Laughing It Up with George Schlatter

I was delighted to see, on the People magazine site, an article about George Schlatter. George who? It seems there’s a brand-new documentary, Sock It to Me: The Legend of George Schlatter, now coming onto the market to celebrate Schlatter’s 96^th year.  Back when I was a college kid, Schlatter was the producer of a little sketch comedy show called Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. As a one-off TV special that aired on  September 9, 1967, the show generated such buzz—especially among young audiences—that it returned as a weekly series, replacing the once-huge Man from U.N.C.L.E, at the beginning of 1968. It ran until July of 1973, when its youthful sexiness finally ran out of steam. 

 I take all this personally partly because Laugh-In was must-see TV where I lived. Its inspired brand of silliness (Goldie Hawn frugging in a bikini and a lot of flower-power tattoos; Arte Johnson as a dirty old man constantly being whacked by Ruth Buzzi’s handbag; Lily Tomlin as precocious little Edith Ann proclaiming “That’s the truth!” and blowing raspberries) will always stay with me. At a time when public life seemed increasingly fraught, it was a joy to laugh at bad  jokes and sketches performed by talented showbiz newcomers.

  Hawn and Tomlin, in particular, have certainly gone on to major Hollywood careers. But the show was also so trendy that it attracted guests with high star-wattage. When Schlatter and his writers unearthed Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham’s goofy “Here Comes the Judge” routine, Sammy Davis Jr. started showing up regularly in a judicial robe and powdered wig to increase the hilarity: I’m not exactly sure why we laughed so hard, but it was awfully funny. (Briefly there was even a car model on the market called The Judge, meant to capitalize on the show’s catch-phrase.) There were also frequent guest appearances by major social and political figures. Early on, one of the show’s recurrent gags was for a cast member to say, “Sock it to me,” and then get doused by a pail of water. Pretty soon, there were quick cuts of celebrities—including presidential candidate Richard Nixon—reciting variants on the “sock it to me” line. (Nixon was all innocence, quizzically asking, “Sock it to me?) 

 The other reason I’m delighted to learn of George Schlatter being alive and well is that, as a long-ago budding journalist, I got to do a sit-down interview with the guy.  It was late 1968, I think, and I was writing on entertainment for the UCLA Daily Bruin. With Laugh-In such a money-maker, Schlatter was launching a new and even more adventurous show. Called Turn-On, it was intended to make creative and humorous use of computer technology. But critics hated it, and audiences did too. By the time my article was published, Turn-On had been turned off by the network, after a single episode hit the airwaves. It’s still considered one of the biggest fiascos in TV history.

 As Turn-On was being readied for that fatal first airing, Schlatter was delighted to be interviewed by a young college journalist. He was cordial and funny. After the Turn-On debacle and the publication of my interview, he took time out from licking his psychic wounds to write me a thank-you note. After all these years, I’d have a really hard time digging out either the published interview or his response. But I remember I had quipped that he—then almost forty—relied in conversation on a “predictably with-it vocabulary.” He answered back, “At the risk of exhausting my predictably with-it vocabulary, your piece is a gas!” 

Keep on trucking, George!  

 

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.

 

 

Richard Nixon, TV Star

I admit I didn’t approach John A. Farrell’s Richard Nixon: The Life with much excitement. After personally surviving the Nixon era, I’d read some books, and watched some movies, and that seemed quite enough for me. But Jack Farrell’s new biography of the only U.S. president to resign from office turns out to be as exciting as the best-crafted thriller. It’s chockful of revelations, many of them benefitting from the recent release of scores of documents and White House tapes to scholars. And Farrell’s taut, vivid prose jolts the Nixon story to life. Here’s a pre-Watergate tidbit involving some early underhanded scrutiny of perceived enemies: “The surveillance yielded little but gossip and traces of bureaucratic jockeying. Nixon and his aides, with a revealing degree of self-consciousness, at long last packed the transcripts up and locked them in a White House safe, where their faint tick tick tick was, for a time, forgotten.” (Yes, this passage reminds me of a screenwriter’s best friend: the ticking clock.)

As a man and a president, Richard Nixon was inspired by movies, particularly Patton, which he watched over and over in times of stress. But at many key points his career was driven by the new medium of television. Farrell details how, in 1952, at the point when his place on the Eisenhower ticket was threatened by allegations of financial misconduct, Nixon turned to TV to make his case to the American people. Though the optics were crude and were improvised on the spot, it worked. He became Ike’s two-term running mate.

Television was less a friend to him, of course, in 1960, when—as the Republican candidate for president—he entered into a series of nationally televised debates with Senator John F. Kennedy. Farrell notes that since Nixon’s entry into national politics in 1950, “the percentage of American households with television sets had leaped from 11 to 88 percent. . . .The audience for the first debate was some 70 to 80 million people, in a country with 107 million adults.” In that first head-to-head, Kennedy proved handsome, articulate, confident. Nixon, done in by fatigue, a bad makeup job, and the public perception that he was ill at ease, could not hope to match the challenger’s poise. 

Nixon lost the presidency in 1960, but was back on the hustings in 1968, at a time of political and social turmoil. Following the assassination of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Nixon’s aides strongly suggested he trade in public appearances for media events, like the “man in the arena” telecasts in which he showed off his political savvy by fielding questions from a panel of voters. As one advisor put it, “The greater the element of informality and spontaneity the better he comes across. We have to capture and capsule this spontaneity—and this means shooting RN in situations in which it’s likely to emerge, then having a chance to edit the film so that the parts shown are the parts we want shown.”  

So Nixon became a president of an evolving media age. Of course, the television cameras were there as the Watergate scandal continued to electrify the public. When Nixon stepped down from the presidency on August 9, 1974, they captured his final words and his final “V for victory” salute. Three years later, beginning on March 23, 1977, they recorded his unprecedented series of interviews with British journalist David Frost. The results were so riveting that they evolved into Frost/Nixon, a 2006 British play that took Broadway by storm. In 2008, Ron Howard directed original stars Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in the Oscar-nominated movie.

Washington Politicos and Hollywood Stars

Michelle Obama's Inauguration Gown, 2008

It’s remarkable how often politics and movies intersect. American presidents, both fictional and real, have been featured in scores of movies. I can think of a half-dozen, at least, in which Abraham Lincoln is portrayed, often by award-winning actors like Henry Fonda, Raymond Massey, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, a thinly disguised Bill Clinton (in Primary Colors), and George Bush (W.) have all had their moments – whether reverential or sardonic -- on the silver screen.

I hail from Southern California, the land of motion picture royalty. Now I’m newly returned from the city dedicated to American political royalty. Of course I mean Washington, D.C., where I went to participate in the sixth annual conference of the Biographers International Organization. What struck me in my rambles through our nation’s capital is the clear parallel between Washington’s political celebrities and the movie celebrities of my hometown.

Washington is a city of statuary, with every major president granted some sort of monument. In Hollywood there are far fewer statues, but the fame of our stars is preserved in other ways. Their names are emblazoned on buildings and street signs (e.g. the Kirk Douglas Theatre and West Hollywood’s Norma Place, honoring silent star Norma Talmadge). Celebrities’ autographed glossies are pinned up on walls everywhere: from dentists’ offices to delis to dry cleaning establishments. Then, of course, there’s the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where stars literally adorn the pavement.

In Washington, I took a long Saturday evening walk to the magnificent Lincoln Memorial. There sat Abe himself, nineteen feet high, looking down on me and on everyone else who had gathered at this spot. The first time I saw Paris, I visited the tomb of Napoleon, a place so silent and solemn that it felt like a cathedral. The Lincoln Memorial, by contrast, seems downright festive. At pretty much any hour, there are so many people – of all sizes, shapes, and colors – assembled here, many of them armed with cameras, that I was reminded of the crowds happily checking out the movie-star footprints at Grauman’s Chinese.

I also visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where the inaugural gowns of past First Ladies are preserved as sacred relics. The reverence we feel toward these opulent frocks is not so far removed from how movie fans regard Marilyn Monroe’s white Seven Year Itch halter dress and Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz blue-and-white checked pinafore. In fact, the “American Stories” display at the museum has as its focal point a pair of Garland’s dazzling ruby slippers, upon which fans gaze with awe.

One of my favorite Washington museums is the National Portrait Gallery, where famous Americans of every stripe are honored. Yes, many of the exhibits are devoted to historical figures, and one of the museum’s most famous sections is the Hall of the Presidents. That’s where you can find each president’s official portrait, painted by an artist of his own choosing. These are mostly flattering works, making each chief of state look movie-star handsome. A case in point is the Norman Rockwell rendition of an idealized  Richard Nixon. Then there’s Ronald Reagan, who truly embodied the intersection of movie star and president because, of course, he was both.

But the National Portrait Gallery collects depictions of movie stars too. Among the recent acquisitions is a glamorous photo of Gary Cooper. Also recently purchased are images of film composer Marvin Hamlisch, choreographer Busby Berkeley, the Jackson Five, and a distinctive Milton Glaser homage to comedian/activist Dick Gregory. It’s reassuring, somehow, to see that showbiz stars are stars in Washington too.

Pat Nixon and Winnie Davis: Icons of Womanhood

It’s common wisdom that Richard Nixon lost the presidency to John F. Kennedy in 1960 because he didn’t know how to handle television. During their first televised debate, Kennedy appeared tan and relaxed, while Nixon’s sweaty forehead and five o’clock shadow made him look disreputable. But as author Will Swift points out in Pat and Dick, there were times when Nixon himself turned the new medium of television into brilliant political theatre. Swift kicks off his portrait of the Nixon marriage by describing the night of September 23, 1952. Nixon, campaigning to become Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, had been accused of taking inappropriate monetary gifts from campaign donors. With his candidacy called into question, he decided to book a live broadcast to the nation. The stage at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater was dressed to look like the den of a middle-class family home. Dick Nixon, seated at a desk, proclaimed himself innocent of having received anything but Checkers, the beloved family cocker spaniel.

During a speech that made Checkers a household name and helped Nixon surge in popularity, Pat sat silently, loyally, at her husband’s side. For her pains, she won the respect of an American public that believed it was a wife’s duty to stand (or at least sit) by her man. Patricia Ryan Nixon—who before marriage had been a school teacher and a sometime movie actress—knew she had to live up to the Fifties ideal of womanhood. It was her responsibility to raise the children and keep the home fires burning while her mate went off to joust with the outside world. In 1960, says Swift, Americans had not yet fallen in love with the patrician Jackie Kennedy. “But Pat Nixon was as familiar to them as television actress Donna Reed, and as much admired.” Reed, of course, was the star of a long-running TV sitcom (1958-1966) portraying an idealized American family guided through life by Mom’s wit and wisdom.

Swift suggests that being Dick Nixon’s helpmeet was not the easiest of jobs. She was a private woman and a proud one. As much as Pat believed in her husband's brilliance and his destiny, being cast as a symbol (and publicly ridiculed as “Plastic Pat” by her husband’s detractors) could not have been pleasant for her.

Oddly, I started thinking about Pat Nixon after reading the biography of a woman who never became a wife and mother. Heath Hardage Lee is the author of Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause. It’s a scholarly book that has attracted some Hollywood interest, and I can see why. Winnie was the youngest child of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Born in the darkest days of the Civil War, she grew up to find she was expected to serve as a symbol of the Old South. Solemn and virginal, dressed all in white, she appeared before Southern veterans’ groups like a sweet apparition, lending her angelic touch to the nostalgia they felt for the Dixie of ante-bellum days. As an image of Southern womanhood, Winnie was far less Scarlett O’Hara than sweet, sad Melanie, and the old soldiers loved her for it.

But Winnie was also a flesh-and-blood young lady, one who fell for exactly the wrong kind of man. So loud was the clamor from her Southern admirers that the engagement got called off. She found some happiness in, of all places, New York City, where she worked as a writer and lived an independent life. But, ironically, her obligations to the Lost Cause did her in: by age 34 she was dead. As Pat Nixon also knew, being a symbol is hard work. 

Will Swift will appear on my panel, “Getting the Family on Board,” at this year’s conference of the Biographers International Organization (BIO), to be held in Boston on May 17. The public is cordially invited.