The President's Mystery

A millionaire believes he has successfully disappeared with his fortune intact, but his past comes back to haunt him. The only movie to boast a co-writing credit for a serving President (Franklin D. Roosevelt) is a socially conscious but scrappy affair from Republic. The 'remastered' version I saw was missing almost half-an-hour from the original running time - and it shows. At least it's different.

Henry Wilcoxon is a Wall Street lawyer. Sidney Blackmer of National Can sends him down to Washington to kill a bill that will guarantee loans to local canneries. When he comes back, he goes fishing and finds Betty Furness in charge of a closed cannery in a dying town. He returns home, where wife Evelyn Brent is happy with their life, even though she's carrying on an affair with Blackmer.

So Wilcoxon turns his assets into cash and disappears. Brent is accidentally killed by Blackmer's chauffeur, who covers it up with an accident. Soon enough, the conclusion is that Wilcoxon went bust, killed his wife and committed suicide; in reality, he's helped to reopen the Furness' cannery as a cooperative. They're about to ship out the first batch, when Blackmer shows up in town put the squeeze on.

It's a good set-up for the situation, which was proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in an interview; he was known to be a mystery fan. He asked if a man could disappear with $5,000,000 with liquid assets. There's a scene with Wilcoxon reading the result in a slick magazine. the first half is an interesting piece of work, with some strong acting by all hands; the second half turns into a more standard work of New Deal fiction, the type of thing best left to Frank Capra.

Nice programmer with a fascinating backstory. Based on a plot idea (really just a theoretical question) from then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It's about a rich man with an unhappy life who, after reading the Roosevelt magazine article that lead to this very film being made (how meta!), decides to liquidize all his assets and skip out on his terrible wife to go become a socialist reformer in a small town. Naturally a pretty young woman is behind this gentleman's sudden ideological transformation. After he sets his plan into motion, something happens that threatens to unravel it all.

The Roosevelt connection is interesting, especially if one has read about the President's struggles and personal life around this time. It makes one wonder if anybody in 1936 thought it was strange that a sitting President would be mulling over ideas about middle-aged rich men disappearing and setting up new lives to get away from their problems. Beyond that, I think it's a good B movie with an intriguing premise. The performances are all solid and the direction is creative here and there. It creaks and groans at times, no doubt a mix of its Poverty Row pedigree and the quality of available prints today. It's worth a look but probably more so for the historical elements than because it's particularly entertaining as a mystery film.

Reading some of the information about how The President's Mystery came into being it seems like that story would make a far better film than The President's Mystery itself. Even if I had seen the director's cut which was originally 80 minutes. Sad to say about 3/8 of this film seems to have been gutted and I had to fill in a lot of blanks.

Another president named Warren G. Harding had a campaign song that came about just about like this film. At the famous Republican convention of 1920 several prominent songwriters did a collaborative effort and came up with a campaign song that featured such gems as "we need another Lincoln to do our country's thinking, Mr. Harding we're behind you". None of the writers which included Irving Berlin and George Gershwin took copyright credit.

Here Franklin D. Roosevelt pitches a story idea about whether a rich man could liquidate his assets and just disappear. Six prominent authors of the time and their names are listed on the credits of The President's Mystery wrote a collaborative story. Of course when have that much variety in the mix the result can be bland.

This film can't make up its mind whether it's a screwball comedy, a murder mystery, or in the end a Capra like populist song for the common man. Henry Wilcoxon is our protagonist who does liquidate his assets and leaves an unhappy marriage with Evelyn Brent and moves down south and finds a company town where the cannery is shut down and everyone on relief as they called public assistance back in the day. He gets the place started again, but some old enemies in the person of Sidney Blackmer try to defeat his plans. It turns out someone murdered Evelyn after Wilcoxon left town and he's looking good for it.

Betty Furness is the country girl who wins Wilcoxon and Barnett Parker is his former butler who saves the day.

The film was shut on a nickel and dime budget by the even tighter than usual fisted Herbert J. Yates and Republic Pictures. Since the overhead was cheap, FDR's Warm Springs Foundation for Infantile Paralysis I'm sure got a nice check from Republic where the picture credits say all profits went to.

Maybe the film might be higher rated if we could see the whole thing, but we have to go with what we have.

THE PRESIDENT'S MYSTERY is a 1936 potboiler solely of interest for having a story written by none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only time a film in history can boast being written by a president as such. Whether it's a good story or not is another question, one that only the viewer can decide.

The film's protagonist is a millionaire who has made some bad decisions in life, leading him to decide to just disappear and reappear elsewhere with a new, assumed identity. Intrigue proceeds to follow him. There's some mystery and comedy but the film never really succeeds in either genre, instead coming across as bland and instantly forgettable.