Coming: Docudramas on All Presidents?

“My goal is to try to do a television biography of every president we’ve ever had,” says Louis Rudolph, executive producer of last year’s docudrama “LBJ: The Early Years” and an earlier TV movie about Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Ike.”

“In studying a president, you really are studying America at that time because a President is ultimately--along with rock music and the movies--most reflective of where the heart and soul of the American people are.”

Propelled by the critical and commercial achievements of “LBJ,” Rudolph is currently well on his way to bringing to television the “heart and soul” of much of the last three decades.

NBC has bought a sequel to the Lyndon Johnson story, “LBJ: The White House Years,” which, according to Rudolph, will deal with the top-level politics of the Vietnam era in addition to continuing the personal saga of Johnson and his family. Randy Quaid will reprise his role as Johnson.

Rudolph also has a script deal with ABC for a two-hour movie, “Ronald Reagan: The Early Years,” and another with CBS for “Richard Nixon: The Early Years.”

All three movies, Rudolph says, have been researched and outlined and will be scripted as soon as the writers strike is settled.

Rudolph, a former ABC vice president of movies and miniseries whose credits as a producer include a TV movie on Jacqueline Kennedy, concedes that part of his attraction to presidential docudramas is their commercial viability.

The People magazine-appeal of “peaking through the curtains” on the not always puritanical personal lives of these men of power is what makes these docudramas marketable to huge audiences. And successful “early years” films, he isn’t shy to point out, inevitably lead to sequels about the later years.

But Rudolph says he is most interested in exploring how a person gets to be the “most powerful man on Earth”--what personality traits or quirks in their upbringing these men share that enabled them to fulfill what they all see as “their personal destinies.”

The Nixon film, for example, will focus on his life in California, ending with his defeat in the race for the California governorship.

“What’s so fascinating is how a man could reach such a bottom, where he couldn’t even get elected governor of his own state . . . and then a few years later become president,” Rudolph says. “ ‘Rocky’ is boring next to that story.

“And Reagan doing a nightclub act in Vegas because he couldn’t get arrested in this town as an actor, and then several years later he is the most powerful man on Earth. Again, ‘Rocky.’ ”

Though Lady Bird Johnson, while refusing any payment, cooperated with him in the researching of both LBJ films, Rudolph has not been able to enlist the participation of either Nixon or Reagan. (Nixon, Rudolph said, wrote a letter refusing to cooperate because he had taken offense to a scene in the “LBJ” film in which Sen. Sam Rayburn, admonishing Johnson for initially turning down the vice presidential nomination in 1960, says, “You’re only helping that S.O.B. Nixon get elected.”)

Without having to purchase the rights to the stories of these public figures, as he would for the story of a private person, Rudolph instead relies on the many books, interviews and articles that have been published over the years, and on his own interviews with the President’s friends, colleagues and family members to reconstruct the events and conversations that eventually end up on film. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agreed to help with the upcoming LBJ story, for example, and relatives of both Nixon and Reagan were interviewed extensively during the researching of those movies, he says.

“Realizing that a TV program like this probably will be seen by more people and have more impact than all of the books that will ever be written about Reagan is a pretty heavy weight to carry,” he says. “I’ve found that all those involved in these projects go out of their way to make sure that everything we present is reasonably balanced and meticulously accurate.”

But it’s the “drama” in the word docudrama that ultimately sells these movies. Rudolph says he had a difficult time finding a buyer for the first Lyndon Johnson film because TV movies are generally geared toward the female audience and the networks still believe women are not interested in politics. Playing up the love story between Johnson and his wife and the president’s infidelity finally enticed NBC to take a chance on a political love story.

“LBJ’s” six Emmy nominations, Peabody award and top 20 showing in the ratings made future presidential docudramas an easy pitch, he reports.

But a TV movie on the life of each of the 40 U.S. presidents? Rudolph says he definitely wants to produce a docudrama about the pre-presidential years of Jimmy Carter, but he doesn’t think the American people are ready for it yet. He says he’ll wait until the country starts to develop a nostalgia for the late 1970s.

“And Millard Fillmore,” Rudolph concludes. “He has such a great name for a president and you always hear such derisive depictions of him. I’d like to find out what all that is about.”