Tennesse Johnson (1942), Cat's Eye (1985), Topper (1937)

Tennessee Johnson

Bio-pic about Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States. Johnson's rather low on the to tum pool of presidents you'd expect to see depicted in film, and enough of a divisive one that there was some protest regarding the films release. This treatment is as close as your probably going to get to hagiography of Johnson in celluloid, who was by most accounts a very flawed and a difficult man. Johnson was stubborn, had a notorious temper, was prone to drink, and of course was a racist, but he did have an abiding, almost fetishistic love for the Constitution (he was even buried with a copy). It was Johnson's loyalty to that document that lead the southern Democrat to defy the south, being the only Senator from a seceding state not to resign his seat in congress. Johnson would serve in Lincolns army, and as military Governor of the state in which he once held the position by election. Lincoln taped Johnson to be his running mate in 1864 as a sort reconciliatory gesture to the South, no one in party circles ever wanted him to be President. But Lincoln was killed so he assumed that office, and much to the radical Republicans chagrin didn't take to being controlled from behind the scenes. Major power players in the Party conspired to have him impeached on what amounted to little more then technical grounds, but Johnson fought back and managed to retain his office by one vote.

The film starts out with a depiction of a young Johnson, freshly escaped from the tailor to whom he was bound in an indentured apprenticeship. Johnson crosses the North Carolina boarder into Tennessee, and lands in the town of Greenville, which would be his home base from then on. Illiterate, he is taught to read by the women who would become his wife, ran his own tailor shop, and experienced a remarkable rise in electoral politics. It is Van Heflin who plays Johnson, and its probably the best role he ever got, not a remarkable performance but a good one. The movie of course glosses over and simplifies things (for example while the real Johnson had five children this one has only a daughter) and seeks to present Johnson in the most heroic, sympathetic light, though they do actually depict his famous drunken swearing in as Vice-President. Lionel Barrymore is Thaddeus Stevens, Johnson's political bete noire, Mr. Potter with more integrity. This movie is interesting, mostly for its larger then life, heroic treatment of relatively obscure political figure, though a trifle hammy. On the whole Fair.

Cat's Eye

Somehow I saw most of this as a child, which is kind of surprising as its almost a horror film, though on a Alfred Hitchcock Presents level. It's three short Stephen King stories all tied together by a stray cat. We get stories about a psychotic stop-smoking program, a psychotic wager, and a psychotic wall troll. The leads consist of James Woods, Airplane! star Robert Hays, and ten year old Drew Barrymore (playing eight). The cat himself proves to be a pretty good actor. Fair. (Not for Jaxon.)

Topper

Ancestor of Beetljuice. Constance Bennett and Cary Grant are a couple of funny loving, independently wealthy, free spirits, who are killed in automobile accident after a night on the town. Ronald Young is Cosmo Topper, a hen-pecked, droopyish, frustrated banker, who Bennett and Grant target for the good deed they suspect they need to get out of limbo. The two drag Topper through a serious of comic adventures, with most of the gags being supplied by their doing things while invisible, though they both posses a clever verbal wit besides. While the ghosts 'rules' don't make a lot of sense, sometimes their solid sometimes their not, it's really quite funny, and with an enviably good screw ball premise (sorry Howard Hawks, McLeod beat you to it). Constance Bennett glows, why didn't we see more of her? The film spawned a sequel the next year titled Topper Returns, though he didn't go any where, Bennett and Grant did. Billie Burke gets a more central part then usual. Good