Washington Story

During the Second (2nd) Inauguration of President George Bush, this particular film was shown on American Movie Channel and since I had never viewed this film, it was a great opportunity. Patricia Neal, (Alice Kingsley),"The Fountainhead",'49, was very beautiful and young in this 1952 film and played a good girl and also a bad girl newspaper reporter who was after Van Johnson,(Joseph T. Gresham),"Clowning Around",'92, who was a young innocent Senator to the Washington circle. Alice Kingsley's main interest was to find some bad past history in his life in order to discredit him politically. There was a very romantic scene where Alice and Joseph have dinner and dance on an old Pirate Ship and seem to be falling in love. Louis Calhern,(Charles W. Birch),"The Asphalt Jungle"'50 along with Sidney Blackmer,(Philip Emery),"Rosemary's Baby",'68 gave great supporting roles to this film and were able to portray the tricky methods that are used by the old time politicians working behind the scenes. If you like Patricia Neal and Van Johnson from their past great films, then this is a good film to sit back and ENJOY.

Reporter Alice Kingsley (Patricia Neal) comes to Washington to do a story about the professional life of a congressman and is steered toward Congressman Gresham (Van Johnson) in Washington Story from 1952.

In actuality, Kingsley works for a tabloid, and she wants something juicy. Her attitude changes when he impresses her with his commitment and honesty.

Gresham is dealing with a problem- the constructive of a ship building facility, great for his constituents but with negative national implications. Voting against it will cost him the election.

Both Johnson and Neal are very good, Johnson with that great all-American boy presence and charm, and Neal, a wonderful actress with an earthy sexiness.

Entertaining and at least nowadays, total fiction.

A young generation of American movie viewers cannot possibly appreciate the significance of Washington Story and the performance of Philip Ober as a Drew Pearson type columnist. But back when I was a lad, his was a name that struck fear in the hearts of many Washington politicians, mostly those of the conservative bent. His column from the capital was a weekly expose of all the crooked wheeling and dealing going on there, written in a Walter Winchell like vein. Like Philip Ober in this story, Pearson was a man both feared and despised in many quarters.

A lot of people thought Pearson was a crusading hero, but Washington Story doesn't make Ober anything like that. He's a raker of tabloid mud who's currently drawing a bead on young Congressman Van Johnson from Massachusetts. To do his dirty work Ober gets young Patricia Neal, an ambitious reporter herself, to get close to Johnson and dig up the top soil.

Of course as what usually happens in films like these Johnson and Neal fall for each other with unforeseen consequences for Ober. Louis Calhern is in the film as a wise older Congressman from the other party who befriends Johnson and helps steer him through the crisis. And Sidney Blackmer does a nice job as a lobbyist for the shipping industry whose pet bill is giving Johnson a lot of grief.

If you think Johnson and Neal sound a lot like James Stewart and Jean Arthur you'd be right. MGM filmed Washington Story inside the environs of the real Capitol Hill. It's not Mr. Smith with Jimmy Stewart fighting against a blind establishment, blind to the corruption in Stewart's state. Here the establishment is given a nice coat of whitewash. Remember this was the beginning of the Cold War when we were putting our best foot forward at all times. The villain here in fact is our press.

Or at least a part of it as represented by columnists like Drew Pearson. I have a funny feeling that the genesis of Washington Story came from someone at MGM running afoul of Pearson and getting back at him cinematically speaking.

I've always been drawn to Van Johnson. I think he is a highly underrated actor. In Washington Story he shares double duty with Patricia Neal in making the flick work. It's an absorbing story concerning the machinations of the press and cynicism about Washington. An added plus is the fine work of character actor Louis Calhern, and also the choice to use Washington D. C. venues as the site for actual filming, giving it a "you are there" feeling. The script is very well written and maintains one's interest throughout. A nice touch is the cinematic bookends of the tour bus at the beginning and at the end. Not at the level of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," but a more than decent runner up.

Van Johnson is the congressman ("Gresham") content to toe the party line and play the political game in Washington DC. It's only when a bill is drafted that will impact on ship-building facilities in his Massachusetts constituency that he might have to take a stance! Meantime, a tabloid employs the services of investigative journalist "Alice" (Patricia Neal) to get to the bottom of this ostensibly decent man's true personality. Unawares of her real agenda, he agrees to allow her to follow his day-to-day life but as the decisive vote looms, she reaches her conclusion about him just as he, well.... Though Johnson and Neal take top billing, the film really belongs to Louis Calhern's savvy and wily "Birch" who sees something in "Gresham" that isn't entirely obvious to everyone else. Auteur Robert Pirosh certainly gives him the best witty and telling dialogue to deliver, and he does it well. The other two here rather go through the motions and though initially I thought it a bit like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) that similarity wained rather quickly. Still, it's a watchable look at just how the US Capitol might work: scheming, indifference, self preservation and keeping your head down; is largely devoid of romantic clutter and is just about worth eighty minutes of your time.