On April 23, Turner Classic Movies plays the great political comedy The Dark Horse (1932). If you think that political handlers, dumb candidates, spin and sex scandals are creations of contemporary politics, you need to see this gem from 88 years ago. A political party resolves its convention stalemate by nominating an obscure party regular (the gleefully dim Guy Kibbee) as its gubernatorial candidate. It happens that the dark horse is not merely a cipher, but is a vacuous buffoon who is challenged by the task of removing his own shoes. His own campaign manager describes him thus:
He’s the dumbest human being I ever saw. Every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge.
That equally ruthless and amoral campaign manager, brilliantly played by Warren William (the “King of Pre-Code”), presages modern political handlers with his skill, cynicism and shameless insincerity. He teaches his dimwitted candidate to answer every question with “Yes…and, then again, no.” William’s campaign manager is such a scoundrel that he must first get sprung from jail (by Bette Davis in one of her very first movie roles). There’s spin, staged photo opportunities and even crisis management, when the candidate is about to blunder into a potentially campaign killer of a sex scandal. And it’s still very, very funny today.
Here’s a sample: