Biography at the Movies

I’ll soon be taking a bite of the Big Apple. The occasion is the annual conference of Biographers International Organization, a group that came into being to serve the needs of both active biographers and those interested in the field of biography. Since 2010 there have been (in addition to regular newsletters and Zoom events) annual BIO conferences, mostly in New York City but sometimes in outposts like Boston, DC, Richmond, and even Los Angeles. Some attendees merely want advice on telling family stories; others are experienced writers and even recipients of major awards. My BIO pal Amanda Vaill just won this year’s Pulitzer for Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution.

 I don’t know if there’s any hope of Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler showing up at the movies anytime soon. (The fact that they’re both major figures in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton might surely get producer-types interested.) But I do know there’s a long tradition of concocting films about famous historical figures. Decades ago, it was considered acceptable to wrestle the biographical facts about a celebrity —whether a composer, a scientist, or a politician—to conform to Hollywood’s idea of an inspiring life story. Now I’d like to think we’re trying harder to be true to actual reality. But in any case, actors love portraying great figures of the past. If you look at lists of Oscar-winning performances, you’ll note there’s a lot of Academy love for stars able to get under the skin of the real people who helped create our world. See, in this century alone, Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour), Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything), Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote (Capote), and Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles (Ray).

 This enthusiasm for biographical films has paid major dividends for members of BIO. And several  I know personally have been thrilled by the care with which the motion picture industry has transmitted their work to the screen. BIO stalwart Kai Bird is probably still basking in the glow of Oppenheimer, the 2023 Oscar winner based on his and Martin J. Sherwin’s deeply researched American Prometheus. Jack El-Hai was pleased with last year’s Nuremberg, which developed out of his gripping historical study, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. When a BIO honoree, Candace Millard, published a 2011 historical work called Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, I  doubt she thought Hollywood would come calling. But someone at Netflix got involved, resulting in last year’s fascinating four-part miniseries, Death by Lightning, in which we follow the tragic trajectory of a nineteenth-century U.S. president, James A. Garfield, and his soon-to-be assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. This four-part series is too new to have come up for Emmy consideration, but many other awards-giving bodies have recognized the show’s excellence, with particular attention paid to lead actors Michael Shannon (as the appealingly idealistic Garfield) and Matthew Macfadyen (as the maddening and probably mad Guiteau).

 There is one honor that Death by Lightning has already won. Each spring, since 1988, the scholars behind the USC Scripter Awards have chosen the year’s best film adaptation of a work in print. Uniquely, at an awards ceremony held not long before Oscar night, both the screenwriter and the author of the original published work gain recognition  In 2016, USC added an award for episodic television series, and so Millard was in the winner’s circle when the TV Scripter went to her as well as to screenwriter Mike Makowsky. Bravo to them both.   

 

The Unexpected Mrs. Nixon, Superstar

Hollywood has always had a soft spot for movies about presidents. Both satiric comedies and heartfelt dramas have featured an American president in a leading role. There’s even a musical—an adaptation of the stage hit 1776—that features the song stylings of future U.S. presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

 Of all the American. presidents, it is Abraham Lincoln who has earned the most screen time. He’s been portrayed by Walter Huston in 1930; by Henry Fonda (as Young Mr. Lincoln) in 1939; by Raymond Massey in 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois; and by an Oscar-winning Daniel Day-Lewis in 2012’s Steven Spielberg Civil War-era epic, simply called Lincoln. This is not to mention a more eccentric 2012 flick, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

 Among 20^th century American presidents, the inspirational story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt contending with polio gave rise to 1960’s Sunrise at Campobello. Oliver Stone’s  JFK (1991) is less about John F. Kennedy than about the nagging questions behind his assassination. The up-and-down career of Bill Clinton was pseudonymously handled in 1998’s Primary Colors, in which John Travolta portrays a Clinton-like presidential rogue.

 Then there’s Richard Nixon, whose checkered presidency has been scrutinized in everything from a biographical drama (1995’s Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins) to an intimate fact-based post-resignation film (2008’s Frost/Nixon) to a wacky comedy, 1999’s Dick. In all of these settings, there’s a role for First Lady Pat Nixon, but she’s always a peripheral character.

 That remains true of most First Ladies. Moviemakers are not terribly interested in their stories, except as they intersect with their husbands’ moments of high drama. (The one big exception is Jacqueline Kennedy, whose post-White House life as the tragic young widow of JFK confirmed her movie star potential. Natalie Portman portrayed her in 2016’s Jackie, earning herself an Oscar nomination.)

 I don’t think anyone is about to make a movie with Patricia Ryan Nixon at its center. In her lifetime (1912-1993), Pat was known as the spouse of Dick Nixon, as an apparently prim and proper helpmeet good at smiling and waving. But my friend and colleague, Heath Hardage Lee, has recently published a biography that turns the spotlight on someone who preferred to remain in the background. Lee’s book, The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady, was recently named to the longlist for Biographers International Organization’s prestigious 2025 Plutarch Award. This well-researched biography explores Pat Nixon’s many appealing qualities—her personal grit, her great skill as a goodwill ambassador roaming the world on the nation’s behalf, her strong commitment to preserving her country’s history and institutions. There’s also, eventually, some revelations about the way her husband’s shadier aides tried—in the second Nixon term—to curb her enthusiasm for the First Lady’s traditional mandate to further her spouse’s White House goals. To read about Pat’s efforts to enhance the role of women in American government and on its courts is to be impressed by a First Lady who was in some ways well ahead of her time.

 Heath Lee’s book, which contains the fruits of interviews with many Nixon aides, friends, and family members, portrays its subject as a woman well worth knowing, even by those who were not fans of her husband’s politics. One of many surprises: Pat and Dick had a cordial and long-lasting relationship with Jack and Jackie Kennedy, both before and after the brutal 1960 presidential race that set them against one another. What I learned in reading The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon is that it’s fascinating to read about the woman who willingly stood behind the famous man.

 

 

“Take Off Your Clothes”: Filmmakers Grapple With “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the masterwork of Czech novelist Mila Kundera, whom we lost this past July. Published in 1984, it is a complex philosophical blending of a love story and a chronicle of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops in 1968. In 1988 the novel became an award-winning film, featuring an international cast and crew. Kundera himself at first took part in the filmmaking process, but later insisted that the movie adaptation bore no resemblance to his novel, and refused to permit further adaptations of his oeuvre.

 It was Czech expatriate filmmaker Milos Forman who saw the possibilities of bringing Kundera’s work to the screen. But with the Soviet Union then still in control of his homeland, Forman didn’t dare involve himself personally, for fear of causing harm to his relatives back home. That’s why he brought this project to producer Saul Zaentz and writer/director Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff), working through Orion Pictures. The cast was led by three European actors headed for stellar careers. Daniel Day-Lewis, who’d had modest but showy roles in British films like My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With a View (both 1985), was chosen to play Tomas, a renowned young surgeon. This character, committed to sexual adventures with a wide range of available young women, stands at the very center of the drama. The two most important females in his life, the idealistic Tereza and the boldly cynical Sabina, were played by a very young Juliette Binoche (then age 23) and a sleek, sexy Lena Olin. For both of them, the cavalier European approach to on-screen nudity is very much in evidence.

 Some parts of the film (notably Tomas’s sly advance to a sexy nurse in the opening moments) are notably funny. But there’s no humor to be found when Russian tanks roll into the nation’s capital to end the vaunted Prague Spring of 1968. This is the section in which Kaufman’s filmmaking is at its most remarkable. We see Binoche’s Tereza, a serious amateur photographer, snapping close-up photos of the violence in the streets of her city, then entrusting the precious rolls of film to travelers leaving Czechoslovakia. This is a reflection of what really happened: many hours of such you-are-there documentary footage—both stills and home movies—ended up scattered throughout Europe and America, carried by tourists and expats. The filmmakers gathered up what they could find, then carefully interspersed it with scenes showing Kundera’s characters in the midst of the action. The result (even though the film was shot on location in Lyon, France) is a close-to-accurate vision of what happened in 1968 Prague. (Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman’s favorite cinematographer, was Oscar-nominated for his work, as were the authors of the film’s screenplay.)

 But The Unbearable Lightness of Being is as much about love as it is about politics. For the film version, those in control decided it would be best to focus on the central romantic story. This is the tender but somewhat unlikely marriage of the shy and self-conscious Tereza and the cheerfully philandering Tomas, a relationship in which their much-loved pet dog plays an important role. Their desperate jaunts in and out of Prague dominate the later parts of the film ending with a retreat into the pristine countryside and a moment—how brief a moment!—of quiet joy. It’s hard to say that this three-hour movie hangs together, or that it captures in full the novel’s philosophical complexity, but still it’s a worthy introduction to a world-class author’s most admired work.

 

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris; Mr. Gernreich Did Not

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately researching a Sixties fashion guru, Rudi Gernreich, for a writing project. The experience has made me realize how much fashion shapes our everyday lives, especially if we happen to be female. Gernreich, notorious circa 1964 for daring to create a topless bathing suit, was in many ways a fashion radical. Though he was an award-winning designer with a celebrity clientele, he eventually came around to asserting that “fashion will go out of fashion,” and that individual freedom and comfort are far more important than high style.

 Gernreich, who would have turned 100 this month (he died in 1985), gradually became a champion of low-key, easy-care, and often unisex garments. Not for him the glamour and expensive individualism of the great Paris couturiers, whose business model was to create sumptuous styles intimately tailored to fit each client’s body. So he makes an interesting contrast to the story of Mrs. Ada Harris (based on a popular 1958 novel by Paul Gallico), a London charwoman who has a hard time making ends meet. It’s 1957, and she still doesn’t know for sure that her beloved husband died in World War II. A romantic at heart, she unexpectedly falls in love with a fabulous Dior gown all-too-casually worn by one of her wealthy clients. When a small windfall comes her way, she makes up her mind to cross the channel and purchase an extravagant gown of her very own.

 When she enters the House of Dior, she’s immediately hit by the snobbery inherent in the world of couture. Dior’s clients are expected to be the wealthy, the titled, and the celebrated: snooty folks who treat Dior underlings with disdain and often don’t bother to pay their bills. Through a series of happy accidents and just plain chutzpah, Mrs. Harris wins acceptance among the models and dressmakers. As played by the very talented Lesley Manville, she possesses spirit and good sense, both of which  endear her to the working-class peons who make the extravagant garments. Soon she’s finding common-sense ways to help the House of Dior with its fiscal problems, and we just know that she and her new gown will (after a few challenges are overcome) live happily ever after.

 I first became truly aware of Lesley Manville in 2017, when she copped an Oscar nomination for playing the steely sister of Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread. That film too was set in the haute-couture fashion world, with Day-Lewis starring as an imperious designer named Reynolds Woodcock. Clearly, in Phantom Thread, both Woodcocks are far more dedicated to clothing than they are to people. (A highlight is the moment when the two siblings conspire to strip an elegant green dress off of the drunken body of a wealthy patroness who in their eyes just doesn’t deserve the masterpiece she’s wearing.) In Phantom Thread, Manville was essentially frigid, so it’s a pleasure to see her turn on the charm. Like so many British actors, she seems able to do just about anything.

 While watching Manville in Phantom Thread, I suddenly recognized her as the loyal but deeply frustrated wife of Sir Arthur Gilbert (Jim Broadbent), in Mike Leigh’s wonderful Gilbert & Sullivan film, Topsy-Turvy, I also was lucky enough to see her on-stage opposite Jeremy Irons, doing remarkable things with the role of the drug-addled Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long Day’s Journey into Night. And it’s no surprise that she’ll soon pop up in the latest season of The Crown, playing the ageing (and deeply troubled) Princess Margaret. Personally, I can’t wait.

 

 

"Phantom Thread": The Muse Wears Black

Fashion, as Sunday night’s  Golden Globes “black-out” has shown us, can be a potent political statement. All of those gorgeous movieland fashionistas who purged color from their party frocks certainly made a point about female solidarity and the need to end sexual harassment now. Though many of their outfits were prim by Hollywood standards, some barely-there numbers seemed, confusingly, to invite the sort of sexual attention their wearers professed themselves so eager to decry. Still, I appreciated the monochrome aesthetics of the gathering, and admired designers’ flexibility in coming up with so many all-black looks on very short notice.   

But enough about the vagaries of fashion, Hollywood-style. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread looks at the world of dressmaking with a different eye. He’s interested in the life of a London haute-couture house, one charged with dressing the cream of international society from cradle to grave. Heiresses and royals descend on the house of Woodcock to be fitted for exquisite gowns, day-dresses, and wedding ensembles, each garment a hand-sewn and timeless masterpiece. That’s the irony: in the eyes of designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his staff, the dresses are far more important than the VIPs who will wear them. In one of the movie’s most exhilarating scenes, a fabulous green ensemble is deftly rescued from the drunken body of the wealthy woman who’d commissioned it. In Woodcock’s eyes, she simply isn’t worthy of being entrusted with one of his wearable works of art. 

Phantom Thread takes place in the 1950s, when Post World War II Europe was celebrating a return to high standards of luxury. Fabric is sumptuous; lines are classic. There’s no desire to shock or surprise: that iconoclastic spirit would wait until the following decade, when such rebels as André Courrèges and Mary Quant democratized fashion, hiking hemlines and turning style into something for the very young and very fit. For the wearer, the only surprise about a Woodcock ensemble would be discovering the cryptic written message that the designer tends to tuck into the occasional hem, a secret memo to himself and (perhaps) to posterity. 

In Phantom Thread there’s an enigmatic young woman, played by Vicky Krieps, who (both literally and figuratively) finds and decodes that message. Alma—whose name means “soul’—is a tall, lean figure, first glimpsed stumbling awkwardly while serving breakfast in a country tea-room. Her origins are obscure, as are her motives. But from the first she seems willing enough to fall under the spell of Woodcock, who sees in her proportions his aesthetic ideal. She quickly becomes his model and his muse, but is not afraid to announce her own tastes and to chafe against his more high-handed behavior. (Woodcock’s sphinx-like sister and business manager, ominously played by Lesley Manville, completes a strange isosceles triangle.) 

Midway through the film, Alma seems to be taking over the story, daring to assert her own will in ways  we wouldn’t have expected. Her behavior is so boldly capricious that Phantom Thread starts to seem like a different film, maybe one marked by a tinge of the supernatural. Is Alma, perhaps, meant to be viewed as an allegorical figure in a tale modeled after Poe or Henry James? Certainly, it’s easy to see her as the slippery muse who holds the artist’s fate in her hands. But Anderson’s characters are far too alive to ever be reduced to mere abstractions. The fact that they slip away from us does not reduce their humanity. (Nor, of course, does the apparent fact we’re about to lose Day-Lewis to retirement. We need him too badly to let him go.)