A Face in the Crowd

Between Meet John Doe and Network, the alarming commodity of celebrity. Budd Schulberg's central joke is a showbiz The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, the cracker-barrel galvanizer (Andy Griffith) found in an Arkansas drunk tank and rechristened by the radio producer (Patricia Neal). Warbling pitchman, instant sensation, guffawing comet. "Shucks, I'm just a country boy." He works his voodoo on Madison Avenue and turns a useless pill into a succès fou, politicians are the next logical product so he's tasked with selling "the last of the isolationists" (Marshall Neilan) to the public. "Let us not forget that in TV we have the greatest instrument for mass persuasion in the history of the world." Monsters and the suckers who love them, a fable of hucksters and platforms shaped by Elia Kazan as a procession of frenzies. Hillbilly gusto camouflages a misanthrope with no use for "a dignified sell," he's matched in avid ruthlessness by the agent (Anthony Franciosa) who specializes in "shlockmeistering" and abhorred by the wry scribe (Walter Matthau) who spots a "demagogue in denim." "I'll say one thing, he's got the courage of his ignorance." Teen girls love nothing more than a mix of Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Huey Long, apparently, his televised wedding to the baton-twirling nymphet (Lee Remick) is a glorified striptease bitterly watched by the heartbroken enabler. Tashlin stripped of humor is the approach, Wilder's Ace in the Hole is a close precedent, "punchlines and glamour" are already the future of candidates. (The missing element of religion is remedied in Carey's The World's Greatest Sinner, a vehement analysis.) TV giveth and TV taketh away, the wannabe despot is left ranting to mechanical applause in the penthouse. "We get wise to 'em, that's our strength," assures the coda, history begs to differ. Cinematography by Harry Stradling and Gayne Rescher. With Percy Waram, Paul McGrath, Rod Brasfield, Alexander Kirkland, Charles Irving, Howard Smith, and Kay Medford. In black and white.