From the Archives: Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 7, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush

Actors Jenna Elfman, Jasmine Guy, Hal Holbrook, Frank Langella, Richard Roundtree, and Patrick Wilson; novelists David Baldacci and Adriana Trigiani; directors Victor Levin, Barry Levinson, and Scott Teems; producers Katie Couric, Julie Lynn, and Paul Junger Witt; and political figures Andrew Card, Marlin Fitzwater, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Skip Humphrey – these are among the filmmakers and celebrities who will appear at the 2014 Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville to discuss their works and careers.

Festival director Jody Kielbasa announced this year's program at an October 7 press conference held at the historic Jefferson Theater. After the formal announcement, he spoke with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about documentaries and other films that will be screened during the weekend of November 6-9 at a variety of venues in downtown Charlottesville and on the grounds of the University of Virginia.

Holbrook/Twain
Among the documentaries, Kielbasa singled out “Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey, which I think is an incredible documentary.” Hal Holbrook, who has been performing as Mark Twain for 60 years, will offer a special performance of his award-winning one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight, and also offer comments about the documentary film.

Kielbasa also mentioned that “41 on 41 is coming in as part of the Berlin Wall series in association with the Miller Center.” That film, he said, looks at “41 different people who comment on our 41st president, George H.W. Bush. Obviously,” he added, “some of that discussion will wrap around the Berlin Wall, as well.”

The Berlin Wall series – marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Empire – includes five films, a mix of fiction and non-fiction. The five are Dr. Strangelove, a 1964 Academy Award nominee directed by Stanley Kubrick; Red Army, a documentary about Soviet ice hockey players; Walesa: Man of Hope, Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s biopic about Nobel laureate Lech Wałęsa; German director Wim Wenders' fanciful Wings of Desire; as well as 41 on 41.

“For people out there who are not aware,” Kielbasa explained, “this year the University of Virginia was loaned four original panels of the Berlin Wall. They're encased in glass in front of the Alderman Library. I'm also responsible for a series of programs over an eight-day period leading up to the 25th anniversary” of the wall's destruction, “which actually happens on November 9, the last day of the Virginia Film Festival.”

Presidents and Elections
In conjunction with the UVA Center for Politics, the festival will present the premiere of Bombs Away: LBJ, Goldwater and the 1964 Campaign That Changed It All, followed by a panel discussion featuring former California Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr., and former Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey. The film, Kielbasa said, takes “a fascinating look at Goldwater and LBJ and that incredible election and everything that was going on leading up to 1964.”

The Miller Center for Public Affairs is sponsoring a screening of Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard's film of the award-winning play about the interviews of Richard Nixon conducted by British TV host David Frost. Afterward, Frank Langella, who played Nixon in the film, will talk about his experience with historian Ken Hughes.

Kielbasa, now in his sixth year as festival director, also pointed to two major films made in Virginia that will be shown at the festival.

Big Stone Gap
“Our world premiere, the opening night film,” he said, is “Big Stone Gap, which was filmed entirely on location in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and is about that community.” That screening will include a panel discussion with writer/director Adriana Trigiani as well as several of the stars of the film.

The other high-profile made-in-Virginia film, he added, “is Wish You Well, based on the novel by David Baldacci.” Baldacci will be on hand to discuss the film, which is a coming-of-age story set in 1940s Virginia.

Kielbasa is also excited that director Barry Levinson will be at the Festival to discuss his latest film, The Humbling (starring Al Pacino) as well as his 1989 film, The Natural (starring Robert Redford).

“I know that film gets played a lot,” he explained, “but to able to listen to Barry Levinson talk about the making of that film should be extraordinary and, quite frankly, people consider it one of the best sports movies ever made.”

The 27th annual Virginia Film Festival will also screen a number of likely Oscar contenders, including The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, Wild, and Mr. Turner.

“These are incredibly high-profile films,” Kielbasa said, “and in most cases we'll be screening them anywhere from two weeks to two months in advance of their general release.”

SUGGESTED LINKS

Porn king Larry Flynt defends free speech in Charlottesville
Library of Congress collects pornographic films, violent video games
Filmmaker Stanley Nelson on ‘Freedom Riders,’ the news media, and civil rights
Virginia Film Festival to include documentaries on Kennedy, Nixon, Santorum
Jody Kielbasa previews political movies in 2012's Virginia Film Festival

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/va-film-festival-to-feature-politicians-from-goldwater-lbj-to-nixon-bush

From the Archives: Monique Luiz, 'Daisy Girl' from controversial 1964 campaign ad, speaks at UVA

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on October 15, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Monique Luiz, 'Daisy Girl' from controversial 1964 campaign ad, speaks at UVA

On September 7, 1964, Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign bought time during NBC's “Monday Night at the Movies” for a 60-second ad that showed a little girl plucking the petals off a flower, followed by a nuclear mushroom cloud and an excerpt from one of Johnson's speeches.

Long known as the “Daisy Girl” ad (although the flower was a dandelion, not a daisy), the spot – for which NBC charged $24,000 – was produced by the Madison Avenue firm of Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), which had not previously done political ad-making. It was tremendously controversial and, along with other DDB ads that aired in 1964, changed the style and substance of campaign advertising.

The little girl in the ad was 3-year-old Monique Corzilius, who had earlier appeared in print ads but had not acted on film. (She later went on to perform in commercials for products like Kool Pops and SpaghettiOs.)

Now known as Monique Luiz, the “Daisy Girl” participated in a panel discussion hosted by the University of Virginia Center for Politics on October 15, along with Robert Mann, author of Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad That Changed American Politics, and veteran journalist Sid Davis, who was a White House correspondent in the early 1960s, covered the 1964 campaign, and was present at President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Red hair stands out
After the panel, Luiz answered a few questions posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about her role as the “Daisy Girl” and the reactions to it.

For more than four decades, Luiz did not acknowledge that she was the girl in the ad. In 2009, however, she discovered that another woman was claiming to be her and was trying to capitalize on the TV spot's notoriety. Luiz came forward with documentation that she was the authentic “Daisy Girl” and subsequently was interviewed by Mann for his book, which is how she came to appear at UVA this week.

When she auditioned for the part, neither she nor her parents knew that DDB was making a political ad. She stood out among the many little girls who tried out because of her red hair, and also because her father was persistent.

“I think it was my father who sold them” on the idea “that I could do it,” she recalled. “He pretty much said, 'I can't guarantee anything but she'll try.'”

Listening closely to her in the commercial, one can hear exasperation in little Monique's voice. That was, in part, because the final cut was taken from the 27th take in a long day of filming.

Surprise
Even after filming, Monique's parents did not know how the footage would be used. They found out by seeing the ad on TV.

Their reaction, as she remembered it, was: “'Oh my gosh, it's Monique! She's in a political ad!'”

After the ad appeared on TV for the first time, and it was repeated on news shows in the days that followed, there was a negative reaction, coming from the general public, causing her grandmother, in particular, to become “very concerned about it.”

As she was growing up, Luiz chose not to reveal her association with the ad, and she ended her modeling career at age 7 or 8, preferring to focus on school and normal girlhood.

“I knew about [the controversy] and I just avoided it. I remember my grandmother saying, 'Don't say you're the Daisy Girl! Don't say you're in that ad!' So I grew up not wanting to talk about it.”

For all the publicity that surrounded the “Daisy Girl” ad, Monique Corzilius was paid just one hundred dollars for appearing in it – which seemed pretty substantial in 1964.

As Luiz recalls now, with a smile, “I remember my parents saying, 'Wow! You made a lot of money.'”

The “Daisy Girl” ad is available in several forms on YouTube. Here is a link to one of them.

SUGGESTED LINKS

UVA Center for Politics commemorates 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates
Larry Sabato discusses Cuccinelli, McAuliffe, Sarvis in 2013 election
Lee Harvey Oswald colleague recalls aftermath of Kennedy assassination
Witness to 1963 Kennedy assassination speaks at Virginia Film Festival
JFK was 'cautious, conservative' says UVA political scientist Larry Sabato

Original URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/monique-luiz-daisy-girl-from-controversial-1964-campaign-ad-speaks-at-uva

100 Years of LBJ

The Dallas Morning News notes that today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. There will be several events in Texas commemorating LBJ's birthday, including:

AT THE RANCH

The late president's two daughters and others will celebrate his birthday at the LBJ Ranch near Stonewall. LBJ's working office at the ranch, which was the Texas White House from 1963 to 1969, will be open for tours.

AT THE LIBRARY

A party – open to the public – will be held at the library in Austin, which will open a new exhibit, To the Moon, the U.S. space program in the 1960s.

Radio station KLBJ -- naturally -- offers more details on the celebrations in Austin:

Today would have been LBJ's 100th birthday, so the Presidential library here in Austin is throwing a party; complete with bar-b-que, peach ice-cream and Fresca... It *was* President Johnson's favorite soft-drink.

Dr. Betty Sue Flowers - Director of the LBJ Presidential Library says today also has other significance... It was on this date in 1964 he accepted the Democratic nomination for President.

The celebration will be held from 6 to 8 tonight on the lawn in front of the library, and yes, they will have the Democratic Convention on the big screen... just as LBJ would want it.

More information about the centennial celebration can be found at LBJ100.org.

As it happens, almost precisely one year ago, I was in Austin and had the opportunity to tour the LBJ Library and Museum, which is on the campus of the University of Texas.

I posted some video from that visit (which was on August 29, two days too late for LBJ's 99th birthday) on the anniversary of President Johnson's famous announcement of his decision not to seek re-election, but it seemed appropriate to post it again today, given the historical significance of the day and the coincidence of it taking place during the Democratic National Convention.

Part I is largely a montage of images and sounds from the main exhibition area of the museum. It includes some items meant to evoke the pop cultural reference points of Johnson's life, and especially of the turbulent 1960s, when LBJ served as president.

One highlight is a recording of Lady Bird Johnson recalling, in her own words, the events of November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Other images are meant to recall Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!, and the Vietnam War as reported on television. (One exhibit refers to 1968 as "The Nightmare Year," with its assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy -- two events we have been remembering this year, forty years on.)

The library displays many letters written by and to President Johnson, including letters from Barry Goldwater (who lost the 1964 election to Johnson but sparked a political revolution in the process) and the Smothers Brothers (whose CBS-TV show was canceled in large part because of their satiric barbs aimed at the President and his Vietnam War policies).

Part II begins with a rather creepy animatronic rendering of President Johnson in a stable at the LBJ Ranch, with recordings of him telling funny stories on various occasions, including an anecdote about Winston Churchill. Part II also includes pictures of the reproduction of the Oval Office that has been installed in the LBJ Library and Museum, which is 0ne-eighth smaller than the real one in the West Wing of the White House. (For a look at the Reagan-era Oval Office, check out the video I posted of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. I visited the Reagan Library just about one month before my trip to Austin last year.)

This part also features more Carol Channing memorabilia. (Hello, Dolly! had its pre-Broadway try-out at the National Theatre in Washington, and its title number was transformed into the campaign song, "Hello, Lyndon!")

I happened upon a YouTube video of Walter Cronkite learning of President Johnson's death at the age of 64 on January 22, 1973, and breaking the news live on the air, which I have added as a bonus.

Cronkite's skills as a journalist are demonstrated by the way he segues from this unexpected news to a pre-written story about negotiations to end the Vietnam War. It's also interesting, by the way, given current global petroleum prices, how Cronkite ends the segment by saying "I'll be back in a minute with our report on the energy crisis." This was about ten months before the OPEC oil embargo precipitated what was the first energy crisis of the 1970s, with the second one due largely to misguided policies of the Carter administration, policies which are likely to be emulated by the Obama administration.

Part I:



Part II:

Bonus Video:

I wonder whether the LBJ centenary will be commemorated in any significant way at the Democrats' convention in Denver. Is it something worthy of prime-time, or would mention of a stubborn and unpopular leader who presided over an ill-conceived and unpopular war bring to mind undesirable parallels to the present day?