JFK’s portrait can be seen on the wall in the final scene where Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are in the embassy office. This film was released the first week of December 1963; about 2 weeks after Kennedy was assassinated. 1963 audiences must have still been shell shocked seeing this. On top of this, Hepburn has a line in the movie about how she could be assassinated at any moment
share"Shell shocked" is going a bit far. I bet most of the audience didn´t even notice it.
shareThe "assassinated" line was re-dubbed by Hepburn for the 1963 release(I have read.) It is certainly there in prints of Charade on DVD today.
I guess they put it back in.
Interesting. When you say it was “re-dubbed” are you saying they had her retroactively put another word in place of “assassinated?” Any idea what the replacement word was? Above, BillySlater suggests my take was a little exaggerated but, audiences in 1963 would’ve still been reeling from the Kennedy assassination when they watched this movie. Your point about the studio originally removing “assassinated” from the dialogue corroborates my take IMHO
shareWikipedia says eliminated was the dub.
shareThe photo is barely noticeable. Also, 2 weeks from release would have been way, way too late to reshoot the scene to pander to over-sensitive audiences.
shareNow you've made me wonder how long it took for the American embassies all over the world to change their official presidential portraits.
It might have taken longer than two weeks, because the Johnson administration might not have thought it tasteful to have the new president sit for an official portrait and ship copies out worldwide. But then, Lyndon Johnson was never known for his good taste and tact...
Now you've made me wonder how long it took for the American embassies all over the world to change their official presidential portraits.
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There is a scene in the new (2020) Netflix movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7" which shows some Department of Justice guys getting briefed on the trial in DC...on the day that the office they are in is having the LBJ portrait removed and the Nixon portrait put in. "You're here on a historic day," says the receptionist. While this is a fictional scene based on nothing, this scene is set in September of 1969 -- 8 month's after Nixon's inauguration. Perhaps the rule is to get all the photos out and mounted in one year. And likely the "other President's" portrait is simply taken down in the meantime.
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It might have taken longer than two weeks, because the Johnson administration might not have thought it tasteful to have the new president sit for an official portrait and ship copies out worldwide. But then, Lyndon Johnson was never known for his good taste and tact..
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There is ANOTHER scene in the episode of Mad Man in which JFK has been killed days before. Lead characters Don Draper and Roger Sterling remark that JFKS picture in the bar is still up. Interestingly there is no cut to the picture. They just talk about it.
All this fiction...what happened in real life? I don't know. I expect LBJ waited a decent interval before seeking to put his photo up all over.
And this: some places get great big portraits of the President to hang. But I've been in many government buildings where all that's up there is an 8 x 11 photo of the Prez.
Re the "Chicago SEven" movie, that was probably artistic license. I really doubt they looked up the actual day the portraits were changed, they just wanted to show the audience that the political climate was changing.
shareRe the "Chicago SEven" movie, that was probably artistic license. I really doubt they looked up the actual day the portraits were changed, they just wanted to show the audience that the political climate was changing
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Oh, I totally agree with you. As I do too much, I miscommunicated. That's what I was saying with this line:
"While this is a fictional scene, based on nothing..."
Indeed, as I take it, the true meaning of that moment is to establish that while LBJ's justice department under Ramsey Clark was NOT going to prosecute the Chicago 7, the "new" Nixon justice department, led by John Mitchell (who appears in this scene)WERE going to so prosecute...and the young prosecutor in the room here(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) thinks that's a bad idea.
"In real life," I would assume that photographs of the new President(and Vice President) are shipped to arrive at all federal offices everywhere the week after the inauguration. Easy enough to do.
But it is likely a good "historical question" how long LBJ waited to replace JFK's photo with his.
I imagine (based mainly on repeated viewings of The West Wing) that there would be a presidential portrait protocol and a responsible department to carry it out. The portraits would probably be in the diplomatic bags in good time to go on the wall on the day of the inauguration.
You could even speculate that they'd also have the vice-presidents photo in the same diplomatic bag just in case. And if they were not so prepared that they would swing in to action within a few hours of Johnson's unexpected swearing in.
The line was changed for the release, but later the original was put back.
shareThere was a review from an important critic -- Bosley Crowther of the New York Times -- that came out upon Charade's relase just weeks after the JFK assassination. The JFK killing rather poisoned Crowther's review -- as I recall, he felt the emphasis on bloody murders in Charade was not only distasteful, but indicative of the violent times that JFK's murder reflected.
And for 1963 -- and for a Cary Grant movie -- and for an Audrey Hepburn movie-- Charade WAS pretty violent, borderline gruesome at times. Quite a few individual murders. Opening shot on the bloody face of Hepburn's husband. One guy gets his throat slashed(red blood), another is tied up to suffocate with a plastic bag over his head. George Kennedy slashes Cary Grant's back with his hook hand and draws blood.
Charade rather mixed the action of Hitchcock's North by Northwest with the blood of Hitchcock's Psycho and helped advance the "violent action thriller" as we know it today. Things would only get MORE gruesome, what with Dirty Harry and Marathon Man yet to come in the 70s.