{"id":376212,"date":"2026-04-05T11:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/376212\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T11:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:54:10","slug":"i-still-think-its-one-of-the-great-films-of-all-time-all-the-presidents-men-turns-50-watergate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/376212\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I still think it\u2019s one of the great films of all time\u2019: All the President\u2019s Men turns 50 | Watergate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rustle of a notepad. The click of a pen lid. On a floral-patterned sofa sits Dustin Hoffman with long hair, big collar and a lean and hungry look. Opposite is Jane Alexander, wearing a blue button-down dress, cornered and nervous in the glow of a table lamp. In this taut, claustrophobic acting masterclass<\/a>, no detail is too small.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe makeup artists ran in because the sweat was pouring off Dustin\u2019s face,\u201d Alexander recalls with a laugh. \u201cGordon [Willis, cinematographer] said, \u2018Don\u2019t touch that, I\u2019m lighting off his sweat!\u2019 I love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a pivotal scene in All the President\u2019s Men, dubbed<\/a> \u201cthe granddaddy of all journalism movies\u201d, which premiered at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts 50 years ago on Saturday. The film was based on the 1974 book of the same name by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about their investigation into the Watergate imbroglio that brought down President Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

Flawlessly directed by Alan Pakula, and starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, All the President\u2019s Men<\/a> was a box-office hit and nominated for eight Oscars, winning four including best adapted screenplay for William Goldman and best supporting actor for Jason Robards as the Post editor, Ben Bradlee.<\/p>\n

There was also a best supporting actress nomination for Alexander in the role of Judy Hoback, who in the screenplay is referred to as \u201cthe Bookkeeper\u201d of the Committee to Re-elect the President. She had only five minutes and nine seconds<\/a> of screen time but, half a century later, looks back on it as one of the highlights of her career.<\/p>\n

Alexander had appeared on stage and in film in The Great White Hope opposite James Earl Jones. She went straight from performing a matinee of Noel Coward\u2019s Present Laughter<\/a> with Douglas Fairbanks Jr at the Kennedy Center, a short walk from the Watergate complex, to filming her brief scenes in All the President\u2019s Men inside a tiny house on a hot summer\u2019s afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember walking in and thinking I was a little bit late,\u201d Alexander, 86, says via Zoom from Purchase, New York, with her pet dog Romeo listening in. \u201cWe went right to the set, and Alan Pakula<\/a> looked at me and he said, \u2018Oh God, you look great, let\u2019s go, we\u2019re gonna shoot it now!\u2019 I said, \u2018No, I haven\u2019t gone to makeup and hair yet.\u2019 He said, \u2018I love what you look like \u2013 just like that.\u2019 I said, \u2018I don\u2019t have my costume.\u2019 He said, \u2018I love that, what you got.\u2019 I said, \u2018That\u2019s just my summer shmatte, a little blue thing.\u2019 He said, \u2018Perfect.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went right into the house and rehearsed in that small, small room. Alan set it up so brilliantly. I don\u2019t think you could have failed in that scene because he put me right in the corner with that light so it was very claustrophobic. It was a hot day and it was hotter inside the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cDustin was leaning forward from the couch. There was a Panavision camera, humongous, the size of a Volkswagen car. Gordon Willis<\/a> is sitting up there operating above us and he\u2019s crowding. I remember it all being like, ahhhhrrrrrgh! I couldn\u2019t see anybody but Gordon, the camera, Dustin. I couldn\u2019t see where Alan was. It was set up for causing great tension.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scene is a study in gimlet-like persistence and the psychological toll of whistleblowing. The relentless Bernstein keeps pushing the bookkeeper, who is caught between conscience and fear but will become the first source within the Committee to Re-elect the President<\/a> to confirm the existence of a secret slush fund.<\/p>\n

Alexander remembers it all vividly. \u201cIt\u2019s probably one of the favourite scenes I\u2019ve ever done in my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI always felt that Alan directed it so beautifully and I\u2019m told by a number of acting teachers that they use that scene in classes for people to learn and watch very carefully.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, it looks like it\u2019s in one take; of course, it\u2019s not. There\u2019s a lot of cutting but it\u2019s just the two of us and he only uses two angles for both of us. Dustin was always leaning forward. It was tight, it was tense. Now, why did I even let him in the room? Because I need to tell somebody this story. With Bernstein like that, so upfront, I don\u2019t know if I can do it and I don\u2019t know if this is the right person. Woodward would probably have been easier to divulge everything to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander makes a briefer, second appearance later in the film when Woodward and Bernstein return to her house and find her sitting on her porch. \u201cWhen you have Bob come into it outside, I\u2019m more ready and we never hear what I fully say but I\u2019m going to spill all the beans.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she first saw the film at the Kennedy Center<\/a> premiere, before an audience of 1,100 people, Alexander was awed. \u201cIt was incredible. I still think it\u2019s one of the great films of all time. It\u2019s the only one I watch every two years that I\u2019ve been in. It holds up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in All The President\u2019s Men. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive<\/p>\n

All the President\u2019s Men ranks alongside His Girl Friday, Citizen Kane, Ace in the Hole, Sweet Smell of Success, The Killing Fields, The Paper and Spotlight as one of the best films about newspaper journalists plying their trade. It is the definitive procedural account<\/a> of reporters joining the dots between a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building, Nixon\u2019s reelection campaign and the White House.<\/p>\n

Redford\u2019s curiosity had been piqued when, weeks after the break-in, the topic came up with reporters during a publicity tour for his film The Candidate<\/a>. He devoured the Washington Post\u2019s industry-leading reports on the Watergate story. When he read a profile of the paper\u2019s odd couple \u2013 Bernstein, a liberal Jew who wore his hair long, and Woodward, a Waspy Republican who served in the navy \u2013 he saw their cinematic potential.<\/p>\n

Years later Redford told the Washington Post<\/a>: \u201cI thought that was a real great character study. Two guys that couldn\u2019t be more different. Different religions, different politics, different everything. And yet they had to work together, and they didn\u2019t like each other very much. I said, \u2018Boy, that feels like a good, interesting little black-and-white film to me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But when Redford approached Woodward about a possible film, he was rebuffed. Speaking by phone this week, Woodward, now 83, recalls: \u201cCarl and I were in the middle of covering the story and focused on that and so the idea of a movie, and the idea it focusing on the relationship between Carl and myself, just seemed impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t make sense. We were busy and Redford kept calling and insisting, \u2018This is the way to tell this story\u2019. Carl and I both thought, yeah, maybe from his end it\u2019s the way to tell the story but we did not see it initially.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, like the tenacious men he was seeking to portray, Redford persisted and, when he learned that Woodward and Bernstein were contracted to write a book about their Watergate<\/a> investigation, duly bought the film rights for $450,000, a hefty sum at that time.<\/p>\n

Goldman\u2019s first screenplay, however, did not go down well. It was full of Hollywood liberties including descriptions of women as \u201cdelicious looking\u201d, \u201cleggy\u201d and owning \u201cthe best boobs in Virginia\u201d. Woodward scribbled \u201cNo!\u201d or \u201cWrong\u201d in the margins numerous times. Woodward says: \u201cThe first draft had lots of jokes and as Carl said, it was kind of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Bernstein Take on the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bernstein and his then partner Nora Ephron<\/a> had a go at writing a screenplay but could not resist overdoing Bernstein\u2019s own heroism. Goldman was offended and later described the intervention as \u201ca gutless betrayal\u201d. But Pakula came on board and, along with Redford, kept honing the screenplay, excising the back stories of Woodward and Bernstein\u2019s personal lives to make something leaner and sparer.<\/p>\n

Woodward recounts: \u201cPakula and Redford came to Washington, stayed at the Madison Hotel across from the Post and we talked to them regularly to answer the questions of what happened. We had some notes, we had drafts of stories and so they sucked it up out of us like reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good experience for us to see somebody come and kind of take over your story, which is what they were doing and what they did and it worked because it was, quite frankly, honest. It was not a mistake-free endeavor and we laid out the mistakes and the tension between us and how Bradlee and other editors at the Post responded.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cIn reporting you are always asking the question, what\u2019s the next story? What\u2019s the next level and driving to that. That was the whole spirit of the making of this movie that was adopted by Pakula, all of the people who worked on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nixon himself only appears on TV screens. But there is a dramatisation of Woodward\u2019s late-night meetings in car park with a secret source known as Deep Throat<\/a> who urges: \u201cFollow the money.\u201d Woodward says: \u201cThey really got it and they got the lump in your stomach atmosphere exactly right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward with Robert Redford at the premiere of All the President\u2019s Men in Washington in April 1976. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n

Redford and Hoffman learned each other\u2019s lines so they could interrupt each other in character and give their joint interviews extra authenticity. They were also diligent in their research. Hoffman spent nearly four months in the Post office, speaking to reporters about their jobs, sitting in on meetings and listening in on their phone conversations as well as spending time with Bernstein socially.<\/p>\n

Redford, who had just appeared opposite Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were<\/a>, was arguably Hollywood\u2019s hottest sex symbol. But for Woodward, that was not quite the blessing it might have seemed. He says: \u201cWhen the movie came out, I remember, I was unmarried and I would meet women, or somebody would say you ought to take so and so out, and so I\u2019d call on the phone and identify myself and say, how about a date Friday night? \u2018Oh yeah, that\u2019d be great.\u2019 \u2018I\u2019ll pick you up at seven o\u2019clock, eight o\u2019 clock.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI go there to the house or apartment and I remember this twice at least: I\u2019d knock at the door and the woman would open the door and look at me and you could realise subconscious levers in the subterranean world of expectation that thought it was Robert Redford<\/a> but it was me. The door would open with a real smile and then she\u2019d look at me, realise it\u2019s not Redford and it would go from this high expectation to bargain basement low expectation. I\u2019ve seen disappointment a number of times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodward considered the casting of Robards as Bradlee a masterstroke \u2013 \u201cSeparated at birth. They\u2019re so alike\u201d \u2013 and remembers when a Saturday morning when a rough cut of the film was first shown to Post staff, who were anxious about what they would see. \u201cThere were a lot of tight sphincters about that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBradlee told the story: he\u2019s sitting there in this theatre watching and had his arms behind his head, which is something he did and, in the movie that\u2019s on the screen, Robards puts his hands behind his head. Ben\u2019s sitting there watching it. It was a jolt. He\u2019d kind of been caught.\u201d<\/p>\n

Producer Walter Coblenz\u2019s<\/a> commitment to specificity in the look of the film was no less remarkable. At one point he visited Woodward at his home. \u201cHe said, I want to have somebody come and take pictures of your apartment. We want to know what it\u2019s like for the movie. Then I was sitting in a chair and he said, \u2018Even better, how about if I buy some of your furniture?<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, OK. He said, the chair you\u2019re sitting in, I\u2019ll give you $150. He bought that, bought some table, bought some lamp, God knows what else he bought. But I remember I thought this was a kind of realism on steroids and it reflected Redford\u2019s, Hoffman\u2019s, Pakula\u2019s quest for realism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This forensic approach extended to the Washington Post\u2019s office, which was painstakingly duplicated on a sound stage in in Burbank, California. Leonard Downie<\/a>, who worked on Watergate as deputy metro editor, recalls that Pakula\u2019s production team took 1,000 photos in the newsroom along with meticulous notes.<\/p>\n

In his memoir, All About the Story<\/a>, Downie writes: \u201cCopies of the same works of art hung in the soundstage newsroom, along with 1972 calendars displaying the correct date for each scene. The movie newsroom contained the same two hundred desks, plus the same wastebaskets, Teletype, Telex, fax and photo machines, typewriters, telephones and other equipment, and even books.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phones had the correct extension numbers on them, and 1972 phone directories were on the desks. All the equipment and technology worked. Unseen actors played the appropriate people on the other end of the line for Woodward and Bernstein\u2019s telephone calls.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was more: \u201cThe Post sent packing crates of used paper, unopened mail, old galley proofs, and other trash from our newsroom to scatter on the desks on the movie set. It also reprinted the front pages of seventeen different editions of the Post for placement on the desks on days depicted in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a phone interview, Downie, 83, who was executive editor of the Post from 1991 to 2008, says he was impressed by the accuracy of the portrayal. \u201cWoodward is hard to depict because he\u2019s not a colorful person. Redford was fine as Woodward. Dustin Hoffman<\/a> was Carl Bernstein. He was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Robards\u2019 performance struck a chord with Bradlee, Downie recalls. \u201cHe\u2019s either talked to Bob and Carl about a story not being ready late at night and then he goes off towards the elevators, and as he\u2019s moving through the newsroom, he kind of reaches out and taps the desk. We never saw Ben do that until the movie and we always saw Ben doing that after the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford on screen. Photograph: taken from picture library<\/p>\n

Downie worked as a script as a consultant for Steven Spielberg\u2019s 2017 film The Post<\/a>, which was a prequel of sorts, dramatising the Washington Post\u2019s publication of the 1971 Pentagon papers and, unlike All the President\u2019s Men, includes publisher Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) among its characters.<\/p>\n

In Pakula\u2019s film, Graham only appears by name when the attorney general, John Mitchell, threatens over the phone: \u201cYou tell your publisher, tell Katie Graham she\u2019s gonna get her tit caught in a big wringer if that\u2019s published.\u201d Goldman\u2019s screenplay did in fact include a four-page scene in which Graham, to be played by Geraldine Page<\/a>, questions Redford about Deep Throat but it did not make the final cut.<\/p>\n

Graham had initially been sceptical about the project and Redford\u2019s decision to use the Washington Post\u2019s name. Woodward says: \u201cShe initially was, \u2018Oh great, I\u2019m glad I\u2019m not in it, \u2018and then when she saw the movie she did an about face and said, \u2018Why am I not in the movie?\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s family still regret the omission. Her son Don Graham<\/a>, who joined the Post in 1971 and later became publisher himself, says by phone from his home in Washington: \u201cThe one missing character in All the President\u2019s Men is Katharine Graham. That newspaper does not have a publisher and that was an outrage, righted later by Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham, who is now 80 and runs a scholarship fund<\/a> for undocumented immigrant students, adds: \u201cShe told me Redford came to her and told her she would not be in the movie. She said, I\u2019m really hurt by that. She is a pretty meaningful character in the book: Bob and Carl are not guilty of failing to understand Katherine Graham\u2019s importance in this but movies are movies and they aren\u2019t documentaries and they don\u2019t depict everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Katherine Graham and Pakula became fast friends, and Don Graham hugely admired the film when he first saw it at the Kennedy Center on 4 April 1976. He says: \u201cI thought, this is an unbelievably accurate description of how much of the reporting worked. I thought, I\u2019m not sure it isn\u2019t too accurate, I think that most viewers will find this too slow. But that wasn\u2019t the reaction of most viewers. The tension built up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI admired how Pakula stayed true to how the reporting went, the calling people at night, the checks that don\u2019t work out, the mistake they made, the slow step-by-step, story-by story, interview-by interview pace of it. That was impressive to me and I came away feeling yeah, they got it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodward\u2019s then six year-old daughter was less awed, however. He says: \u201cI said, what did you think, Diana? She said, \u2018Boring, boring, boring.\u2019 Redford came for dinner one night. He came in the hallway and Diana was there and I introduced her to Redford. He looked down and she said, \u2018I know who you are. I saw you on television pretending to be my dad.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of Saturday\u2019s anniversary is acute. Redford died last year aged 89<\/a>. Donald Trump has added his name to the Kennedy Center and announced it will close for two years. The media is under attack and the Washington Post, sold by the Graham family after 80 years to the tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, recently slashed a third of its staff<\/a>. Woodward remains an associate editor.<\/p>\n

Bradlee\u2019s speech<\/a> at the end of All the President\u2019s Men resonates anew: \u201cYou know the results of the latest Gallup poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up \u2026 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing\u2019s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I\u2019m going to get mad. Goodnight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rustle of a notepad. The click of a pen lid. On a floral-patterned sofa sits Dustin Hoffman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-376212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}