Melissa Wye Geraci

John F. Kennedy and the Artful Collaboration of Film and Politics Melissa Wye Geraci

This is the first historical analysis that reveals the depth and scope of the contribution that the Kennedy family, professional staff, and outside collaborators made in creating the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign image. Documenting the origins of this ground-breaking strategy as the combined result of both 1920s Hollywood film production and propaganda films in Europe during the 1930s, it sheds new light on the effectiveness of the Kennedy influence during the 1960s and up to the present. The Kennedy boundary-spanning approach to the development and dispersal of public/private information has since become an integral component of media-based politics. The business of enhancing the aesthetics of the run for the presidency through pictorial and cinematic representation has become an essential contributing factor in many of the more controversial aspects of Hollywood filmmaking, as well as a governmental propaganda resource. The work particularly examines the campaign film The New Frontier. With illustrations.