The Phantom President

All the actors sparkle here, even Durante (who killed more than one MGM feature in his day) is a riot. Colbert is dazzling in every scene, even while bathing a dog. Cohan is fresh and fun, too bad he didn't make any other talkies. This production wreaks of Paramount, right down to the Lubitch touches of rhyming dialogue and animals delivering a musical number laced with sexual innuendo. In one instance the camera dissolves from the back side of a jackass to the keynote speaker of the Presidential convention; some things never change and it's still fresh!

Will Hays would have had a lot to say about this production if he could have gotten his hands on it.... :)

The famous Broadway song and dance man, George M. Cohan, only made a couple films. So, seeing "The Phantom President" is one of the only ways you can see him acting.

George plays two different people in this story. Theodore K. Blair is a rich guy who's in line to possibly be the next President. However, he's not very good at public speaking. But, when his campaign folks find a very charismatic medicine show man who looks EXACTLY like Blair, they get Peeter Varney to impersonate Blair on the campaign trail. Naturally, they want to keep this sort of thing out of the papers and don't even tell Varney's buddy (Jimmy Durante) nor Blair's girlfriend (Claudette Colbert)...which leads to all sorts of mix-ups.

While Varney's help should be much appreciated, through the course of the film you start to see what sort of a skunk Blair is. In fact, instead of rewarding Varney for helping him become President, Blair plans on sending him off to a hellish reward near the North Pole! What's to become of this evil plan? See the film.

While the music seemed a bit corny to me, I did enjoy the script and the film ended on a marvelous note. It's surprising, then, that this movie was a huge money-loser back in the day. I can't see why except, perhaps, by the 1930s, Cohan was a bit of a has-been...a relic of the past who was popular about twenty years earlier. Regardless, it's well worth your time and quite clever.

Apparently George M. Cohan, American Theatrical Giant and God, was one of the most difficult men to work with. Cohan did not like taking orders from others - after all, his productions were of plays or revues or musical comedies he wrote, composed, staged, directed, and starred in himself. But when he was asked to do THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT in 1932 he had to be directed by Norman Taurog and sing the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. That these two song writers were as good as he had been in his heyday did not matter - the only rival composer he liked was Irving Berlin, who waived the flag as well as George M. himself. Early on he showed his dislike for the two song writers, which they did not appreciate. He also did not care for making movies (he had made a couple of silent films of one or two plays, and several of his plays were made into movies). So THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT would be one of only two forays into talkies that George M. would take.

It is not the failure or mediocrity that many critics have considered it to be (including Cohan, and Rodgers and Hart). The tunes demonstrate the inventiveness of the composer and lyricist, who experimented here with their "talk - sing" dialogue in the convention sequence, in the President Picture introduction ("The Country Needs a Man"), and in the snake-oil scene. This is a dry run for the similar scenes in their Hollywood masterpieces LOVE ME TONIGHT and HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM. The chemistry between Cohan and Claudette Colbert is actually good, as is the balance of the smooth Cohan and the explosive Durante. And there are lots of nice little bits by Durante (his election speech on the radio is marvelous), and one unexpected person: Sidney Toler as Professor Aikenhead. An advisor to the party expecting to run Blair for the Presidency, he is an early expert on spin control. Quickly he developes his own niche in the story - an underplayed, common-sensical sense of humor. He wants to see how loveable a character Blair is...a dubious proposition. He gets an apple, and tells Blair to hand it to a nearby horse. "Why?", asks a suspicious Cohan (here as Blair). Unruffled and smiling, Toler just replies, "Because you can't sell it to him!" Toler should have made more comedies, but when he does appear in comedies (like IT'S IN THE BAG) he has a good sense of timing.

But most intriguing is Cohan himself. This is his one surviving example of acting in a talkie, and he does nicely all considered. But he would not appear in another film where he had to take orders from others (in this case Taurog, a highly successful film director from the early 1930s to the 1950s). In 1935 Cohan financed a filming of his own play GAMBLING - this time being in charge of the whole production. It has not survived, and descriptions of it suggest it has little to offer us. Still, one hopes it will one day reappear, just to see Cohan at his dramatic peak. He made it just after appearing in Eugene O'Neill's AH WILDERNESS (his first appearance in a non-Cohan play), and got some of the best reviews in his career for that. GAMBLING, made just afterwards, should have been of some interest. We may never know.

After GAMBLING Cohan returned to the "legitimate" stage. Ironically it was for his last major role: playing FDR in I'D RATHER BE RIGHT, a musical comedy by Kaufman and Hart, with music by (ironically) Rodgers and Hart. If you see Jimmie Cagney in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY he does a scene from I'D RATHER BE RIGHT ("Off the Record!") which had new lyrics for the 1942 film regarding World War II. Cagney's Cohan praises Rodgers and Hart in the film - but in reality he still argued with them. He was forced to make comments against his friend Al Smith in the show, and he really disliked FDR. But the real Cohan was shown YANKEE DOODLE DANDY before he died in November 1942. The old trouper liked it.

"The Phantom President" is the only sound movie still in existence that has George M. Cohan in the lead. If the name isn't familiar to many people today, that's understandable. Well into the 21st century there are likely not many living or who were old enough to have seen Cohan on stage or in this film. It's sure no one living would have seen the one other sound film that came two years after this - "Gambling." Apparently, it was so bad that Cohan wanted all prints of it destroyed right after it was made. It did have a premier and brief release and then disappeared. The Fox Film producers must have agreed that it was that bad.

Interestingly though, there is a review posted on the IMDb Web site for that film. It's by a long-time reviewer and movie buff who read the screenplay for the film, which survives, and the stage play script. From that reviewer's description of the plot, it sounds quite awful. It's also very interesting that two of the three silent films Cohan starred in also are lost. So, that leaves just two films in which one might see George M. Cohan. This one, and the 1917 silent film, "Seven Keys to Baldpate." Cohan wrote a play by that name, based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers, of the same title. And, he then wrote the screenplay for the 1917 film in which he also starred. I have that novel, and the 1917 silent film as well as the three best of several sound picture remakes of the story.

While few people in the 21st century would know much, if anything, about the actor, George M. Cohan, people on Broadway and actors and those studying acting will know the name. But many outside of the stage may know his name associated with music. If for no other reason, some of his biggest hit songs and familiar tunes will ensure that the name Cohan will live on for ages.

Cohan was such a presence on the Broadway stage in the first three decade of the 20th century, that he was known then as "Mr. Broadway." He was a superb writer who also produced and starred in many of his works. He was the consummate entertainer - a musician and composer who could sing and dance as well. Cohan wrote, composed, staged, and starred in more than 30 Broadway musicals. He wrote more than 50 stage shows and 300 songs. Among the most memorable of his songs is the iconic, "Give My Regards to Broadway;" and his patriotic songs associated with World War I - "Over There," "The Yankee Doodle Boy," and "You're a Grand Old Flag."

In the 1917 silent film of "Baldpate," Cohan is particularly hammy. Actors in the silent films exaggerated a great deal for facial expressions and body gestures to better impart the unspoken words of the story. But stage actors were often even much more exaggerated so that those in the distance in the audiences could better make out everything that was going on. Well, Cohan's role as George Washington Magee in "Seven Keys to Baldpate" must be one of the hammiest performances on film - certainly of any that I have ever seen.

But now, these 15 years later, in his only surviving sound picture role, Cohan's ham is almost all gone. Here he plays dual roles. Theodore K. Blair is seeking his party's nomination to be president, which apparently would be a shoo into the White House. But, however intelligent, educated and right he may be for his party bigwigs, Blair has the personality of a wet noodle. Stumbling into the picture is a medicine show promoter, Peter Varney, Blair's exact look-alike.

Well, one can guess where this story will go, and it does. Along the way there's some mayhem, good comedy, and a little romance. The latter is courtesy of Claudette Colbert as Felicia Hammond. She wasn't interested at all in Blair, who carried a restrained torch for her. But, when the new Blair - ala, Peter Varney, emerges, her wall crumbles. There's a little fun and pun in that. Adding to the comedy and music of this comedy musical satire is Jimmy Durante in a very good role as Curly Cooney. And, among the supporting cast, Sidney Toler (known, for the very early series of Charlie Chan movies) is very good - and funny. Alan Mowbray is another in the supporting cast who will be familiar to many movie buffs.

The quality of this film is not very good. The outdoor shooting, especially has light problems. The screenplay had holes and is quite choppy. There's a huge continuity problem that is glaring to all. The acting is generally fair all around. It's not a real good movie, but a fair one. It is the only film in which to see George M. Cohan acting and singing.

Here are my favorite lines from this film.

Professor Aikenhead (Sidney Toler), "Blair lacks political charm. Blair has no flair for savoir faire."

Prof. Aikenhead, "Chivalry is all right, but a little Chevalier wouldn't hurt."

Felicia Hammond, "You see, I want love. I've heard very good reports about it.

Boss Jim Ronkton (George Barbier), "How does it look to you, Varney?" Peter Varney (Cohan), "I'm just trying to figure... which one of us looks the most alike."

Light weight but winning political satire even in its day, the big news in this well reviewed Rodgers and Hart not-quite-musical (there are just four main musical sequences - the best known song is "Give Her A Kiss") was George M. Cohan's first appearance in a talkie - he would make but one more in 1934 (GAMBLING), three years before Cohan returned to Broadway with Rodgers & Hart in their 1937 hit I'D RATHER BE RIGHT, playing a real president - FDR.

Playing the dual role here of a candidate and his more likable double, Cohan more than justified the hype, and ably assisted by the always wonderful Claudette Colbert as the candidate's girlfriend (shades of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA) and Jimmy Durante who almost steals the film as the nice Cohan's manager (catch Durante in MGM's 1934 STUDENT TOUR playing a crew coach named Merman in an in joke!), Cohan makes this a must-see in any year. In an election year like this one, we can only wish the finale were reality rather than a gentle satire of pandering to public perceptions.

The pleasant surprises don't stop with the leads however. Watch the singing portraits of past presidents in the opening for Alan Mowbray as George Washington and later, Sidney (Charlie Chan) Toler's appearance as a political boss - all smiles but as rooted in what "works" as any current campaign manager - is a joy to behold.

If you've seen Jimmy Cagney dancing to an Oscar as Cohan in the World War II YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (a decade after this effort), take a look at Cohan doing the original steps (in black-face, yet in an "on stage" number) and you'll wonder if Cagney didn't study this film specifically.

In the great legacy of film musicals, THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT is probably little more than a footnote, but it's a very enjoyable, important one.