Kennedy was shocked by his balls. Stevenson was largely thought of as too-clever-by-half and effete.

Yeah, bad history, good movie. But movies are not supposed to be historical fact.

Thank you for the recommendation and for you kids playing at home, you'll be happy to know that The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845-1849 is available in the Kindle format at archive.org.

Yes, but Eleanor was a product of the Victorian/ Edwardian eras. Her writing is very 19th Century.

WOW! That is spot-on casting.

I may be conflating the two. It's been a while since I've read anything about Lincoln and that is from DKG and Ronald White.

I recall JFK asking if Lincoln would have been considered great had he had his second term. Cleaning up the mess of the Civil War might have made him tremendously unpopular and he also might not have been successful.

I came to Gore Vidal around 2007 when I saw an interview with him on the BBC which made me laugh my ass off. Then I started reading his essays, which are fantastic and provide an interesting view of history. He had to read to his grandfather, the Senator from Oklahoma, who was blind. So this kid had a doctoral-level…

I felt like we were being forced to eat our peas. Once the two guys recited the Gettysburg Address I knew we were in for some major league flatulence.

Lincoln was suicidal after losing Ann Rutledge's hand. I think he loved Mary Todd a great deal but between her craziness, his depression, the war, losing kids, it was just too much.

The short answer is the Reconstruction Amendments had the nuts cut out of them as part of the deal to put Hayes in office in 1876. Tilden won the popular vote but the Electoral College was in dispute (as were vote counts in many states). Long story short, the deal was Hayes gets the office with the promise that the…

Yeah, I was shocked a star would permit a scene like that at the end. For me it made the movie.

It is interesting that Hepburn was paired with Streep as Kate didn't think Streep was a good actress as she was "too cerebral and over-reliant on technique". Camille Paglia felt the same way.

I think the exaggerated Jimmy Stewart persona worked best in his small role in The Shootist.

My favorite is when he told Dahl he saw him "strangling that chicken".

Claude Rains is the whole key to that movie. I don't think he gets enough love these days. Probably because, like Cary Grant, he made it look so easy.

I believe this is because Jimmy Stewart was independent (after the war), much like Cary Grant did. It allowed them to play roles of their choosing and explore different depths of their personae. I think it was more obvious with Grant, who played darker characters (Notorious comes to mind). But Stewart locked into…

Perhaps we can get in on some of that Hamilton cash and produce Rove!.

All those Carter kids were in rehab. Those parents just spent all their money and didn't care about what happened to them. Of course, I am speaking from tabloid articles but as Lance Bass said in THR, "Where there's smoke there's fire."

That was a good article. I don't believe I have ever heard Aaron Carter sing (or Justin Bieber).