They’re the presidents’ elect films

With hindsight, it seems obvious that the one Hollywood movie screened most often at the White House over the past 50 years is “High Noon.”

Director Fred Zinneman’s 1952 classic is, after all, the quintessential “the buck stops here” film: a strong-willed leader, unable to achieve consensus about an imminent danger, takes matters into his own hands and saves the day. It’s a politician’s ultimate fantasy.

“The film can be seen as a metaphor for the president,” said Burt Kearns, co-executive producer of “All the Presidents’ Movies,” a documentary about the film-going habits of the chief executives, airing Thursday night on Bravo. “The main character of ‘High Noon’ is a glamorous figure, a man who does what he has to do. He’s a man alone, who has to do the right thing. He’s what you think the president would imagine himself to be.”

George W. Bush has screened it at the White House; Ike screened it three times; Bill Clinton has seen it 20 times during his life. The list goes on.

The “High Noon” fixation of the Oval Office’s occupants is just one of the fascinating tidbits in the three-hour program, which ranges from the early days of cinema to today.

And it’s a thematic touchstone for Bravo, which is using it to kick off what the network is referring to as “West Wing Weekend,” which will include White House-set films like “Absolute Power” and “The American President.”

It all builds up to Sunday’s off-network premiere of NBC’s acclaimed but recently troubled hit “The West Wing,” whose star Martin Sheen narrates “All the Presidents’ Movies.” Bravo is introducing “The West Wing,” with a marathon of the first six episodes, starting at 11 a.m. Sunday. The reruns then settle into their Monday-Thursday schedule on Aug. 11.

“All the Presidents’ Movies” also features interviews with such presidential kinfolk as Ron Reagan Jr., Steve Ford, Susan Eisenhower and Lynda Bird Johnson, as well as various Hollywood types who screened their films at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Presidential screenings began in 1915, when Woodrow Wilson watched D.W. Griffith’s racist classic “The Birth of a Nation,” which the president called “all so terribly true.” Though nearly every president since has screened Hollywood films -- Franklin D. Roosevelt would watch only short films with happy endings, Truman may have patterned his 1948 whistle-stop presidential campaign after Frank Capra’s “State of the Union” -- the documentary focuses on 1953-1986, when Paul Fisher was the official White House projectionist.

Fisher didn’t just show films; he kept a log of the 5,000 films he screened for seven presidents, as well as jotting down who else was in the East Wing screening room at the time. The log was discovered by Irv Letofsky, a former Times editor who is co-executive producer of “All the Presidents’ Movies.”

“I was writing a 1996 newspaper article about the presidents and their screenings,” Letofsky said, “when a White House aide told me about Paul Fisher and his diaries. Fisher sent them to me, and when other people looked at them, they kept saying, ‘That’s really great television.’ ”

If nothing else, the tale of presidential moviegoing is what Kearns called “an alternative history of the White House, a new angle no one has bothered to explore.”

And the presidents have their quirks, for good or ill:

* Dwight Eisenhower loved westerns and screened over 200 of them while in office. But the former general and World War II hero refused to watch war movies or anything starring Robert Mitchum, because he disapproved of the actor’s 1949 marijuana bust.

* Richard Nixon watched over 150 movies with his buddy Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. The week in 1970 that he began the secret bombing of Cambodia, Nixon screened “Patton” twice.

* Jimmy Carter, who viewed 580 films, more than any other president, was the only leader to screen an X-rated movie: the Oscar-winning “Midnight Cowboy.”

* Lyndon Johnson didn’t like movies that much, but he sure loved “The President,” a short documentary about himself -- he saw it at least a dozen times.

Although Fisher had left the White House before the two most recent occupants had moved in, it’s possible to learn a few telling details about the movie-watching tastes of George W. Bush and Clinton.

* Bush’s all-time favorite film is Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” but the first film he screened after taking over the White House was the Cuban missile crisis film “Thirteen Days.” The president is also said to be a fan of the “Austin Powers” films and has screened at the White House “Field of Dreams” (a favorite of his father), “Naked Gun 2 1/2” and, just recently, “Seabiscuit.” During baseball season, though, he’s said to prefer watching tapes of Texas Rangers games when he’s traveling on Air Force One.

* Clinton had more eclectic tastes. Sure, he screened popular films such as “Independence Day” and “Naked Gun 33 1/3” plus such best picture Oscar winners as “Schindler’s List,” “American Beauty,” “The English Patient” and “Casablanca.” But his showings at the White House and Camp David also included more obscure titles like Billy Bob Thornton’s “Sling Blade,” the German film set in the Nazi era “The Harmonists,” the Anthony Hopkins biopic about C.S. Lewis “Shadowlands” and Baz Luhrmann’s Australian breakthrough “Strictly Ballroom.”

The 42nd president screened another Australian film, Jane Campion’s moody art film “The Piano,” which earned Holly Hunter a best actress Oscar, but which prompted Clinton to ask, “What was that all about?”

Clinton aside, the documentary illustrates, most of the presidents had very mainstream tastes. This is reflected in a presidential top 10 list compiled by the program’s producers, which in addition to “High Noon” includes “Casablanca,” “Field of Dreams,” two Audrey Hepburn films (“Sabrina” and “Roman Holiday”) and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”

That means the preferences of a first lady like Jackie Kennedy, who spoke French and loved to watch art films like the 1961 Alain Resnais classic “Last Year at Marienbad,” really stand out. Not all first ladies shared her adventurous taste; Hillary Clinton is said to be a fan of “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

“We often think a president is isolated and out of touch with America,” Kearns said, “but its seems the White House theater serves as a window to what’s going on outside the White House. Sometimes they use it for solace, like Richard Nixon would lose himself in the musicals of the ‘30s and ‘40s when Vietnam War protesters were outside. Ronald Reagan would often find comfort in the movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Even today, George W. Bush likes films that paint a rosy picture of America.”

Of course, not everyone was looking for escape. One of the most fascinating parts of the documentary features home video shot by director David O. Russell, who was invited to the White House to screen his 1999 film “Three Kings,” which alleges that the U.S. abandoned freedom-loving Sunni Muslims to the depredations of Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf War. Clinton, arguably the most avid and film-savvy president yet, is shown holding an intense post-screening discussion about the movie.

There are many juicy items like this in “All the President’s Movies,” and just as many that were left out because of time constraints. Letofsky, who did much of the research for the show, mentioned a story about Reagan that didn’t make the final cut.

It seems Reagan screened the 1983 miniseries “The Day After,” about what happens when a nuclear bomb devastates Lawrence, Kan. Old Hollywood insider that he was, the president decided to jot down some notes on how he felt the film should be edited and had them sent to director Nicholas Meyer. Annoyed at what he felt was executive presumption, Meyer tore up the notes.

Ultimately, however, “All the President’s Movies” is not about how much the White House screening habits differ from ours but in how many ways they are similar. Settled down in plush seats in the East Wing screening room, munching popcorn and gulping sodas, the presidents and their families were like everyone else, allowing the magic to wash over them.

“One thing that came out in all the interviews we did, was that the presidents let their guard down in the White House theater,” Kearns said. “This acted as a family room, and people felt they were sitting with the first family in their den. People will watch this show and see the president as a more human person. It make him less of a public figure and more of a guy, a moviegoer.”

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‘All the Presidents’ Movies’

Where: Bravo.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday.

Narrator: Martin Sheen.