Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's movie is the 1976 historical political thriller about the Watergate scandal, "All the President's Men".

Alan J. Pakula directed from a screenplay William Goldman adapted from the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

"All the President's Men" stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, with Jason Robards, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, and Jane Alexander in supporting roles.

The film begins on the night of June 17th, 1972, at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. A security guard, Frank Wills, sees that the door's latch has been taped to prevent it from locking.

He calls the police, who searched the building and find five men have broken into the office of the National Democratic Committee.

The next morning, Bob Woodward, a young reporter for The Washington Post's Metro Section, goes to the local courthouse to cover the story.

He's surprised to learn the five men were using expensive surveillance equipment and are being represented by a high-priced attorney.

One of the accused, James McCord, reveals he used to work with the Central Intelligence Agency, and the other four men, all Cuban Americans, also have CIA connections.

They also have connections with a Nixon White House official, E. Howard Hunt, who works for Chuck Colson, the White House Council.

Carl Bernstein, another young reporter, is assigned to work with Woodward on the story.

And together they dig deeper into the burglary to discover what deeper story is behind it.

They're repeatedly met with silence and obstruction.

Ben Bradlee, the Post's executive editor, is not convinced there's anything to the Watergate story, and insists the two reporters find reliable sources to substantiate their findings.

Woodward turns to a source he's employed before, a highly placed government official he refers to only as Deep Throat.

They meet at night, at an empty Washington parking garage.

Deep Throat refuses to offer any information, but tells Woodward he will substantiate whatever the reporter finds out from other sources.

He also offers a word of advice, "Follow the money."

The break-in to the headquarters of The Democratic National Committee in Washington, was the initial incident that led to the major political scandal that became known as Watergate, after the complex where the burglary took place.

As the story slowly unfolded, it became clear that the real scandal was not the burglary itself, but the vigorous efforts by Nixon administration, and Nixon re-election campaign officials, to cover up the connections between those entities and the Watergate burglars.

"All the President's Men" portrays the beginning of the efforts by Woodward and Bernstein to uncover who and what was really behind the Watergate break-in.

The film covers the period from the break-in, in 1972, to Nixon's second inauguration on January 20th, 1973.

After that, Woodward and Bernstein, and later, other reporters at other newspapers, worked to uncover the full extent of the involvement in the scandal by officials in the Nixon administration, and ultimately, President Nixon himself.

In the wake of revelations connecting the Watergate burglary and the Committee to Re-elect the President, also known as CREEP, Congress became involved.

Hearings by the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Watergate Committee, led to the discovery that there was a secret audio taping system in the White House.

When the Supreme Court ruled that the White House had to surrender those tapes to government officials, they revealed that President Nixon had conspired with other top administration officials to cover up the connections between CREEP, the White House, and the five Watergate burglars.

Prominent Nixon administration officials, including former Attorney General John Mitchell, went to prison.

When the House of Representatives instituted impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, he was advised by Republican leaders that he faced a likely conviction in the Senate.

Richard Nixon instead resigned from office on August 9th, 1974.

The Watergate scandal produced staggering headlines and electrifying televised hearings.

But more than four years of political drama began with what Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, called, "A third-rate burglary attempt."

And the determination of two Washington Post reporters to uncover the truth.

Robert Redford became interested in the Watergate story as early as mid 1972.

As a result of reading Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's articles in The Washington Post.

He bought the film rights to their book, "All The President's Men", for $450,000 in 1974.

Later that year, he hired William Goldman to turn the book into a screenplay.

Goldman had previously written "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", released in 1969, "The Hot Rock" released in 1972, and "The Great Waldo Pepper" released in 1975.

All movies starring Robert Redford.

Goldman said Bob Woodward was very helpful to him, but that Carl Bernstein was not.

Goldman's major decision in adapting Woodward and Bernstein's work, was to restrict the film's content to events in the first half of the book and discarding the second half.

None of the principles was happy with Goldman's first draft.

Bernstein wrote his own first draft with the help of his then girlfriend, Nora Ephron, who would later write the screenplays for "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle", and "You've Got Mail", among many others.

Redford suggested some of their material could be worked into Goldman's script.

Goldman considered Redford's actions, in his words, "A gutless betrayal."

And ultimately, only one of the Bernstein Ephron scenes was included in the shooting script.

Goldman won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for his efforts, but later said in his memoir, "Adventures in the Screen Trade", that if he could start his career over again, he wouldn't go anywhere near "All the President's Men".

Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post, decided to cooperate with the production of the film to help ensure its factual accuracy.

In his memoir, "A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures", Bradlee recalled when Woodward told the Post's senior editorial staff, that Alan J. Pakula would be directing the movie.

Woodward said Pakula had already produced "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 1962, and directed "Klute" in 1971.

The response, according to Bradlee, was, "Big deal.

How does that help him do Dick Nixon and the boy journalists?"

Redford and Hoffman spent several weeks in the Post newsroom getting a sense of how the reporters worked and attending staff meetings.

The production crew went to great lengths to recreate the Post's newsroom as accurately as possible on a Warner Brothers sound stage.

Boxes of trash were shipped to the set in Burbank, and a brick from the newsroom became the model for the fiberglass versions used to decorate the set.

Nearly 200 desks, from the same company that supplied the desks for the Post, filled the set, painted the same color as those in the Post's newsroom.

The filmmakers even used faithful replicas of outdated telephone books.

Ben Bradlee wanted George C. Scott to portray him but Redford's choice from the first was Jason Robards.

When Robards visited the newsroom to get a feel for the place, Bradlee told him, "Just don't make me look like a jerk."

Except he didn't say, "Jerk."

After one visit, according to Bradlee's widow, Sally Quinn, Robards left and never came back.

But he absolutely got Ben.

Robards went on to win best supporting actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review, as well, as an Academy Award.

The reviews of the movie were enthusiastic.

Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times, "Newspapers and newspapermen have long been favorite subjects for movie makers.

Yet, not until "All the President's Men" has any film come remotely close to being an accurate picture of American journalism at its best."

Roger Ebert agreed in the Chicago Sun-Times, "It provides the most observant study of working journalists we're ever likely to see in a feature film.

And it succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the mixture of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage, that permeated The Washington Post as its two young reporters went after a presidency."

Unusually, for a serious political drama, "All the President's Men" was both a popular and financial success.

It earned over $30 million for Warner Brothers in the US on its initial release.

It is often shown to journalism students to give them some idea of what the life of a newspaper reporter is like.

Mike Canning, author of "Hollywood on the Potomac: How the Movies View Washington, D.C.", summed up the popular assessment of the movie in a retrospective review.

"It has become the gold standard for films on investigative journalism."

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Good night.