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Wilson is a 1944 American biographical film about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. Shot in Technicolor and directed by Henry King, the film stars Alexander Knox, Charles Coburn, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Thomas Mitchell, Ruth Nelson, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price, William Eythe and Mary Anderson. Darryl F. Zanuck, then head of 20th Century-Fox, was an ardent admirer of Wilson and personally oversaw production. Character actor Alexander Knox was cast in a rare leading role as Wilson who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.
Wilson received critical acclaim, earning ten nominations at the 17th Academy Awards and winning five, including Best Writing, Original Screenplay. However, it was a box office bomb due to its unusually high budget. Zanuck was so disappointed over the failure of the film that for years he forbade Fox employees from mentioning the film in his presence.
Production
Development
Wilson was initially intended as a historical drama about a fictional American family living during the Progressive Era before being rewritten by Lamar Trotti into a biopic about Woodrow Wilson. Journalist Ray Stannard Baker, an authority on Wilson, served as an adviser.
Casting
Before Knox was cast as Wilson, Ronald Colman and Frank Conroy were considered. Claudette Colbert was also considered for one of Wilson's wives. Ernest Palmer was hired as cinematographer but had to be replaced by Leon Shamroy after falling ill, while James Basevi quit as art director due to disagreements with the rest of the crew. Ticket sales were damaged due to the United States Department of War prohibiting the film's exhibition on Armed Forces bases during World War II under provisions of the Soldier Voting Act against the screening of political material that could influence elections such as the ones about to be held on November 7, 1944.
The film's unusually high budget (US$5,200,000, equal to about US$90,000,000 today) caused 20th Century-Fox to ask a much higher rental price and an unusually high percentage of each admission, as confirmed by Variety: "Twentieth-Fox's deal on Wilson will call for advanced scales of 76c matinees and $1.10 evenings. Terms on Wilson, for which 20th is seeking quick release and dating, will be 60% straight from the first dollar but with a guarantee of 15% profit to the theatre. Twentieth-Fox will also demand extended playing time on Wilson." Theaters that usually charged 25 cents admission were forced to charge Fox's stipulated $1.10 admission (US$19.95 in 2025) for Wilson, keeping customers away in droves.
Critical response
The film received generally positive reviews but was not without its detractors. The New Republic film critic Manny Farber was particularly unenthusiastic, calling the production "costly, tedious and impotent" while writing: "The effect of the movie is similar to the one produced by the sterile post-card albums you buy in railroad stations, which unfold like accordions and show you the points of interest in the city ... The producers must have known far more about the World War, the peace-making at Versailles, and Wilson himself, but that is kept out of the movie in the same way that slum sections are kept out of post-card albums ... About three-quarters of the way through, a large amount of actual newsreel from the first World War is run off and the strength of it makes the film that comes before and after seem comical." In The Nation in 1944, critic James Agee wrote, "No matter how friendly I feel toward Wilson and the people who made it, any such review would amount chiefly to a specification of occupational psychosis. With the best intentions in the world, Hollywood took a character and a theme of almost Shakespearian complexity and grandeur, and reduced the character to an astutely played liberal assistant professor of economics; the theme to a few generalizations which every schoolboy has half-forgotten... Every major problem, opportunity, and responsibility which the picture set its makers was, in other words, flunked—now through timidity, again through habitual half-blindness, and most of all perhaps through the desire to sell and ingratiate and essentially to render a two-and-a-half-hour apology for one sustained impulse of daring and disinterestedness."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a protege of Wilson's, screened the film for guests at the Second Quebec Conference in 1944. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, however, was no fan. He excused himself in the middle of the film and went to bed.
Awards and nominations
Despite lackluster commercial performance, the film received ten nominations at the 17th Academy Awards, winning five:
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color (Wiard Ihnen and Thomas Little)
- Best Cinematography, Color (Leon Shamroy)
- Best Film Editing (Barbara McLean)
- Best Sound, Recording (E. H. Hansen)
- Best Writing, Original Screenplay (Lamar Trotti)
Wilson was also nominated for:
- Best Picture (Darryl F. Zanuck)
- Best Director (Henry King)
- Best Actor in a Leading Role (Alexander Knox)
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Alfred Newman)
- Best Effects, Special Effects (Fred Sersen and Roger Heman Sr.)
Preservation
The Academy Film Archive preserved Wilson in 2006.