The Man

The President of the US is killed. So is the Speaker of the House. The Vice President is ill and cannot accept the presidency.

Enter US Senator Douglass Dillman, who is president pro tempe of the senate. He is also black. He accepts the presidency to the discontent of many cabinet officials, especially the secretary of state. He would be president if not for Dillman.

Racial feelings are revealed among several politicians as Dillman sits in the oval office, determined to overcome the bigotry of those around him and to be as good a president as he can be.

An early vehicle for James Earl Jones, who as Dillman, is brilliant. Excellent performances by the supporting cast. Hopefully, this film will one day be on DVD or VHS. It's also a good potential historical lesson to be absorbed by Americans if this situation should ever happen.

.....then by all means let me know directly at the above e-mail address so that I may arrange for a copy for you. An outstanding undiscovered classic originally made for TV, but whose controversial content resulted in a theatrical release at the 11th hour. James Earl Jones has never been better, nor has Rod Serling's writing, proving he was just as much a genius working outside of the fantasy milieu (as though he hadn't already demonstrated that with "Requiem for a Heavyweight," etc.). Burgess Meredith excels as a white supremacist trying to stymie the new prez at every turn, and Janet MacLachlan is very good as the concerned daughter whose natural opposition to the Oval Office has her torn over her dad's new presence there.

As an African-American educator, I found this movie to be an extraordinary one. I hope to find a copy to show to my students who will participate in this year's Multicultural Career Institute, which is in its 13th year on our university campus. Situated in the Midwest, only 10 percent of the university's 22,000 students are students of color. The majority of the students come from small to large farming communities where few, and far too often, no persons of color live. One of the biggest fears that white America has always harbored is the insane notion that 1) only whites can lead this country and 2) if a person of color is elected to a high-ranking position, then white America will find itself the recipient of vengeance and payback for slavery, racism, etc. This film disputes these notions and allows the viewer to understand America in its truest form.

Not just another cheap, throwaway ABC Movie of the Week, Joseph Sargent's The Man, written for the screen by Rod Serling and based on an Irving Wallace novel, this movie has the potential to be a very good political thriller. The performances are from journeyman to excellent, the dialogue, at times, crackles, and the story is a mixture of the catastrophic and the mundane (the death of the president and speaker of the house being the former and the pervasive racial dismissiveness directed toward James Earl Jones' president pro tempore-to-president is the latter).

Yet.

It's obvious ABC got a higher quality product than they wanted. The Movie of the Week series cranked out one piece of clichéd garbage after another during its 1969-1976 run, and the occasional brilliance (That Certain Summer, Katherine, Duel come to mind) would catch everyone by surprise.

What do you do with something good, when you're regularly paying for crap?

Sheesh, people might begin to expect quality.

So, ABC puts The Man into limited release. The movie looks like a TV flick because it's on a MOTW budget. Probably made $37.26 nationwide. That'll teach 'em to make something good!

But.

I'd put The Man in the box set of post-Twilight Zone Rod Serling work along with the white-knuckled Seven Days in May, the original Planet of the Apes, and some of the better episodes of The Night Gallery. Serling was a great writer, but the trouble with The Man is that it's so starved for time and funds, so shoestrung by lowest common denominatorism from the network, that the movie never gels.

That's catastrophic for the viewer and mundane for the world of networkthink.

Although dated this is an excellent movie with Jones as commanding as usual. One of the most intriguing phenomena to watch is how his character grows into the bold and confident president one would expect of one who has tasted the power of the office. The ubiquitous theme of racism is dealt with adroitly. Moreover the Rod Serling screenplay makes one wish the old master would have left a greater body of work along these lines. The Movie is however much different from the book but this was for me a very enjoyable find, especially after a near 30 year search. I recently got a fair copy from videogrill on Ebay. As of this date 4-20-6 there is another copy being offer through the same online group.