A film about the Obamas which will dramatise their famous first date one summer afternoon in 1989 is planned. The news has unsurprisingly set tongues wagging and left some mouths agape. Is it not cheap and tawdry to mix high office with box office? You might think so, but if you do, credulous reader, think again.
Some imagine that the rot set in with the famously cinematic presidency of John F Kennedy. Kennedy deliberately and self consciously cultivated a film star image. He was known to associate with the Hollywood elite including Frank Sinatra and, of course, Marilyn Monroe. His sister married “Rat Pack” member Peter Lawford. Ted Sorensen, Kennedy’s main speech writer, portrayed Kennedy as a headline star.
In addition to the grooming and stage lighting used to enhance Kennedy’s cinematic profile, Sorensen penned lines that central casting would die for. Most famously, he had Kennedy, in his inaugural address, speak in the tongue of a latter-day Caesar, by declaring to the crowd and, more importantly, to the TV viewing public at home: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
