On Criterion, I watched the 1957 satire/drama A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, based on his short story "Your Arkansas Traveler." It centered on Andy Griffith in his film debut as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a drifter who is discovered in the drunk tank of a local jail by a radio journalist named Marcia (Patricia Neal) who highlights him for her "A Face in the Crowd" human interest weekly program, where, in this case, she just surprises prisoners in a rural Arkansas jail and tries to mine entertainment out of them. Lonesome is woken up by the jailer, and, on a deal that he'll be released the next morning if he provides a song for the radio program, proceeds to perform a white-man blues song, hollering and taking over the broadcast. Marcia follows up with her radio colleagues, decides she wants him back for weekly shows, and finds him hitchhiking the next day, offers him work, and he soon becomes a radio sensation, preaching to the audience with charm and a big laugh. He takes advantage of his celebrity, criticizing local politicians and ridiculing his show's sponsors, and gaining Memphis-area popularity, all with an underlying sinisterness behind his big laughs enveloping the screen like a python swallowing its prey.
As the film progresses, and Lonesome moves on to his own TV show, he becomes more corrupt behind the scenes, hiding it with a folksy, everyman TV persona. He hawks sugar pills as if they are male enhancement pills, he leers at teenage girls in a majorette competition and marries the 17-year old winner (a young Lee Remick also in her film debut), is brought on as an influencer to political hopefuls and develops his own political ambitions, and reveals himself to be more of a narcissist egomaniac stepping on everyone to get ahead.
While Griffith obviously hams it up in this role, which would be a far distance from the more kinder and likable TV characters he would become known for, like Andy Taylor and Ben Matlock, Patricia Neal delivered a more understated, pained performance as the person who inadvertently created a monster, and is sinking in regret throughout the film. She had made Lonesome famous, thinking he'd be a fun weekly segment to her show, and his persona ran away from her, and she couldn't do anything but sit and watch, and resign herself to profiting off of his success, because he knows he owes her for his success. She even has a brief affair with him, only for him to callously reject her, first to claim he has an estranged wife in an unsettled divorce, then to marry a teenage adoring fan as a public performance. Marcia says of her: "Betty Lou is your public, all wrapped up with yellow ribbons into one cute little package. She's the logical culmination of the great 20th-century love affair between Lonesome Rhodes and his mass audience." When Lonesome leaves the room, Neal as Marcia lets out this choked little cry before collapsing onto the bed, and it was some really great physical acting from her. In the finale, as she is witnessing Lonesome's downfall, she still can't help but care about him, and has to be convinced by her show's writer, Mel (Walter Matthau) that while Lonesome is able to con people for a while, ultimately people see through it, and "we get wise to him - that's our strength."
As a cultural reference, the scene where Lonesome's true nature is revealed to the public made me think of The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled," where he loses his show to a ventriloquist dummy named Gabbo, who wins over Krusty's audience, until he too, loses them due to the same way as Lonesome. I don't know if The Simpsons was making a reference to A Face in the Crowd, but it felt possible.
This is an excellent film, that I had heard of through a casual mention in an old Winona Ryder interview as one of her favorite films. The film still holds up well, and what is sad is that in the present day, Donald Trump can act completely crass, drop any notions of seeming relatable or caring about the public, and he still gets voted for a second term. Whereas this film follows more of a rise and fall of a public personality, assuming the public will turn on him when his real personality is revealed, and sadly, that hasn't been the case in real life with current politics.
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