Martin Sheen -- who plays a fictional president on NBC's The West Wing -- was
said to be in a studio Monday narrating part of a three-hour Bravo documentary,
All the President's Movies, about the films that have been shown at the
real White House over the past 50 years.
The doc is slated to debut Aug. 7 at 7 p.m. and repeat Aug. 9.
It includes numerous revelations about film favorites and screening back
stories gleaned from first families, extended families, friends, Motion Picture Aassociation of America chief Jack
Valenti and even a retired White House projectionist.
According to insiders, here are just a few of those revelations:
• Franklin Roosevelt wouldn't see Gone with the Wind, in part because he
only wanted short movies with happy endings.
• George W. Bush's favorite: Saving Private Ryan (On Air Force One, his
viewing of choice is said to be tapes of Texas Rangers games).
• George H. W. Bush's favorite: The Longest Day.
The only president to screen an X-rated movie? Jimmy Carter. The film was
Midnight Cowboy, which received not only an X rating (in 1969), but best
picture, director and screenplay Oscars.
• The first film Carter saw in the White House: All the President's
Men.
• President Nixon watched Patton April 25, 1970, the same week he bombed
Cambodia.
• On the night that the Watergate was broken into, Nixon watched Skin
Game, starring James Garner and Lou Gossett Jr. as a pair of con men.
• Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower both liked High Noon, with the
former seeing it 20 times.
• But Pennsylvanian Eisenhower's favorite: Angels in the Outfield, in
which heavenly emissaries aid the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• Because of Robert Mitchum's bust for marijuana possession, Eisenhower would
"walk out of" any film in which he appeared.
