Video: Ben Bradlee’s cinematic legacy in ‘All the President’s Men’

Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor who presided over the paper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal that brought down a president, left behind a lasting legacy when he died Tuesday at the age of 93.

In addition to backing reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Bradlee led the Post to 18 Pulitzer Prizes, created its influential Style section and published a series of articles on the Pentagon Papers.

In his own small way, Bradlee also made his mark on the movies by giving cinema an unforgettable character — himself — whose unwavering resolve can be summed up in three words: “Run that baby.”

Bradlee was portrayed by Jason Robards in “All the President’s Men,” director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman’s 1976 political thriller adapted from Woodward and Bernstein’s nonfiction book of the same name.

Sharing the screen with Robert Redford (Woodward) and Dustin Hoffman (Bernstein), Robards would win a supporting-actor Oscar for his nuanced depiction of the hard-charging editor.

Bradlee was initially somewhat skeptical of the film, whose production would eventually involve movie stars and crew members crawling through the Post newsroom, but came around because he thought it would improve the final product. “We’re all in the position that we didn’t have any choice about this movie -- it would be made regardless,” he said in a Post story at the time. “And I could see that. Lacking that choice, it seemed to make more sense to try to influence it factually than to just stick our heads in the sand.”

In a key scene, which you can watch the video above (which contains obscene language), Bradlee’s on-screen avatar demonstrates the qualities a journalist should aspire to: thorough, skeptical, committed to the truth, courageous and maybe even a little bit crazy.

Leaning on a desk in the Post newsroom while debating with Woodward and Bernstein about whether to run an early Watergate story, Robards’ Bradlee says, “I can’t do the reporting for my reporters, which means I have to trust them. And I hate trusting anybody.”

He pauses, looks at them, looks at the article, then steps toward them.

“Run that baby.”

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