A Face in the Crowd: How a forgotten gem from the 50’s predicted Trump’s rise
When A Face in the Crowd (1957) was initially released, the film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, along disappointing box office returns. Director Elia Kazan, hot off of Academy Award winning films such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden failed to net the film a single Oscar nomination, despite an electric lead performance from future TV icon Andy Griffith.
One of A Face in the Crowd’s “issues” that hindered its initial success upon its release is its cynicism. Budd Schulburg’s sharp screenplay, based on his own short story “Your Arkansas Traveler,” takes aim at the cult of personality that radio, and especially television, enable. The film tells the story of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Griffith), an oft-imprisoned drifter who is discovered by a radio producer (Patricia Neal) and quickly launched into stardom and political relevance. The perceived cynicism was seen as unrealistic at the time, as no one was willing to believe that an uneducated and ignorant “talking head” could amass so much power and influence in such a brutal and undiplomatic manner.
However, as television continued to develop over the decades, A Face in the Crowd began to gain respect from film scholars and critics upon reevaluation. Rhodes’s unpolished appeal, a rough-talking, tell-it-like it is, “everyman,” who is motivated by power and wealth, is extremely relevant in the age of Donald Trump, who unlike Rhodes, was able to follow through on his plan and gained unparalleled power.
Unlike Trump, Rhodes began his journey from nothing, sleeping off a hangover in a jail cell. After a producer randomly selects him as a subject on her radio show, Rhodes quickly impresses the producer and local audiences by his jovial and “honest” personality. He lights up the air waves by singing and joking with his audiences like they’re his old friend, and spitballs pearls of down-to-earth wisdom, like commending the mothers and wives of the world for their hard work around the house. With a few jokes and compliments, Rhodes gets his own radio program, and later his own TV show.
Upon moving to TV, Rhodes gets his platform and begins to see what he can do with his power and scope. First, Rhodes disarms his audience with his folksy charm, such as clowning around with film equipment, trying to figure out how to talk into the camera. To his audience, he’s honest and just like them, perplexed by the fancy equipment. Even he believes himself to be an honest man, telling his producer earlier on that he “puts his whole self into everything he does.”
However, Rhodes quickly realizes what he can do with power. Lonesome Rhodes entered politics extremely similarly to Donald Trump. While Trump tweeted insults to the president of the United States, Rhodes insulted a candidate for sheriff and suggested people send the “common dog catcher” their unwanted animals, flooding the man’s yard with hundreds of mutts within the day. Like Trump, Rhodes lacked the ability to really dig deep into the issues in the sheriff’s race, but instead lobbed insults and suggested that the candidate was just fundamentally unfit for the position, simply riling up his audience to get a reaction
Rhodes gained his audiences trust by mocking politicians, advertisers, and the format of television itself. After gaining audience trust by flubbing advertising reads on his radio show, Rhodes exploited his audiences by selling them Vita-jex, a completely useless vitamin supplement. Despite the product’s inability to do anything, its sales soar as a result of Rhodes’s catchy jingle and advertising campaign.
At this point, to the viewer of the film watching as an impartial observer with the luxury of the full truth, Rhodes abandons his on-air principals, hawking goods for businesses that pay him enough money for a good ad. He still occasionally bad-mouths products and politicians, but only to push his established brand as a renegade man of the people. Rhodes only becomes more and more self-absorbed, and more dedicated to his pursuit of power.
While Lonesome Rhodes never runs for president in A Face in the Crowd, the film predicted the manipulative power of mass media, where anyone, despite a dubious past and lack of qualifications, can become a “voice of the people,” by simply telling the people what they really want to hear. The film predicted the power of the platform, and the durability of the power given by mass media.
At the end of A Face in the Crowd, Rhodes is betrayed by those closest to him, who have grown tired of his unquenchable thirst for power. Rhodes’s audio engineers record him viciously berating his crew, and leak the audio during a broadcast. Instantly, Rhode’s reputation is shot. His ratings fall, and his time in the limelight appears to be over. Obviously, an incident like this wouldn’t even scratch Trump’s reputation at this point- it probably would make him more popular. Yet, for Rhodes, the incident is a heavily blow to his empire, leaving him depressed and contemplating suicide at the end of the film, as he finds himself unwanted and alone, already abandoned by most of the people that surrounded him during his stardom.
However, one of Rhodes’s staff writers (played by a young Walter Matthau) predicts that the PR-nightmare will not be the end for Rhodes: Instead, he predicts that the incident will simply blow over, and Rhodes will soon be back on the air, although he may not ever be as popular as he once was. What the writer, and the film, failed to see is that controversy can became a platform even more captivating than “telling it like it is” radio talk. If Donald Trump was Lonesome Rhodes, he would spin the leak as him yelling at incompetent people who truly deserved it.
A Face in the Crowd successfully predicted what media culture would become in the 21st century without even mentioning the internet. Rhodes’s rise is not just a parallel for Donald Trump, but a parallel for the online culture where insults and blunted-stated thoughts as seen as honesty, and controversy is mistaken for influence.
