It's sad to find that aside from TCM, this film is not being aired on present day TV. The reason, of course, is that it was made in black and white. Yet it hasn't dated in the slightest. Nor has it outworn its power and fascination through repeated viewings. In fact it's such a richly textured movie that the more you see it, the more you appreciate its many subtleties of character and dialogue. For example, it wasn't until this time around that I realized the king's men of the Humpty Dumpty title were not just the voting hicks but the inner echelon. "He had us all now," Ireland comments off-camera, "we were all working for him." All the main characters! Great performances abound in this picture. Certainly Crawford reveals a range far beyond his usual blustering stereotype. Ireland gives the best account of his entire career. So does Mercedes McCambridge. (This was her film debut). All three were to coast on their King's Men reputations for the rest of their professional lives. In the support cast, those players who never bettered their characterizations here include Will Wright ("You have to understand that Pillsbury's not a man. He's a thing. When a thing gets busted, you fix it"), Ralph Dumke ("Pillsbury's the head man. He uses my head"), Raymond Greenleaf ("Pillsbury has to be prosecuted"), Anne Seymour, Grandon Rhodes, and Walter Burke.

"All the King's Men" is essentially the career of the infamous Louisiana politician, Huey Long...though the studio made a few changes here and there in order to avoid lawsuits. This is because the film is NOT a flattering look at a politician who seemed to start out with the best of intentions and eventually became a monster.The film begins with a newspaper reporter (John Ireland) trying to cover the political campaign of a small-time and unknown newcomer, Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford). But the campaign is completely undermined by the state political machine--crony politics where a small group of men essentially run the entire show. After losing, Willie runs again...and once again loses. By his third election, Willie has learned much...and eventually realizes how to beat the entrenched party machine. And, instead of a group of people, the people of his state have one man running it all....and that one man appears to have all the worst qualities of the old machine...and then some.This film earned the Academy Award for Best Picture...and two more for acting. Crawford took home the Best Actor statuette and Mercedes McCambridge the Best Supporting Actress and John Ireland nominated for the Best Supporting Actor awards. And, the acting in this film was pretty good. In fact everything about the film is very good except for two things...it would have been nice if they'd called it like it was and said the man was Huey Long instead of a guy inspired by him and if the film WAS set in Louisiana or some rural setting, why didn't anyone look or sound like they were from this part of the country? Minor quibbles...and a film, overall, that's well worth your time...though I think the better pictures that year was "The Heiress" as well as "12 O'Clock High".By the way, in the final climactic scene, pay attention to the assistant for the Governor...his gun fires 8 or more times without reloading...and it's a revolver!!

The parallels to modern day politics is more than evident even if the picture is almost seventy years old. The connection to Huey Long notwithstanding, there was one point in the film when one sees only a rear view of Broderick Crawford in the Willie Stark role, and he looked to me just like George Wallace, another apt comparison I think. Stark also seemed to approach Wallace's equivalent of a fire and brimstone type orator, another populist characteristic that these sort of politicians take on.So if power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, this film ably captures the nuance of Stark's ideological world view that a man is conceived in sin and born of corruption. I don't think I've heard that philosophy expressed any more horrifically, and for those of that mindset I guess anything is possible. Jack Burden (John Ireland) in response appears willing to cut such corruption some slack when he states that 'many times, out of evil comes good'. In a roundabout way that may be true, but there's always a price to pay.The story element that I couldn't buy simply because it was so inconceivable was the idea of Anne Stanton (Joanne Dru) taking up with Stark - how hideous an idea was that? Maybe Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge), that seemed more realistic, but the idea that Jack Burden could hang around with all the duplicitous dealings that personally affected him, well that was another bit of a stretch. But I guess when real people get tangled up in these sort of webs, it's hard to extract oneself. However there's one very real tip off for the viewer regarding Willie Stark's rise to power when he claims that large campaign contributions come with no strings attached. Remember now, he was a lawyer when he said it.

This is very much a period piece. Robert Rosen directs & his direction here is not quite where he was when he would do " The Hustler " later but this is still a solid film. This is Broderick Crawford playing a fictional version of Huey Long known as Willie Stark.While his intentions of getting into politics are good, he winds up selling himself out to accomplish good in the same way everyone who gets elected still does. His one line about nailing the fat guys in a speech is very much reflective of the Obama line of paying all our governments bills by "taxing the rich" which people still bought hook line & sinker in our last election.In this movie, we even find out that even when a politician is a true outsider, once they get inside they become the rich. That is why no matter how much someone calls for "change we can believe in" things never change. In the case of Huey Long, the book this is based upon was obviously not written by one of his biggest fans.Still, this is a worthwhile picture though a bit dated. It has been redone recently with Jude Law in the cast. Guess if I run into that one, I will look at it. Politics don't seem to change, no one is ever all knowledgeable about what is really going down.