For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

FLICK PICKS: Politics, Hollywood style

With this year's presidential race shaping up fact to be wilder than fiction, perhaps the scripted stuff offers more true insight than reality can.

Hollywood political films play Wednesday nights through September on Turner Classic Movies, starting with such on-screen campaigns as 1958's The Last Hurrah with Spencer Tracy and 1972's The Candidate with Robert Redford -- a savvy double feature this Wednesday (Sept. 3) at 8 and 10:15 p.m. ET.

They're followed by Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson in 1964's The Best Man (Wednesday at 12:15 a.m. ET), Robert Altman's 1975 Nashville (2 a.m. ET, photo above) and the 1932 Guy Kibbee-Bette Davis comedy The Dark Horse (4:45 a.m. ET).

Congress is at the heart of such Sept. 10 titles as Advise and Consent and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. On Sept. 17, it's presidents in action, both real and imagined, from Raymond Massey's Abe Lincoln in Illinois [right] to James Coburn's '60s romp The President's Analyst. Corruption comes into play Sept. 24, in All the King's Men and Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty.

See all the titles and times at TCM's rich American politics minisite here, along with some fun vintage movie trailers.

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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