A presidential candidate is deemed to have a dull personality, thus a charismatic look-alike is hired as a front.A presidential candidate is deemed to have a dull personality, thus a charismatic look-alike is hired as a front.A presidential candidate is deemed to have a dull personality, thus a charismatic look-alike is hired as a front.
Hooper Atchley
- Announcer
- (uncredited)
June Gittelson
- Woman in Medicine Show
- (uncredited)
Ben Hall
- Man in Medicine Show Audience
- (uncredited)
Paul Hurst
- Sailor
- (uncredited)
Edward LeSaint
- Convention Chairman
- (uncredited)
Charles Middleton
- Abe Lincoln
- (uncredited)
Frank Mills
- Driver
- (uncredited)
Edmund Mortimer
- Guest
- (uncredited)
Alan Mowbray
- George Washington
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe portraits that provide a prologue for the movie and sing about the problems of the country during the Depression are of the same four presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt) that are on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota that was being carved at the time this movie was released.
- GoofsThe Universal Vault Series DVD defaults to 16:9 creating a squashed image. It can be manually adjusted to 4:3, however.
- Quotes
Prof. Aikenhead: Blair lacks political charm. Blair has no flair for savoir faire.
- SoundtracksPHANTOM PRESIDENT PRELUDE
Written by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Sung and chanted by uncredited players
Featured review
George M. Cohan who in the first decade of the last century was as the title of one of his songs and biography The Man Who Owned Broadway was considered old fashioned by 1932. Still as a performer he had considerable box office and he responded to the pleas of Jesse L. Lasky to come over to Paramount to make his sound motion picture debut. But the songs were to be written by a pair of relative newcomers Rodgers&Hart.
It's come down in show business legend how Cohan barely dealt with them while The Phantom President was in production. He thought they were second rate songwriters and truth be told Cohan thought just everyone else was second rate next to him. He had that kind of ego. But he had the talent to back it up and truth be told the songs that Dick and Larry wrote for this film were truly second rate.
The musical format of this film was song patter, no individual numbers that could have been hits were written for The Phantom President. The patter format worked well in Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah I'm A Bum, but many song hits came from Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah I'm A Bum boasted You Are Too Beautiful from that score. Nothing like that comes from The Phantom President. Maybe Cohan could have written a better score, in fact he was given one number to be interpolated.
But The Phantom President is first rate political satire with Cohan playing a double role, a cold fish millionaire who is running for President of the USA and a carnival medicine show man that his political handlers recruit to go out and do the campaign as he's got a personality the voting public will warm up to.
The political end works well, but carnival Cohan starts cutting in on millionaire Cohan's time with Claudette Colbert a former president's daughter and someone who the millionaire thinks would be a great first lady. He takes some drastic action.
The four handlers are well cast also, George Barbier, Louise Mackintosh, Sidney Toler, Julius McVickers are all familiar enough in roles that are suited to all of them. And of course we have Jimmy Durante who is gloriously himself with some interpolated material for him as well in the song Schnozzola.
There are so many performers whose salad days were well before talking motion pictures were invented that we should be grateful that at least we can see something of what Broadway saw with George M. Cohan. And his dancing style; well you can see why James Cagney was cast in the autobiographical Yankee Doodle Dandy.
It's come down in show business legend how Cohan barely dealt with them while The Phantom President was in production. He thought they were second rate songwriters and truth be told Cohan thought just everyone else was second rate next to him. He had that kind of ego. But he had the talent to back it up and truth be told the songs that Dick and Larry wrote for this film were truly second rate.
The musical format of this film was song patter, no individual numbers that could have been hits were written for The Phantom President. The patter format worked well in Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah I'm A Bum, but many song hits came from Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah I'm A Bum boasted You Are Too Beautiful from that score. Nothing like that comes from The Phantom President. Maybe Cohan could have written a better score, in fact he was given one number to be interpolated.
But The Phantom President is first rate political satire with Cohan playing a double role, a cold fish millionaire who is running for President of the USA and a carnival medicine show man that his political handlers recruit to go out and do the campaign as he's got a personality the voting public will warm up to.
The political end works well, but carnival Cohan starts cutting in on millionaire Cohan's time with Claudette Colbert a former president's daughter and someone who the millionaire thinks would be a great first lady. He takes some drastic action.
The four handlers are well cast also, George Barbier, Louise Mackintosh, Sidney Toler, Julius McVickers are all familiar enough in roles that are suited to all of them. And of course we have Jimmy Durante who is gloriously himself with some interpolated material for him as well in the song Schnozzola.
There are so many performers whose salad days were well before talking motion pictures were invented that we should be grateful that at least we can see something of what Broadway saw with George M. Cohan. And his dancing style; well you can see why James Cagney was cast in the autobiographical Yankee Doodle Dandy.
- bkoganbing
- Apr 11, 2012
- Permalink
Details
- Runtime1 hour 18 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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