His Ego Leaves No Room For A Crowd

So, A Face in the Crowd. Patricia Neal finds some bum (Andy Griffith), and somehow gets him on a local radio station, where he becomes a big hit by spinning folksy tales of a hometown partially constructed from his own experiences. An Ozark version of Garrison Keillor, I guess. He's such a big hit, he quickly gets an offer from a Memphis TV station, then leverages that into a spot on a national station, where he becomes a huge star. Rhodes lets it all go to his head, especially when he's called in to give a prospective Presidential candidate advice on how to better appeal to the voters. So naturally he is destroyed by his own arrogance, for a certain value of "destroyed."

I was mostly impressed by A Face in the Crowd, until right at the end. During Lonesome Rhodes' breakdown, Walter Matthau speaks directly to the audience - under the guise of speaking to Rhodes - and details exactly what will happen to the disgraced personality. Then he turns to leave, not before spooking Rhodes' lackey into hitting a button on a sound machine. So Matthau departs, walking away from us to an elevator, down a long aisle, to thunderous applause. The movie was too impressed with itself there.

Maybe it's the message isn't terribly surprising to me. You mean celebrities are not always wonderful people (Rhodes is apparently based on some guy named Albert Gottfried), that they can be as motivated by selfishness and greed as the rest of us? That we shouldn't look to them to determine how we feel about important issues? Old news by now, but I imagine that wasn't the case in 1957, when the public knew less about the prominent stars of the day. And it isn't as though there aren't plenty of people who don't continue to put too much stock in what celebrities say. Even so, it's reminiscent of Advise and Consent, in that it's more notable to me for how accurately it describes something which is commonplace these days.

I was never clear on what Patricia Neal's character saw in Rhodes, romantically. I missed the beginning of the film, so I'm not clear how she realized this drunk hayseed could be a marketable property, either, but that's not a big deal. But she is attracted to him, and hangs around for reasons beyond just money. When he asks her to marry him, she doesn't accept, but she clearly considers it. When she learns he was married all along, she's hurt. She knows he's garbage, but she won't leave. Maybe he's just that good a showman, he always knows how to rein in his impulses just enough to keep from alienating the people he needs, until he thinks he doesn't need them.

I think it's supposed to be she sees something good in him, and thinks she can bring it out, but there's no evidence of it. He can be charming, but charming isn't good. He's a drunk when I first saw him, he's a drunk later, and mean throughout. The only difference is that as he rises in prominence, he's more likely to punch down than up. Instead of encouraging kids listening to his show to visit the radio station owner's pool, or not letting advertisers bully him, he's berating the writers working for him and insulting his audience. But it boils down to the same thing: He thinks he's invincible, and he uses it as much to hurt others as to help his position.