Tennessee Johnson (M.G.M.) is one of Hollywood's grown-up moments. This screen biography of Andrew Johnson, 19th President of the U.S., not only is notably faithful to the facts of his life but actually illuminates a dark chapter in U.S. history. No more adult picture of Washington politics has come out of Hollywood.
Johnson is one of the most controversial and least known Presidents. Some historians and most citizens today know him only as a bullheaded, ill-tempered drunkard who narrowly escaped impeachment by a righteous Congress. But some biographers consider him a great man, ranking just ahead of Abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens and just behind Abraham Lincoln as one of the most influential statesmen of his time. The film, which takes this view, presents it eloquently.
Andy Johnson's story is a natural for the cinema. An illiterate, runaway tailor's apprentice, Andy (Van Heflin) arrives in Greeneville, Tenn. with shackles on his ankles, has them chopped off by the village blacksmith, sets up a tailor shop, is taught to read and write by the young village librarian (Ruth Hussey), who becomes his wife. Under her guidance Andy is elected sheriff, Governor, Senator, Vice President.
As Vice President, Johnson was Lincoln's choice and a stanch Lincoln supporter, a fact overlooked by historians who cast him as a villain. Like the members of Franklin Roosevelt's "Janizariat," Johnson was attacked as a whipping boy by Lincoln's enemies. The picture does not omit the drunken spectacle Johnson made of himself at his inauguration as Vice President, but the documented fact that he was no habitual drunkard is underlined in the film by a letter to him from Lincoln: "You ornery old galoot; don't you know better than to drink brandy on an empty stomach, particularly when you are ill? . . .In hitting at you they're hitting at me and I don't mind."
Then came Lincoln's assassination and President Johnson's battles with a hostile Congress, led by the redoubtable and unscrupulous Thaddeus Stevens (Lionel Barrymore). Johnson seeks to conciliate the South and repair the Union; Stevens to punish the rebels. This part of the film treads on blood-soaked ground, has already aroused protests from a few Negro-philes, who revere Abolitionist Stevens as a hero. At the suggestion of the OWI, Director William Dieterle reshot some sequences to make Abolitionist Stevens a more sympathetic character.
With brutal frankness Tennessee Johnson scans the faces of the people's representatives in Congress: mean faces, scheming faces, corrupt, stupid, generous, brave and honest faces—the composite face of democracy. To make such an intangible dramatic and occasionally even tangible is no mean achievement. Director Dieterle's split-second direction is partly responsible, but chief credit goes to Actors Barrymore and Heflin. As fanatical, silver-tongued Thaddeus Stevens, Lionel Barrymore gives one of the best performances of his long career. Van Heflin's job is a brilliant tour de force. A veteran of second-rate Hollywood films (Seven Sweethearts, Grand Central Murder) and of the stage Philadelphia Story, he has his first big chance as Andrew Johnson.