All the King’s Men (1949) Directed by Robert Rossen (109 minutes)

This political drama film noir, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actor (Broderick Crawford), and Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge) in 1949, centers on the rise and fall of Willie Stark, an idealistic but ruthless politician in the American South, patterned after Louisiana Governor Huey Long.

Staring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge and Joanne Dru, this film is based on the book, All the Kings Men, a 1946 novel written by Robert Penn Warren that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947. Main character Willie Stark resembles Huey Pierce Long, the radical populist governor of Louisiana whom Warren was able to observe closely while teaching at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.