Presidential House Visit: Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home

Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home
Dixon, Illinois

I associate Ronald Reagan so much with the glamour of Hollywood, it's easy to forget he actually had Midwestern roots. As a boy, he moved around pretty frequently, but he considered Dixon to be his hometown.

Bedroom Reagan shared with his older brother

The people of Dixon are very proud of their connection to the president. A private commission funded by citizens bought the "Sears catalogue house" that the Reagan's lived in when Reagan was president, and fixed it up to the way it was when he was a boy. 

Table where the president ate during his visit

Part of the fun of the tour was hearing about the tour Reagan took of the house after it was restored. He apparently found the loose tile in the fireplace where he used to hide pennies from his brother, and stuck a few pennies back under it for good measure. 


President Reagan, his brother Moon, and Nancy all had lunch in the house as well, prepared by a White House Chef in the house's working kitchen. The chef was going to use the White House China, but when Reagan heard the china in the house was donated by his former 5th grade teacher, he insisted on using her china.

Statue of Reagan at the riverfront in Dixon

Like the people of Georgetown's devotion to Grant, the people of Dixon have an incredibly sweet relationship with Ronald Reagan. He returned their affection and returned to Dixon even after his presidency, not for the good press, but simply to come home. 

Movie Review: Magnificent Doll

A new series about the depiction of presidents in film. 


In the interest of consistency for these reviews, I am going to be using four distinct categories on which to grade them, using letter grades. These categories are: 


Historical Accuracy - How much of the plot was accurate? Was there any noticeable bias? How much of the plot was based on supposition?


Period Detail - Were the costumes, locations, and sets accurate? Were they at least not distractingly bad?


Casting - How well did the actors portray the historical figures? Were they distracting or helpful in their interpretations?


Quality of the Film - Was the movie actually any good? Did the inaccuracies (or accuracies!) get in the way of the plot?


So, without further ado, I give you Magnificent Doll.

I love old movies. I like my heroes heroic, my villains dastardly, and my romances chaste, but even I couldn't say Magnificent Doll (1946) was a good movie.


That is not to say I didn't enjoy the heck out of it. Any movie where James Madison is played by the Penguin is going to be worth watching, but Magnificent Doll is so much a product of its times, it suffers. 


Synopsis:
The movie covers the life of Dolley Madison from her girlhood in Virginia to her time as First Lady, but mostly focuses on the time between her first marriage and the death of Alexander Hamilton. Dolley is contracted into a loveless Quaker marriage with her first husband, who dies tragically in the Yellow Fever epidemic of Philadelphia. She and her mother take in boarders to make money, and their first boarder is none other than Aaron Burr, who takes a shine to Dolley. Through Burr she meets James Madison, whose gentle brilliance wins her over, even though she still has feelings for Burr. She gets over Burr when he attempts to take over the United States using mostly a lot of mustache twirling, and realizes James Madison is actually pretty awesome (and shockingly young looking for a man 17 years her senior).
Historical Accuracy:
Magnificent Doll is accurate in some respects, and totally off the mark in most others. It got the basic chronology and major points of Dolley Madison's life, but all the details are either fudged or completely wrong. There are too many to list here, but suffice to say, Dolley Madison was not the reason Aaron Burr conceded the presidency to Jefferson. The most glaringly awful changes had to do with her first marriage. There is no reason to suppose that Dolley Madison was forced to marry John Todd. Also, in the movie Dolley's entire family died in the Yellow Fever epidemic. While her husband and son did die, her first son survived and lived with her and James Madison. 
Grade: D


Period Detail:
Old Hollywood never let history get in the way of a good story (or an opportunity to reuse sets and costumes), so saying the movie was lacking in period detail supposes that the filmmakers had any interest in the historical period they were depicting. The dresses are not only wrong, they are hideous, and somehow manage to make Ginger Rogers look bad. 
Grade: F


Casting:
Without a doubt, the casting was the best part of Magnificent Doll, and it was still pretty patchy. I was skeptical about David Niven in the role of Aaron Burr, but he twirls his metaphorical mustache with great aplomb and manages to make Dolley's (historically inaccurate) attraction to him plausible. Burgess Meredith brings a quiet sweetness to James Madison, even though he is much too young for the role. The weakest link was definitely Ginger Rogers. Normally, I love Ginger Rogers, but it was pretty obvious she was doing this movie because of her contract with the studio, most likely with a gun pointed to her head if her line readings were any indication. Still, the casting was good overall.
Grade: B


Quality of Film:
The screenplay for Magnificent Doll was written by Irving Stone, a popular writer of historical fiction from the 40s and 50s. Random lines like, "I don't think your cousin, Patrick Henry, would approve of that!" attempt to give historical context, but instead make the dialogue clunky and unbelieveable. It seems like nobody really cared enough about this movie to try and make it good, so they just settled for mediocre. Still, the excellent cast and ridiculous melodrama are fun, if not high quality.
Grade: C


Overall: C


You can view Magnificent Doll here if you are interested.

Presidential House Visit: Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

The fact that Herbert Hoover is regarded as one of the worst presidents is the great irony of his life. Born to a Quaker family in a simple cottage, Hoover went on to become part of the first graduating class of Stanford University, a rich man, and one of the greatest humanitarians the world has ever seen. His time as president was his greatest failure.

Herbert Hoover Birthplace in West Branch, Iowa

Bedroom where Hoover was born

The view from the backyard to the Hoover gravesite

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum and Library does a nice job of giving a solid overview of Hoover's life. It gives significant time to his presidency without shying away from his failures, but it also gives a lot of space to his remarkable work feeding children throughout Europe after World War I. The most moving exhibit included the emotional testimonials of survivors who could still remember the smell of Hoover rolls that signified hope and the end of hunger. 

Final resting place of Hoover and his wife

Hoover worked hard to build a successful life for himself, and he designed his park so that standing from his back porch you could see the flagpole marking his gravesite, symbolically marking the path of his life. He meant for the site to commemorate his life as an example for future generations, as well as a to honor the country he loved. 

Presidential House Visit: Harry S. Truman House

The Harry S. Truman House in Independence, Missouri would more correctly be named the Bess Truman House since the house had been in her family for several generations. They lived there with their daughter Margaret and Bess's extended family both before and after Truman's presidency. 

The site emphasized the fact that Truman decided to return to his Midwestern roots and carried on the rest of his life just as he had before he ever became president. The town of Independence wisely decided to preserve the area around the Truman home, so that the view of the street from his house is much the same as it was when the Truman's lived there.

  

The Trumans were a tight-knit family. Harry, Bess, and their daughter Margaret are all buried together at the Truman Presidential Library and Museum, which is just down the street from the Truman house. The museum was well put together, informative, and meaningfully interactive. It was definitely the highlight of a truly special trip. 

Presidential House Visit: Grouseland

Built to look like a Virginia plantation but function as a fortress, Grouseland was a complete surprise to me. I knew very little about its owner, William Henry Harrison, and didn't expect much of his home. It was a revelation: a beautiful, functional house with so many historical connections I couldn't believe it wasn't better known. 

Grouseland from the Side 

The Front Entrance of Grouseland

Front Door

Presidential House Visit: Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home

The Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home in southern Indiana offers a unique perspective on a period of time in his life I knew little about. He wrote very little about his background, but seeing his humble roots gave me a new perspective on his life. 

Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home Site

  

Replica of the Original Cabin

A Historical Re-enactor Poses at the Cabin

  

The Farm

Presidential Free Association: Grover Cleveland

This is part of a series called Presidential Free Association. I post the first word that comes to mind when I hear the name of the president, along with a brief explanation.

Cancer

During his second term as president, Grover Cleveland underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his upper jaw. The surgery was kept secret from the public so as to not effect support for Cleveland's monetary policy. The country was in the midst of a panic, and switching to the silver standard was a topic of fierce debate. Cleveland supported the gold standard, but his Vice President wanted to switch to the silver standard; Cleveland worried that if his illness was made public, Congress would shift its support away from him. 

Coincidently, when the secret surgery came to light, Cleveland and his supporters maintained that he had just had a very large tooth pulled...and of course it was necessary to pull this tooth on a steamer in the middle of the ocean with the utmost secrecy.