MOVIES

The Phantom President (1932) In the first of his two sound picture appearances, George M. Cohan plays a dual role as a stuffed-shirt banker with presidential aspirations and the coincidentally identical stranger, a medicine show mountebank with the pep and personality needed to pull off a successful campaign.  Claudette Colbert is another of the dead stick banker's aspirations which is also taken over by his double - despite the obvious decades of age difference.  Jimmy Durante is the double's eccentric gibberish-spouting factotum and they perform a couple of  Rodgers and Hart numbers together with excellent chemistry.  There are few opportunities nowadays for us to ascertain what Cohan's appeal was, but his charisma and personality are obvious and his blackface performance lacks the smarmy emotionalism of Jolson's and doesn't even go into dialect.  There is some effective political satire here, showing that the only way to win the presidency is to put on an entertaining spectacle.  I was also impressed with the sophisticated direction and camerawork, with the double scenes handled very effectively.  It's all pretty weird, but entertaining, and Colbert is well-dressed in sleek satin with huge puffy feather collars or fur sleeves.  Worth seeing for historical value, 7/10