Tennessee Johnson

OK, so it's not that accurate a portrait of the era and the writers may have fabricated "history" but that's Hollywood. Let's not under estimate Van Heflin. The guy was one of my favorites and terribly underrated. You can see all kinds of emotion in his eyes. He was not a very energetic actor like Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power nor did he have the matinee idol looks of a Robert Taylor but the guy was cerebral. He was brilliant in "Johnny Eager" and all but stole every scene he was in in "Santa Fe Trail". He excelled at complex characters.

I wonder what kind of career he would have had if he had lived longer.

Watch this movie with an open mind and really enjoy Heflin's acting.

I doubt if a film made in 2004 or after about Andrew Johnson would be as kind as this 1943 film. Johnson did support the North in the Civil War (he was the only Southern Senator to remain in the U.S. Government during the war, and would be appointed Governor of that portion of Tennessee from 1863 - 64). Lincoln, in order to have a strong National ticket in her 1864 election chose Johnson (a Democrat)as his running mate. So Johnson became Vice President. And then John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, and Johnson became President.

Johnson was illiterate, until his wife taught him to read and write. He educated himself, and rose in the legal and political world of Tennessee (and then the nation). But he was a piece of "po' white trash", and remained so with all it's cultural baggage. He supported the North because he (rightly) distrusted the Southern plantation aristocracy (epitomized by Jefferson Davis). However - he hated slaves and free Black people. Hence his willingness to be soft on the South. Lincoln would have been soft too, but Lincoln had great gifts at managing his adversaries and probably could have arranged a compromise. Johnson was pig-headed. He antagonized the Radical Republicans controlling Congress. They waited for him to make a mistake, and he did (technically he violated the Tenure of Office Act, by firing Secretary of War Stanton without getting Congressional permission - this act was declared unconstitutional in the 1880s). Then followed his impeachment and the saving of his skin by seven Republican Senators who voted not to remove him. And those men all lost their Senatorial seats.

In 1943 Johnson was considered a hero, for saving the Executive Branch from becoming a rubber stamp for Congress. Actually, there was nothing to show that some Radical Republican President could not have restored power to the Executive Branch if Johnson had been removed. He gets high grades for his grit and courage, but his pig-headed stupidity and racism sink his historical rating.

Still Van Heflin, Lionel Barrymore, and the other actors (like Charles Dingle) make the film interesting and enjoyable enough. Good film making but mixed history. Two final points: Edmond Ross was in good health when he voted, but James W. Grimes of Iowa also voted for acquittal, and he had a paralytic stroke a few weeks earlier (he died within a year). Second: Andrew Johnson is the second Vice President of the name Johnson (and Lyndon Johnson the third Veep). The first was Martin Van Buren's Vice President, Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, whose career as a politician might make a diverting comedy.

That letter Lincoln was supposed to have sent Johnson has kind of puzzled me. After all, it is read out loud twice. It SOUNDS like Lincoln's prose style, but I'd never heard of any other reference to it. So I posted the question on a Civil War news groups. Here's one of the exchanges.

"Robert Maxwell" wrote> It's generally agreed that at the second inauguration, Andrew Johnson was skunk drunk when he took the oath and tried to make his speech. I just watched the movie, "Tennessee Johnson," and it appears that Johnson was ill during the inauguration and that Lincoln later sent him a letter saying something like, "If you took a drink more often, you would know better than to take brandy on an empty stomach because you are ill. I know you only were there because I asked you to be."

Does anyone know if this letter ever existed?

Reply. "Having worked for three years as an assistant editor with The Papers of Andrew Johnson and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Association, which is engaged in supporting projects to edit the papers of the sixteenth president, I can safely say that no one I know has ever claimed such a letter to exist."

Anyone interested in the impeachment of Johnson might watch the first 20 minutes of Blight's lecture on the subject, on open courses from Yale. Don't be intimidated by "college" or "Yale". (I went there and it's not that demanding.) Blight gives an informative, objective, and lively presentation of the material -- interrupted briefly by somebody yelling "Let my people go," to which Blight replies, "You're free to leave...I hope that guy doesn't have a gun."

http://academic earth.org/lectures/black-reconstruction-economics-of-land-and-labor

Please eliminate the space between "academic" and "earth". It's only there because IMDb.com doesn't allow words that are too long, like floccinaucinihilipilification.

The name of this film is called " Tennesse Johnson " and relates the story of the 17th president of the U.S. Van Heflin stars as Andrew Johnson and Lionel Barrymore plays his chief adversary, Thaddeus Stevens. Having studied the life of Andrew Johnson and then watching this Black and White film, I found it to be a shoddy and haphazard biography of Lincoln's successor when the great man was assassinated in 1865. Still Van Heflin's performance produced a superior piece allowing the audience to glean a more sympathetic view of the often fiery and very vocal V.P. Ruth Hussey and Marjorie Main as well as Noah Berry Sr. add to this historical and memorable film. Although a bit flawed, the movie is worth viewing by anyone interested in studying the 17th President of the U.S. ****

The cast is spectacular- Heflin , Hussey, Barrymore , Main and Regis Toomey.

The movie tries to lionize Andrew Johnson, 17th President as carrying on Lincoln's legacy and policies.

In fact, Lincoln made a monumental mistake by letting this Democrat near the White House.

Johnson repeatedly vetoed Republican efforts to bring former slaves into true freedom and equality.

He allowed southern Democrats to install segregation and institute discrimination, setting race relations back 100 years.

Johnson didn't speak at his Senate impeachment trial.

So much dramatic license was taken in this film, it's tough to trust anything.

Not sure why the filmmakers wanted to rehabilitate Andrew Johnson but I did appreciate the actor's efforts.