Washington Story (1952)

A reporter (Patricia Neal) suspects the "nice guy" image of a respected Congressman (Van Johnson) is all a facade and sets out to uncover the truth.

Log it

Sign in to log this.

Not read yet. Character is read in the background after the first visit.

No profiled raters yet.

A yes-or-no question, answered from what people wrote here, on TMDB and on Wikipedia. Never made up.

YesNoUnclear

No reviews yet.

Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Tastebuds's numbers.

CinemaSerfon TMDB · Nov 20236/10
Van Johnson is the congressman ("Gresham") content to toe the party line and play the political game in Washington DC. It's only when a bill is drafted that will impact on ship-building facilities in his Massachusetts constituency that he might have to take a stance! Meantime, a tabloid employs the services of investigative journalist "Alice" (Patricia Neal) to get to the bottom of this ostensibly decent man's true personality. Unawares of her real agenda, he agrees to allow her to follow his day-to-day life but as the decisive vote looms, she reaches her conclusion about him just as he, well.... Though Johnson and Neal take top billing, the film really belongs to Louis Calhern's savvy and wily "Birch" who sees something in "Gresham" that isn't entirely obvious to everyone else. Auteur Robert Pirosh certainly gives him the best witty and telling dialogue to deliver, and he does it well. The other two here rather go through the motions and though initially I thought it a bit like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) that similarity wained rather quickly. Still, it's a watchable look at just how the US Capitol might work: scheming, indifference, self preservation and keeping your he
Read the whole review on TMDB