these manipulators these days.
