Eric Rachut The subject of this biopic is Andrew Johnson, the President who succeeded Abraham Lincoln, the only American President who had no formal education whatsoever (and yet was a voracious reader), the only southern member of Congress who did not walk out when Secession arrived, the man who attempted to implement "presidential reconstruction" as outlined by Lincoln at the cabinet meeting on the last day of his life, and the first President to be impeached (the pretext being the ability of the President to dismiss a Cabinet appointee, a question later resolved by the Supreme Court in Johnson's favor). What dramatic material! But try to find a DVD of this movie! Johnson is condemned for his bluntness and, above all, for his racial views, which happened to be fairly similar to those of Lincoln. His great sin, however, was in considering the Constitution to be indeed the governing law of the land. In our current time he is condemned. The censors are determining what we can see.

Frank Lampard One gets an indication as to what fiction is being perpetrated very early in this film. It comes upon the death of Lincoln, when Andrew Johnson and his wife both state that he was chosen as Vice President by Lincoln because he wanted Johnson to be the man that replaced him if something happened to Lincoln. Say what!? Johnson was chosen by Lincoln for one purpose, to steal Democratic votes that Lincoln worried he might need in what was shaping up as a tight race in 1864. As it turns out, that ridiculous scene is one of the more believable scenes in this ridiculous farce of a movie. Johnson was a semi-illiterate, deeply racist, hotheaded, buffoon. However, this film paints him as one of the greatest human beings ever to grace this country. Would have loved to see how they handled his "Round the Circle" speeches, where a drunken Johnson cursed out anybody that raised a voice to him. This film was just plain silly.

Neil Doyle VAN HEFLIN as Andrew Johnson and RUTH HUSSEY as his wife both give earnest performances and the screenplay, while fictionalizing certain points for dramatic license, is a good one. But, as usual, history buffs are going to nitpick the inaccuracies to the point of dismissing the film as fiction. Not true. What it does do is make anyone who watches it want to consult the history books--and that's a good thing if you want to know the whole story behind Johnson being the first president in history against whom impeachment charges were made.As his adversary in the impeachment process, LIONEL BARRYMORE delivers another one of his more restrained performances without overdoing the ham. He and Heflin share some pretty dramatically effective moments, both of them in fine form. Heflin takes the character of Johnson from his humble beginnings as a tailor to his marriage to Hussey and his gradual emergence as a spokesmen for the people of Tennessee. For the sake of running time, it skips most of the years leading up to the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination, compressing all of those events and managing to keep the screenplay a tightly knit focus on the impeachment process itself. Only quibble is it fails to make clear the strongest point of the impeachment.VAN HEFLIN plays most of his role in appropriate age make-up (as does Hussey) and they're both terrific. In lesser roles, MARJORIE MAIN, REGIS TOOMEY and CHARLES DINGLE provide colorful support.Summing up: May not be a complete history lesson, but it will certainly cause viewers to probe more deeply into the detailed background of historical interest. And it does serve to remind us what a fine actor Van Heflin was in a demanding role.

bkoganbing Though Tennessee Johnson boasts fine performances by Van Heflin, Ruth Hussey, and Lionel Barrymore as Andrew Johnson, Eliza McCardle Johnson, and Thaddeus Stevens respectively, the wrong story about Johnson was told here.The accepted historical view of Andrew Johnson's presidency now is that had he been a bit more of a politician and also had been able to rise above the prejudices of his poor white class, the whole impeachment would never have happened. His actions through the use of the presidential veto in stalling the Reconstruction set racial equality in the USA aside for a century. Men of good will on both sides had they been willing to give a little might have settled on a compromise Reconstruction policy without all the rancor that characterized it and U.S. politics for decades.The real story is Andy Johnson's rise to the presidency. As is showed here young Johnson arrives in Tennessee escaping a kind of slavery of his own. He was an indentured servant to a tailor and learned the trade, but after differences with his employer in his native North Carolina, Johnson escapes to Tennessee.Andrew Johnson is the only United States president who never spent one day inside a school classroom. He was taught to read and write by the woman who later became Mrs. Johnson. There's was a real love story, one of the most romantic in our history.Johnson's real moment of courage was after a slow rise up the political ladder that saw him elected as Mayor of Greenville, Tennessee, the state legislature, the House of Representatives, governor and then senator from Tennessee. In 1861 he was the only southern Senator to not walk out of the Senate when the south seceded. He became military governor of Tennessee when the Union Army captured enough of it to set up a government. Johnson's very life was in peril every minute from the firing on Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender at Appomattox. That's a story worth telling.Unfortunately Johnson represented the poor white class in Tennessee and saw freed slaves as a rival labor force. He had all the prejudices of his class and wasn't hesitant to voice them. That part of the story is not told in Tennessee Johnson.I did like Charles Dingle's performance as Senator Waters, why he wasn't given his real name in history of that of Ben Wade of Ohio is beyond me. As President Pro Tempore of the Senate with no sitting Vice President, he was first in line of succession had Johnson been impeached. From what I know of Ben Wade, Dingle fitted the role well.Though it made good cinema, Andrew Johnson never addressed the Senate personally during his impeachment trial. There was an ill Senator who cast a deciding vote that saved Johnson's presidency. But unlike William Farnum's character of Senator Valley, James Grimes of Iowa had been felled by a stroke and no one expected him to be in the Senate that day. But he was carried in and voted not guilty.The real story of Andrew Johnson is one of the most dramatic about one who turned out to be one of our worst presidents. Too bad it wasn't told in Tennessee Johnson.