In The Dream Life, his book about the mythology of the 1960s, J. Hoberman describes a career arc and a political one: “Fonda tracked the trajectory of tormented liberalism as he failed upward in what might be called his JFK trilogy. Defeated in his bid to become secretary of state in [Otto Preminger’s] Advise and Consent, Fonda appeared in that position in The Best Man; rejected in that movie as a presidential nominee, he returned, in time for the 1964 election, as Fail-Safe’s agonised Doomsday leader”. A film about personal morality and politics in the Society of the Spectacle, The Best Man is dominated not only by the Fonda image and his legacy of supporting progressive Democrats including Helen Gahagan Douglas and Adlai Stevenson, but also by the voice of Gore Vidal – the dense fabric created by his dialogue, his caustic humour, his shameless compression of diverse political issues into the few days of a party convention. Luckily, the project lost its original director, Frank Capra, whose lowbrow ideas for the film had deeply disturbed Vidal. (There is still a wonderful whiff of early Capra in the figure of the former President: as played by pre-code motor-mouth Lee Tracy, he’s a clever relic from the ‘age of the great hicks’). Complementing Vidal’s political expertise, two media-savvy collaborators were hired instead. Director Franklin J. Schaffner was rather new to cinema but had supervised and directed many political programmes during his 15 years on TV – from conventions to Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House. And cinematographer Haskell Wexler would later make Medium Cool, his own late-60s masterpiece about a Democratic convention. Starting out as a riff on the Drew-Leacock type of embedded Direct Cinema (their ‘JFK classic’ Primary was shot just as Vidal’s original play The Best Man became a hit during the 1960 primaries), the film ends with Fonda updating Ford’s notion of ‘glory in defeat’ to the 60s: a double-edged, half-smug, half-conscientious sarcasm in defeat. – “I’m of course happy that the best man won”.

Alexander Howarth