by Warren M. Sherk
In the summer of 1962, Dimitri Tiomkin sent his friend and frequent collaborator, the producer and director Frank Capra, a story titled, “Madame President,” to read.
Frank Capra photograph, inscribed by the director, “To my dear Friend Dimi, Frank Capra, 1959.” Capra directed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Lost Horizon, It’s a Wonderful Life, and You Can’t Take It with You. Image number: DT105 (8-inch x 10-inch publicity photograph).
In Capra’s rear-view mirror was Pocketful of Miracles (1961), a comedy starring Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, that would eventually become known as his final film. Capra’s take on the story of “Madame President” that Tiomkin was developing as a book and film project: “The writers can write.” He suggested the writers finish the project in book form to iron out the plot structure and then develop the story as a musical stage comedy that could be adapted as a motion picture. Capra felt the opportunity to try out the material before a live stage audience, “a shakedown run,” would benefit what might become, “one of those fun riots everyone dreams about.” “It’s a wild comedy but very amusing. The dialogue cracks with funny lines.”
Later that month, Tiomkin gave “Madame President” to Ted Loeff. Loeff, the founder of Literary Projects Company, the “long right arm” of the New American Library, a book publisher that initially focused on affordable popular titles and reprints. Loeff was a player in the book to film business, the burgeoning niche market in which independent producers would buy rights to unpublished novels and Loeff would arrange publication and tie-ins between the producer and publisher “to guarantee mutually profitable exploitation,” as noted by Andrew Dowdy, in his book on films of the Fifties.
Loeff worked as a publicist in Hollywood as early as the mid-1930s, as producer Sol Lesser’s publicity director in the 1940s, and went on to open a boutique agency that flourished in Beverly Hills in the 1950 and early 1960s.
Loeff was the closer on a six-figure deal with Columbia Pictures that made headlines, “TV publicist hits jackpot with book,” across the country from Port Angeles, Washington to Baytown, Texas to Brattleboro, Vermont. A television publicist, Peter Gilman, a 31-year-old graduate of UCLA, wrote Such Sweet Thunder—unrelated to the 1957 Duke Ellington album of the same title containing a twelve-part suite based on the work of Shakespeare—in his spare time while working at NBC. Rejected by New York book publishers, Gilman showed his manuscript to Joe Morhaim, a fellow NBC press agent who handled Groucho Marx and also typed screenplays in his off hours, who brought it to Loeff. Diamond Head, released in 1962, was based on Gilman’s novel. A detailed accounting of the film and its production history can be found in The Hard Sell of Paradise: Hawai’i, Hollywood, Tourism, by Jason Sperb.
“The competition for such material became intense,” writes Frank Manchel in Film Study: An Analytic Bibliography, Volume 1. “It even got to the point where studios were putting up thousands of dollars for ideas for books and plays, hoping that being in on the ground floor would ease the cost of purchasing the material once it was in print.”
In the fall of 1962, Tiomkin brought “Madame President” to the attention of Ferris Mack, an editor at Doubleday & Company in New York. (Doubleday published Tiomkin’s autobiography in 1959.) The manuscript Mack sent to three readers was admittedly not in finished form and needed some rewriting and polishing. The reader’s consensus was that sales would be slight and Mack was not optimistic in his report back to Tiomkin. “This story is of more interest to Madison Avenue people than to the public.” Biographical details of the “Madame President” co-writers, Beverly Lawrence and Frank C. Peterson, remain elusive. [Readers, if you have any information on Lawrence or Peterson, please email us at info [at] dimitritiomkin.com!] When the time came to return the manuscript, Mack wrote to Tiomkin, “I’d like to send it back to the authors, but I have no address. Should I send it to you, the well-known and beloved literary agent?”
In February 1963, research C. L. Closelooker, comparing British and American politics was quoted as saying, “History would be running true to form if John vs. Robert vs. Edward [the Kennedy brothers] brought about the ascendency of America’s first Madame President.”
Actress Polly Bergen plays the first woman president in the 1964 film, Kisses for My President, from a screenplay by Claude Binyon. The Warner Bros. film project was announced in June 1963.
Tiomkin had a close relationship with Jack L. Warner and Binyon was a collaborator on Tiomkin’s musical project, Sweet Surrender, in the mid-1940s, but there is no evidence that the similarly-themed projects are related.
“Madame President” may have remained an undeveloped story property; however, it is interesting to see where it fits within Dimitri Tiomkin’s chronology of becoming a developer of story properties, an optioner of film story rights, and eventually, a film producer.
Dimitri Tiomkin, the road to becoming a Producer.
Music soloist Galina Oleinichenko and producer Dimitri Tiomkin at a music rehearsal or recording session for Tchaikovsky.
1949-1951
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Secured financing for the 1951 film.
1953-1954
Singer John McCormack life story
Entered into an agreement to act jointly in conducting the negotiations for the sale and exploitation of the filming rights to McCormack’s biography.
1963-1966
Azef
Producer, controlled the motion picture, television, and radio rights, for the unrealized film project.
1964-1969
Mackenna’s Gold
Co-produces, after optioning the story rights.
1965-1966
Home Is the Sailor
Options the story rights.
1965-1969
Hermitage
Producer for proposed film for television.
circa 1966-1971
Tchaikovsky
Executive producer and music arranger. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign language film category.
Sources
Correspondence courtesy of Olivia Tiomkin.
“Hollywood … Film Shop,” by Patricia Clary, Daily New-Journal, September 27, 1950. On press agent, turned actor-writer, Joe Morhaim.
“TV publicist hits jackpot with book,” Port Angeles Evening News, November 11, 1959
“Vitality Termed Key to Success in Writing,” Los Angeles Mirror, October 13, 1960
“Kennedy Brothers Dynasty—And Madame President,” by Holmes Alexander, The Dothan Eagle, February 25, 1963. C. L. Closelooker may be a pseudonym.
“‘Presidency’ Film Role Next For Polly Bergen,” by Louella O. Parsons, Indianapolis Star, June 27, 1963
The Dimitri Tiomkin Collection at USC’s Cinematic Arts Library includes a photocopy of the story, “Madame President,” for a proposed screenplay.