The history of film screenings in The White House did not start auspiciously.
On February 18, 1915, DW Griffith wound up his three-hour “The Birth of a Nation” in the East Room of the White House to a rhapsodic response. The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was a defender of the Confederacy and pushed “Lost Cause” propaganda, and he was literally quoted three times in film himself, including a comment praising the Ku Klux Klan.
It is widely accepted that after that screening, Wilson said of Griffiths’ film, immediately controversial upon release as it has been ever since, that it was “like making history with lightning.” If this choice as the first film ever to be screened at the White House is regrettable, take comfort in knowing that it was an earlier screening outside on the lawn of the 1914 Italian silent masterpiece “Cabiria” that was the very first film shown on the grounds.
These screenings began a history of film showing at the White House that has continued ever since, culminating in the conversion of a closet in the East Wing into the White House Family Theater, an on-site movie theater, in 1942.
Well, that was a story that lasted until October 2025. The movie theater was razed this week as part of the Trump administration’s demolition of the entire east wing to make way for a proposed $300 million ballroom. A lot of history was lost this week, but the cinema was part of it – and that should not be forgotten.
The White House Family Theater, which can seat 42, came about at a moment when Franklin Roosevelt’s administration recognized the unique power movies held over the public. This was a time when the average moviegoer went to the movies twice a week. And as America neared World War II, despite national polls showing that the American public was extremely isolationist and that Charles Lindbergh’s “America First” rhetoric had taken root, Roosevelt realized that closer ties with the American film industry might be in the government’s best interest. When the US finally entered the warsaid Roosevelt, “Entertainment is always a national asset. Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in time of war.”
Roosevelt created a bureau of motion pictures and also converted part of the East Wing of the White House to show motion pictures as a way to gauge the national mood. As White House Historical Society puts it, “In 1942 Roosevelt commissioned an East Terrace cloakroom called the ‘Hat Box’ converted into a cinema. Here the President enjoyed watching newsreels and took a particular interest in the battles being fought in Europe and Asia.”
Since then, movies shown in the White House Family Theater have been a matter of public record. Washington DC rare books store Other story books has a handwritten log of many of the films shown during the FDR, Truman and Eisenhower administrations, and it’s an eclectic list. FDR saw Paul Robeson in “The Emperor Jones” along with many Marie Dressler comedies. Many Disney films were shown to younger members of the Roosevelt family. And he even took films along the way, including the 1943 version of “The Phantom of the Opera” to this year’s Cairo summit and Howard Hawks’ masterpiece “To Have and Have Not” to Yalta. The last film FDR saw before his death was the Charles Laughton noir “The Suspect”, shown in March 1945 and featuring Crown Princess Juliana of Holland.
Decades before President Obama made the unveiling of his favorite movies each year an annual eventa pipeline of sorts from the White House to the Oscars took hold, beginning with a White House screening of 1948’s eventual best picture winner “Hamlet.” Eisenhower’s showing of “High Noon,” which he later declared a personal favorite, established that film as a go-to answer for presidents or would-be presidents when asked about their favorite movie.
The DC-Hollywood connection was then set for good under the Kennedy administration. On November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination, JFK saw the last film he ever saw, the second James Bond entry, “From Russia with Love” – he had declared Fleming’s original novel one of his top 10 favorite books.
Subsequent administrations would go so far as to maintain official screening records of all films seen at the White House Family Theater in their respective presidential libraries (although The University of Chicago Press compiled all of Nixon’s showingswhich featured some contemporary titles but leaned more towards Old Hollywood throwbacks). There are publicly available archives online through these libraries where you can see exactly what screened for POTUS during the Reagan administration, Bill Clinton’sand George W. Bush’s.
Jimmy Carter watched about 480 movies in the White House during his four years in office, including a pre-Cannes screening of “Apocalypse Now” in May 1979 with Francis Ford Coppola in attendance. A screening of Ingmar Bergman’s “Autuma Sonata” apparently drew 48 White House employees, beyond the Family Theater’s capacity. Carter’s film viewing even extended to Camp David, where he arranged for Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat to see a screening of “Star Wars” which they watched together in the run-up to the historic summit that led to peace between Egypt and Israel. Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore”? Displayed in the White House.
Movie attendance at the White House Family Theater arguably reached an all-time high during the Reagan years, not surprising given that the occupant of the White House was himself a former Hollywood movie star. But Reagan went a step further than his predecessors by leaving mini-reviews of the films he showed, as recalled in the memoirs of his press secretary Mark Weinberg, titled “Movie Nights with the Reagans.” Reagan’s tastes could be quite broad, and equally he was a staunch anti-communist Reagan told Warren Beatty he wished his movie “Reds” had a happy ending.
Later, Gwyneth Paltrow says so Bill Clinton dozed off and snored loudly during a screening of “Emma,” while Roland Emmerich recalled to THR how Bill Clinton watched the White House get blown up for a screening of ‘Independence Day’. George W. Bush took the White House Family Theater so seriously that he actually had it redone in red cinema to look like an old movie palace. Barack Obama showed “La La Land”, and Donald TrumpThe first movie he saw there was “Finding Dory.”
Now the White House Family Theater is no more.
