Magnificent Doll

Dolly Madison is a truly fascinating character from American history. Unfortunately, while "Magnificent Doll" does center on her life, it also is filled with historical inaccuracies...enough so that it's not a particularly good history or civics lesson. The biggest problem is that romance between Madison (Ginger Rogers) and Aaron Burr (David Niven) as I could find no indication that they ever dated or had any sort of relationship apart from taking a room at her mother's rooming house. There also is no mention of a child from her first marriage...one that did NOT die from Yellow Fever. And, sadly, what we know Dolly DID do was generally omitted or given only brief mention.

Apart from the inaccuracies, the film is a mildly entertaining but occasionally stuffy film. In particular, the latter portion of the movie seems to go off the rails...and boredom set in as I watched. Not terrible...but Dolly sure deserves better than this tepid plot.

Popular historical novelist and biographer Irving Stone wrote the story and screenplay for The Magnificent Doll the story of Dolly Madison and the three men in her life, first husband John Todd, second husband and 4th president James Madison, and 3rd Vice President Aaron Burr. The roles are played by Ginger Rogers, Burgess Meredith and David Niven without his familiar mustache. The charm however is there.

I would rate Magnificent Doll a lot lower but for Niven's portrayal of Burr. It is one of the few villain roles that Niven ever did in his career. But Aaron Burr had a considerable reservoir of charm which enabled him to rise as he did.

In real life Burr did stay at the boardinghouse of Dolly Payne and did pay some court to the widow Todd. But there was no romance there and Burr was hardly her lost love. He had a well cultivated reputation as a rake and after the death of his wife many years earlier he was proving on all occasions his sword was mightiest of all.

There was a wife for Burr and a daughter Theodosia whom he doted on and who was his official hostess and political partner. She's eliminated and Dolly Madison's son by her marriage to John Todd did not die in the yellow fever epidemic. Her son Payne Todd was spoiled rotten and was the bane of the existence of his stepfather James Madison who exhausted a great deal of his own money with his stepson's gambling debts and buying off all the women he consorted with. Children of two of the three leading characters just eliminated from the story.

But that's only part of the problem with what Irving Stone wrote. According to Stone, Burr was early on fascist, not a believer in democracy especially when it went against him. That was a good movie selling point in 1946, but in real life Burr never thought in concrete methods to put his vast plans into action.

But Stone could always spin a good yarn in work like The Agony And The Ecstasy and The President's Lady which were historical novels that became pretty good films. Many years ago he wrote a book with short biographies of the men who ran and lost for president called They Also Ran. His conclusions about some of these defeated candidates are laughed at today by serious historians.

Ginger Rogers and Burgess Meredith are good in their parts. But acting honors go to David Niven in Magnificent Doll for what he does with the man described as the American Catiline, Aaron Burr.

David niven, ginger rogers, burgess meredith. This is the love triangle of dolly payne, james madison, aaron burr. A little united states history, told from dolly's point of view. Probably not the best choice, as it's all quite stuffy and stilted. Dolly spouts sayings, mottos, aphorisms all the way through. Burr is chasing after dolly, but she finds madison attractive. If you know murrican history, you'll know how it turned out! It moves pretty slowly... the script needed some zinging up. No real magic between all these stars, it's mostly fighting over political ideals. Slavery, north versus south. And apparently burr had designs on taking leadership of the united states by force, rather than by election. B meredith is quite lucid in this one. In some, he slurs and mumbles. It's okay. Directed by frank borzage. He had already won his two oscars already. Written by irving stone. He had also written lust for life, about van gogh.

I stumbled across this movie in a rather old presidential quiz book. Already knowing a great deal about Dolley Madison before I bought the movie wondering how they were going to dramatize one America's most beloved first ladies. I started the movie with mixed emotions and finished it feeling the same.

Ginger Rogers was a great actress but she doesn't pull off a convincing Dolley Madison-there's something missing. I don't know what it is, but it just isn't there. I did manage to overlook Rogers performance and applaud David Niven who was perhaps my favorite character. He pulled off the scheming Aaron Burr to perfection. From the beginning as a senator, to the tie with Jefferson in the election of 1800, to the treason trial that forced him into obscurity. It was Aaron Burr who introduced Dolley to James Madison in the first place. Reading the box I knew Burgess Meredith would play James Madison it was a shock to see him (I'm dating myself here when I say the first time I saw him was in Grumpy Old Men). I liked him second, his smallness (after all James Madison is still our shortest president at 5'6') and his quiet way made it easy to understand why Dolley Madison choice him instead of Aaron Burr.

After watching this movie I had rather hoped that Hollywood would find someone to redo this movie. I think Dolley Madison's life is just as interesting as Thomas Jefferson's. Maybe if they do choose to redo this movie they could show that she had two sons (in the movie it only mentions one son who died in the yellow fever epidemic but actually she had one older that lived). The elder son, named Payne Todd, from Dolley's first husband who died in the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1794, is the one who caused many heartaches in Dolley's later years even though she didn't admit it. He was a drunkard and a scoundrel and spent money lavishly.

To get back to the movie, overall it wasn't bad. If you like period pieces and good verses evil you'll enjoy this movie. It wasn't the best movie I've seen but wasn't the worst. The acting was good; especially David Niven and Burgess Meredith did an okay job. They played a little bit with Dolley's life but you can't expect Hollywood to get it right all the time.

Except for those Vice Presidents who ended up as President (14 of them)only one is remembered as a distinct personality: Aaron Burr. And it is for some questionable reasons. His ambitions were on the scale of Napoleon Bonaparte, aimed (supposedly) not only towards the U.S. but also Mexico, and against Spain (and supposedly willing to use French or British assistance). He managed to show that Thomas Jefferson, for all his brilliance as party leader and politician, could be momentarily thrown for a loop by a clever, unforeseen loophole. He helped destroy Alexander Hamilton's political career, and then ended Hamilton as well. And, despite facing political ruin, he managed to leave his political chief's political projects in ruins. To 90% of the American public, mention Burr and the word "traitor" or "unscrupulous" pops up.

There are those who deny this view of Burr. Jefferson and Hamilton were grown men, who played hard ball politics with each other and with each other's supporters. Burr was no different from them. Jefferson was willing, as John Adams' Vice President, to forget his old friendship with Adams and concentrate on derailing his chief's policies and aims (as Burr did towards Jefferson). Hamilton hit Burr pretty well in the New York Gubernatorial race of 1804, helping to defeat Burr in that election (and in the process so insulting Burr as to lead to Burr's challenge and their duel in Weehauken). As for the treason against the U.S., it is now questioned if Burr was really planning to overturn U.S. government control over the western states, or just jumping the gun on westward expansion (Burr died in 1836, and lived long enough to see the fall of the Alamo and the creation of the Texas Republic - he made some sharp and cutting comments that one age's treason was another age's patriotism, which seems well called for). But in any case, Hamilton had played around with similar expeditions in Latin America in the late 1790s. But he never went as far as Burr did, involving the ranking general of the U.S. Army as a co-conspirator. So Hamilton's actions are forgotten today but Burr's actions are not.

One day a creative script on Burr's career will be created, and a Scorsese director will handle it. Until then, the only film dealing with Burr's career (aside from a television version of "The Man Without a Country" made in the 1970s)is this odd little film that concentrates on the career of Dolly Payne Todd Madison, the wife of the "father of the Constitution", our 4th President James Madison. Ginger Rogers and Burgess Meredith play the Madisons (and give good performances), but the film is stolen by David Niven. Niven's darker side was rarely noticed in his climb to stardom, but when he played a figure with frailties (the Major in "Seperate Tables", or the scoundrelly heir in "Tonight's the Night") he actually gave his best performances. Here he played Burr as the ambitious politico who nearly stole the 1800 election from Tom Jefferson (but for Alex Hamilton's action to keep enough Federalists from supporting Burr), and as Hamilton's slayer turned into super traitor - who got acquitted in the treason trial of 1807 (the film does not show how poor the government's case against Burr really was). Unrepentent at the end, he manages to maintain our fascination, although the audience feels it was a blessing that he failed in the end. In reality, given his commitment to immigrants, abolitionism, and feminist rights (which neither Adams, Jefferson, nor Hamilton were fully committed to), one wonders if it would have been such a bad thing had he become President in 1800.