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What was the first movie shown in the White House?
Question
#6005. Asked by eddy. (Sep 14 00 8:14 PM)
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Luv2PlaGmz
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The first movie shown in the White House was D.W. Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation' in 1915. Woodrow Wilson was president.
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McGruff

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Because widespread black protests had greeted the staging of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman nine years earlier, both Griffith and Dixon decided to drum up support among prominent Americans for The Birth of a Nation in anticipation of the storm of criticism that would surely follow the film’s release. Dixon managed even to wangle an interview with President Woodrow Wilson; he screened The Birth of a Nation for the president on February 18, 1915 (the first film, in fact, ever to be screened in the White House). The film’s power and message reportedly overwhelmed Wilson, no doubt in part because his own scholarly writings figured so centrally in the film’s historical interpretation.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/episodes/birthofanation.html
Thomas Dixon, author of the source play The Clansman, was a former classmate of President Wilson. Dixon arranged a screening at the White House, for the President, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have commented of the film that "it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation
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