Chapter 21: Hollywood's Vision of a Military Takeover Imagined in 1964
A Tale of Conspiracies, Coups, and the State of Democracy
“Seven Days in May” is a motion picture that premiered on February 12, 1964. It advertised itself as “The astounding story of an astounding military plot to take over the United States.”
The movie featured an all-star cast including Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Frederic March, and Ava Gardner. The screenplay was by Rod Serling, who made his name with a television series called “The Twilight Zone.” The director was John Frankenheimer, who two years earlier had directed “The Manchurian Candidate.”
“Seven Days” is the story of an attempt to overthrow the United States government. In this instance the conspirators are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The principal protagonists are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, James Mattoon Scott played by Burt Lancaster, and the President, Jordan Lyman, played by Frederic March.
Lancaster/Scott wants to engineer a coup to depose March/Lyman because the President has negotiated a treaty to dismantle our nuclear arsenal if the Russians do the same. Lancaster/Scott and his co-conspirators believe the Soviets will not keep their part of the bargain, and the United States will be destroyed as a result.
There are some similarities between this film and “Advise and Consent.” Both movies were based on best selling novels. Both featured a southern senator who plays a noteworthy role in the drama (Charles Laughton as Senator Seabright Cooley from South Carolina in “Advise” and Edmond O’Brien as Senator Ray Clark of Georgia in “Seven Days”). Both Laughton and O’Brien unfortunately have embarrassingly inadequate Southern accents. Both these movies were shot in black and white. And both movies are too long.
In the climactic scene of “Seven Days,” President Lyman, having discovered the conspiracy hatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, demands that General Scott resign. Scott refuses and storms out of the Oval Office.
It is worth noting that the character of General Scott was inspired by two right-wing generals of the time, Curtis LeMay, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and Major General Edwin A. Walker of the Army. These men were both fanatics. LeMay, who joined the Air Force when it was still part of the Army in 1929, apparently believed that the use of nuclear weapons would not destroy the planet.1 He was very unhappy about the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis and said, "Why don't we go in and make a strike on Monday anyway.”2 He ran as the candidate for Vice President when Alabama's racist governor George C. Wallace ran for the Presidency in 1968.
Major General Walker, who is referred to by name in the movie as among the “false prophets,” was accused of indoctrinating his troops with the wacky tenets of the John Birch Society. He called President Harry Truman “definitely pink” and also alleged that Franklin D. Roosevelt and other prominent Democrats had communist leanings.3 He was described by a well-known historian as a “right- wing demagogue.”4
When “Seven Days” was filmed, President John F. Kennedy said of the possibility of a Pentagon attempt to overthrow the government that, “It’s possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right.”5
According to the movie’s director, John Frankenheimer, “President Kennedy wanted the movie made. . . . The Pentagon didn’t. . . . Kennedy said that when we wanted to shoot at the White House, he would conveniently go to Hyannis Port that weekend.”6 (Hyannis Port is a town on Cape Cod where the Kennedy family has a good deal of property.)
One of the best scenes in the movie is the first one. Two lines of picketers are carrying signs in front of the White House. One line backs President Lyman, the other General Scott. The two groups start fighting, and the melee is well staged. This does indeed seem all too believable.
The clip below is timestamped to highlight the key passage. Please take a moment to watch the clash between the protestors - ends at 4:14
There is, however, one passage in the movie which stands out precisely because it is utterly unbelievable. The movie’s climax is the scene between President Lyman and General Scott. Lyman says, “I want your resignation. I want it tonight. . . .” Scott replies, “I will not resign.”
At this point, Lyman opens a drawer and takes out a set of letters. These are love letters that General Scott, a married man, wrote to his mistress. Lyman obtained them in an underhanded way. As you can see from the video clip below, the director wants the viewer to know that Lyman is considering using these letters to besmirch the character of Scott and put an end to his attempted coup.
And then. . . .
Lyman decides not to use the letters and puts them back in the drawer!
The clip below is timestamped to highlight the key passage. Please watch until 1:46:39.
This is astonishing. A President of the United States has in his possession material that he, as well as we in the audience, believe would force the resignation of a man leading a military coup, and the President does not use that material.
The first point that needs to be made is: In what universe would compromising material – however obtained – not be used in such a situation? In real life, these letters would either be thrown in Scott’s face or leaked to the press.
Second, although the audience is meant to admire Lyman’s restraint, there is nothing admirable about his conduct. Lyman himself tells Scott that if there is a military coup, a war with the Soviet Union would follow quickly. Given that calamity, failing to use every means possible to avoid it is incredible. No review of this movie which I have read makes this observation. (In the end, Lyman defeats Scott in a rather strained plot twist.)
The third point is a comparison between politics in 1964 and in 2024. Let us imagine that someone had letters he intended to use against Donald Trump. What could they possibly say that would prove a problem for him?
We already know about Access Hollywood and E. Jean Carroll. We already know that Trump was having sexual relations with a star of pornographic movies while his third wife was pregnant. We already know that he is a philanderer. We already know about his multiple bankruptcies and about how often he has refused to pay the bills of contractors. We already know that he is sloppy, to put it mildly, with classified material. We already know that he has a strange relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Donald J. Trump cannot be blackmailed.
As noted above, President Kennedy said that under certain extreme circumstances he could envision an attempted military coup. In the movie, General Scott is a figure with a large popular following who delivers rousing speeches to packed arenas. Moreover, his opposition to President Lyman is principled. It is not rooted in the desire to enrich himself personally. Is there a similar figure in the American military today? How many people reading these words can name the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? No need to bother with the Internet. He is Charles Q. Brown, Jr. He has no political following.
If there should be a revolution in the United States, if our constitution is overthrown, it probably will not be by an outside force acting illegally. It will more likely be accomplished from the inside, legally. It will take place not in order to gain power but rather after power is already achieved.
Donald Trump won the Presidency for a second time legally. If he wants to stage a revolution in this country, he will do it after he seizes power. After January 20. Nothing is happening right now.
That is why the lessons of Weimar Germany, some of which were referred to in the previous post, are so relevant to us today. Adolf Hitler attempted to overthrow the government in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. He failed. He attempted to overthrow the government after becoming chancellor legally in 1933. This time, from the inside, he succeeded.
Trump is not Hitler. Nevertheless, perhaps the man whom he chose to be his vice president, Senator JD Vance, was more accurate than he realized when he said in 2016 that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”7 That is to say, perhaps Trump has a number of similarities to what Hitler would have been if he had been an American.
One of the most troubling traits of the Weimar Republic was its inability to defend itself, especially from right-wing violence. In the words of one historian, “[B]etween 1918 and 1922, assassinations [in Weimar Germany] traced to left-wing elements number twenty-two; of these, seventeen were rigorously punished, ten with the death penalty. Right-wing extremists, on the other hand, found the courts sympathetic; of the 354 murders committed by them, only one was rigorously punished, and not even that by the death penalty. The average prison sentence handed out to these political murderers reflects the same bias: fifteen years for the left, four for the right. Right–wing putschists like [Wolfgang] Kapp, who had tried to overthrow the republic by force and violence – his associates committed several revolting murders – were acquitted, freed on a technicality or allowed to escape abroad.”8
Consider the case of Matthias Erzberger (1875 – 1921), the minister of finance. In 1920, a young officer attempted to assassinate him. Two shots were fired, one of which hit Erzberger in the shoulder. The gunman was convicted “not of attempted murder but of ‘dangerous bodily harm’ . . . and sentenced to . . . 18 months in prison, then parole after four months on ‘health grounds.’”9
On August 26, 1921, Erzberger was not so fortunate. Two assassins shot him multiple times and killed him. “With the help of well-connected authorities in Bavaria, the two assassins fled to Hungary, then returned in triumph to Nazi Germany in 1933. After [World War II] they were tried and convicted, but were soon released on parole.”10
Or consider the case of Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945). Hitler organized the “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich in 1923. He was captured. His trial “was degraded into a political farce; the court permitted the accused and [the] lawyers to insult the government in the most offensive and incendiary language.”11 Hitler was sentenced to five years in a minimum security prison on April 1, 1924. He served a fraction of this time, being released on December 20, 1924. Hitler was an Austrian and should have been deported. He was allowed to stay in Germany “because he thought himself a German.”12
Why does all this matter? Because on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump attempted a putsch to overthrow the results of a legitimate election. Because of the incompetence of Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith and also because of the complicity of the Supreme Court, Trump was never even brought to trial for his actions and his inactions that day. And he has promised to pardon the “January 6 hostages.”.13 What does this say about the vigor with which the United States defends its own democracy? The Weimar experiment failed. Will the American experiment fail as well?
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2013/12/04/the-ghost-of-curtis-lemay/
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2018) p. 524.
https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/seven-days-in-may-remembrance-of-books-past; https://time.com/archive/6871315/armed-forces-i-must-be-free/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
Schlesinger, Kennedy, p. 450.
Schlesinger, Kennedy, p. 450.
Schlesinger, Kennedy, p. 449, Note at the bottom of the page (electronic version).
Haley BeMiller, “Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance questioned whether Trump is like Hitler in 2016 messages,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 20, 2022, accessed July 16,2024; Savannah Kuchar, “In First Interview as VP Candidate, JD Vance Explains Why He called Trump, ‘America’s Hitler,’” USA Today, July 16, 2024, accessed July 16, 2024. Vance explained, “I don’t hide from that. I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016, but President Trump was a great president and he changed my mind.”
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Norton, 2001) pp. 34-35.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Erzberger
Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018) pp. 415-416, Note 18.
Gay, Weimar, p. 35.
Gay, Weimar, p. 35.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-promises-pardon-jan-6-rioters-day/story?id=116577153; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0jen70m88o