The Man

The Man 1972 U.S. (93 minutes) directed by Joseph Sargent; screenplay by Rod Serling, based on Irving Wallace’s 1964 novel.

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Once upon a time there was a stereotypical ‘minority’ American political figure modeled after an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose dignity and status seemed to derive from the essential fact that he had no real power and influence when push came to shove. He was ‘safe.’ His status and gravitas made him a ‘role model’ for schoolchildren. Better yet, decorous public accolades tended to reflect more beneficially on their ‘majority’ bestowers than on the recipient.

Douglass Dilman (James Earl Jones) fit this stereotype in Joseph Sargent’s 1972 political thriller The Man. Jones’ Senator Dilman is an ‘articulate’ academic who can—cue the music and replay the legend—look back with richly enunciated diction and no less ostentatious satisfaction on a lifetime of rags-to-riches achievement. But day to day he pads the corridors of power to his grove of restful laurels as a do-nothing legislator.

Dilman had been exactly the right ‘note’ to strike for the largely ceremonial role of President pro tempore of the Senate after the hope of the early 1960s turned to civil strife by the end of the decade. The political establishment considered him ‘a well-dressed rebuttal’ to the race riots and protest marches. A middle-aged career politician, academic and solitary widower with an adult daughter, Dilman was a serious Negro face in a prominent place meant to mollify Negro activists and firebrands—but only a face.

'The face in the mirror won't stop': James Earl Jones in The Man 1972

A chain of unforeseen events and the constitutional protocol for presidential succession ‘pushes’ Dilman out of the corridors he had padded and ‘shoves’ him behind the desk in the Oval Office at the White House. Dilman becomes ‘The Man.’

This takes place before the title credits: the opening sequence begins with a buzz of worried activity against the background of a Washington Press Correspondents Association dinner hosted by comedian Jack Benny—and ends with Dilman picking up a telephone receiver.

Thus, less than ten years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law (and right before the Nixon presidency’s Watergate crises), the United States has its first black president.

To define is to control. But do others’ facile definitions suit this man? Few people seem to have any idea of who Dilman is. A key to his character and the shape the story takes is something his activist daughter Wanda (Janet MacLachlan) suggests to him as he wrestles with what he thinks the country expects of him, particularly other black people.

‘They don’t want you to be humble,’ Wanda says. ‘They don’t want you to apologize. They just want you president.’

James Earl Jones and Janet MacLachlan in The Man 1972

The story anticipates history. Once Dilman gets to the Oval Office, his staff and the Washington political establishment appear to divide between those who respect the office and look to President Dilman for direction and leadership to support or oppose, and those who simply cannot abide the thought of a black man in the White House.

Dilman begins to find his footing in the ‘bully pulpit’ at his first press conference. Rather than speak from a handler’s ‘talking points,’ he opts for candor, showing that he is committed to do the job that has fallen on him. His straight talk feels more like a screenwriter’s conceit than what someone in this position might actually say, but it is refreshing and entertaining. Americans usually welcome authenticity in their presidents.

As Jim Talley (Martin Balsam), Dilman’s inherited chief of staff, tells him after the event, ‘You went in with a rubber stamp and came out carrying a shillelagh.’ Dilman’s independence surprises Talley; but once Talley sees that this president expects to do his job, Talley knows what his own role is.

Dilman’s independence also surprises Arthur Eaton (William Windom), his inherited secretary of state. Eaton had assumed that the do-nothing senator gladly would coast while Eaton and the former president’s cabal run the show. Given the new terms, and despite the barbs of his hyperambitious ‘Washington wife’ Kay (Barbara Rush), Eaton’s lawyerly pragmatism counsels him to ride out the end of Dilman’s term and best position himself to seek his party’s nomination at the coming convention.

But one man’s well-dressed rebuttal is a far cry from that same man’s president. Senator Watson (Burgess Meredith), author of the comment and the devious Senate minority leader ‘from a Southern state,’ shows his hand in an attempt to pass legislation behind the president’s back blocking Dilman from replacing his predecessor’s cabinet members. (Watson would be entirely at home in the current House of Representatives.)  

The stakes go up after Robert Wheeler (Georg Stanford Brown), a black American student activist, creates an international incident by allegedly assassinating the South African minister of defense in South Africa. South Africa demands his extradition. Wheeler appeals directly to President Dilman to intervene in his case.

The bad news about this movie is slim: it was done on a 1970s telemovie budget and the original 35mm print apparently was misplaced or lost.

The good news is that it is an efficient, well-paced, well-made political thriller.

Jones leads a terrific cast with his Orson Wellesian voice and presence. Rod Serling’s thoughtful script engages fraught race issues while keeping Dilman’s character the focus of the story and leaving out cartoon characters. Serling best exercises his self-appointed role as public conscience by placing a man among other men and women in a drama rather than trying to teach a lesson.

As The Man in the drama, Jones wholly inhabits this first black American president as a father and widower, an academic philosopher who values truth and a canny politician looking for an edge. His is a portrait in leadership. Secretary Eaton might have a more serious rival than he expects at the party’s national convention.