In ‘All the President’s Men,’ the Washington Post newsroom is in a non-denial denial
The depiction of women in “All the President’s Men” might nowadays be seen as deplorable.
Women are completely absent from newsroom editorial decisions. Female reporters are needed in this movie only for having dates with men who might have information about the Watergate invesigation. The beloved owner of the newspaper — a female — is never depicted, while the nearly all-white male execs get ample screen time as the big decision-makers.
It’s quite a departure from 2022’s “She Said.”
At its time, Alan J. Pakula’s “All the President’s Men,” though an extremely mainstream effort, was perhaps the most perfect film of the ’70s Conspiracy Era, which includes works like “The Conversation,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “The China Syndrome” and “The Parallax View” (also directed by Pakula) as well as countless others with maybe just a hint of government shenanigans. The shenanigans in “Men” were all real, all meticulously documented and certified in the court system, and the reporters are universally regarded as being on the front lines of the toppling of a presidency. The movie boasted big stars, great direction and provided a classic cinematic underdog upset victory.
Today, “Men” is strongest as nostalgia — not for the Nixon presidency, but the news media. A time when paper ruled, when there was no email and no texting, when seemingly everyone was in the phone book, when digitization hadn’t yet happened to everything, when strangers could knock on doors at nighttime and not activate an ADT alarm, when media was (comparatively) so limited, being informed was a treat that took effort. If you wanted political commentary, you didn’t click on a blog, you picked up a Washington Post, New York Times, any other large paper, or Time or Newsweek, or alternate sources such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Playboy, National Review. On television, you made weekly appointment viewing for PBS or “Meet the Press,” no VCRs or DVRs. Network television would be preempted for hours nightly for political conventions in which exciting things still could happen. There was a moat — providing news required some combination of money, licensing and stature.
Many would say the system is better now, and perhaps it is. “Publishing” a political observation (or a movie review) or even a whistleblower scoop requires nothing more than an X account. At any given moment, cable TV viewers and internet streamers can find endless political commentary of any persuasion. “All the President’s Men” reminds us that major publications used to be fortresses that developed extraordinary standards to serve their broad audiences and imply fairness, and that having one’s work produced in this media landscape took skill and persistence.
“All the President’s Men” is a master class in how to make a non-visual subject into something powerfully visual. It takes on a challenge with enormous headwinds — a movie about guys typing articles — and adds the spirit of a “Rocky,” a movie that coincidentally was released the same year and would thwart “Men” in some prominent Oscar categories. The fact that five men burglarized the Democratic headquarters and the fact that Richard Nixon resigned the presidency are perfectly straightforward. Everything in between those two events is probably, ahem, best understood by reading the newspaper articles. Or the book, which was actually published in “real time” in June 1974, with the Nixon administration knee-deep in scandal but not yet gone. This material, cinematically, in suspect hands, should probably require homework to be appreciated.
It doesn’t. Pakula uncovers drama in some beautiful places in the news business. Look at his stellar bookend scenes — the opening of extreme close-ups of a sheet of white paper in a typewriter, then keystrokes that sound like cannon shots, because those words are every bit as powerful as cannon shots. Pakula closes with TV coverage of a triumphant moment for Nixon while the reporters keep working in the background, then probably the most imaginative closing footnotes in a movie ever, the teletype machine rattling off the convictions of the president’s men.
Some of the most beautiful movie adventures are those that have nothing to do with guns. Woodward and Bernstein’s assignment is such an adventure. Pakula knows that when journalists are scrambling to meet a deadline, interesting things happen. He knows that daily news meetings, in which editors promote and dismiss a selection of “top” stories, are entertaining. He knows that people aware of activity that they don’t approve of have a certain incentive/disincentive for talking about it — they’re dying to tell someone, but not wanting to be a pariah.
Roger Ebert wasn’t quite sold but did give the movie 3½ stars. He writes in his opening paragraph that the movie “is truer to the craft of journalism than to the art of storytelling, and that’s its problem,” as “process finally overwhelms narrative.” Eventually, he writes, it’s too repetitive and too long: “the movie essentially shows us the same journalistic process several times as it leads closer and closer to an end we already know.”
He does not note that Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman, via Woodward and Bernstein, make significant contributions to the pop culture lexicon. “Watergate” and any scandal being called a “gate” were already entrenched before the movie. But the term “Deep Throat,” with Pakula’s shadowy characterization of Hal Holbrook, became the label for anyone with important secrets as well as a decadeslong parlor game. “Follow the money,” a quote from Deep Throat in the movie, was invented by Goldman, and has been heard in newsrooms and beyond ever since. (All Deep Throat, who serves as the Reliable Observer, really does in the movie, it seems, is assure Woodward that despite any mistakes they made, their stories are accurate.) “Non-denial denial,” not quite as famous, would describe news subjects who complained about stories without actually refuting them. Partly because of Nixon’s resignation, partly because of their book and partly because of this movie, “Woodward and Bernstein” are the most famous newspaper reporters in history, their names to this day used to describe any upstart who’s got a scoop.
Gene Siskel was far more impressed than Ebert, even including with his four-star review a sidebar about the mystery of Deep Throat. Siskel mentions key developments about Watergate and the Nixon presidency that are not depicted in the film and concludes, “It’s simply the reporters’ story, and it’s an exciting one.” Quite true. It’s also true that the reporters never once evaluate the administration’s actions, only their own stories. Woodward and Bernstein seem adamant about not expressing a point of view about the administration, only that they are uncovering news. (Opining on the administration’s activities has been a regular subject for the reporters ever since on the speaking circuit.) Is the movie missing a chance to make a greater statement — as to why this all happened?
“Motive” has been a conundrum of prosecutors probably since the beginning of prosecution. It seems like there’s a general belief that juries need to know why someone probably did a bad thing before condemning him/her for it. In the Tate/LaBianca murders, significant court testimony dealt with Charles Manson’s statements about “Helter Skelter,” in which a supposed race war was coming. O.J. Simpson prosecutors struggled to determine what, if anything, happened at the dance recital that day that prompted a gruesome attack, or whether it was the culmination of a history of abuse.
In “All the President’s Men,” the skepticism of Woodward and Bernstein’s stories does not actually come from the Nixon administration or even prosecutors, but from the Washington Post’s own newsroom. In a news meeting, a foreign editor tells Post chieftain Ben Bradlee that Watergate is a “dangerous story” for the paper. Exactly why covering the story would be “dangerous” isn’t clear, though that term meshes with some of the tossed-in paranoia of the latter half of the movie. The editor’s argument to Bradlee is, “Why would the Republicans do it ... I don’t believe their story. It doesn’t make sense.”
“All the President’s Men” is a triumph of believing facts, not what does, or doesn’t, make sense. There’s a saying in poker — it’s not the cards, it’s the faces holding the cards. Woodward and Bernstein, according to the film, learned just from the reactions to their questions, there’s something rotten here.
Robert Redford is the driving force behind the film. He reportedly paid $450,000 for the rights. In 2011, he explained that he had warmed up with political themes with “The Candidate,” his sensational 1972 political satire. “I already had issues with Nixon,” he said, and he became frustrated about a lack of follow-up coverage about the Watergate break-in. Eventually, he said, he kept seeing Woodward and Bernstein stories and read a “profile” of Woodward and Bernstein that intrigued him. Redford noted that “They didn’t care for each other,” that one was Jewish and the other a WASP, which curiously was the theme of the completely unrelated movie Redford was making at the time, “The Way We Were.” On that level — the opposites working together on a big project — “Men” is a bit of a bust. It might’ve worked if one of the two was a great reporter/terrible writer and the other was the opposite, but the movie never really indicates what each one’s specialty is. They don’t have enough arguments, there’s not a big split/reunion, there’s not enough contrasts of the two characters.
Redford said at first he somehow “didn’t get a call back” from Woodward in November 1972, and when he finally did, Woodward was “very chilly.” Woodward later attributed that reception to believing they were being put on, that they were under White House surveillance and that it wasn’t Redford calling. Eventually, they worked out an arrangement in which Redford would acquire the film rights to their pending book, and a studio would be enlisted. It is a Wildwood Enterprises Production, distributed by Warner Bros.
“I did not want to be in the movie,” Redford said in 2011, but when the studio bought the rights, it demanded he be in it. Redford curiously brought along his ’70s movie watch, a Rolex Red Submariner, that presumably would’ve been out of reach for Bob Woodward in 1972. Despite his excellent work as Bob Woodward, whom Redford resembled (enough) and who in real life has one of America’s great voices and manner of speaking, Redford is overshadowed by Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein. Woodward gets first billing in the Woodward and Bernstein tag, and he was the first of the two on the story, and he is the one with Deep Throat ... but in the movie, it’s Carl who makes everything happen.
Probably one of the original passive-aggressive movie characters (John Houseman in “The Paper Chase” a few years earlier was another), Bernstein can’t stop twitching, but his coffee-driven energy keeps the investigation moving from living room to living room. His scenes are always on the verge of either a big breakthrough or a big blowup. Initially, he stalks Woodward’s copy, somehow intercepting it before it gets to Woodward’s editor, and changing it. Woodward sees what’s happening out of the corner of his eye and confronts Bernstein. “I’m not looking for a fight,” Carl says, while explaining his version is better but how he’ll respect the outcome if Woodward thinks his own version is better. “I’m not looking for a fight either,” says Woodward, who announces that Bernstein’s version is better. It’s not that Bernstein did it, Bob says, but how he did it.
(In that confrontation, what Bernstein doesn’t say is that he is functioning there as an editor, and that almost any newspaper work, including Bernstein’s, after it’s done, can be improved.)
Redford, Woodward, Bernstein and Pakula eventually skipped what generally would be considered a necessary angle of a Hollywood film — romantic interests. Apparently, ex-wives and girlfriends were included by Goldman in an initial version of the film that Hoffman says made him vomit. By the final version, Woodward and Bernstein are depicted as bachelor workaholics in tiny apartments. There are no wives/girlfriends/kids who must be protected. That is a plus in terms of the movie not having tedious scenes of the worried wife pleading with the husband to back off of this endeavor for everyone’s peace of mind, but it’s a minus in that the two stars are devoid of the sexy charge that the opposite sex can provide. “A Few Good Men” is a great depiction of a male and female working on an investigation, not actually dating, but still pushing each other’s buttons in appealing ways.
Woodward and Bernstein do often deal with women, but only in coldly efficient ways. They actually push one female colleague to restart a failed romance with a man simply on hopes she can acquire a key document from him. (She agrees, and acquires it, and disappears from the rest of the movie.) Another time, they are told a key piece of information by another female colleague, and their response is to ask whether the information she’s sharing is reliable because the man who told it to her may have just been wanting to sleep with her. Whether the information was valid is left unsaid in the film, but it’s Ben Bradlee, not the female reporter, who will conduct the decisive interview.
Woodward and Bernstein will certainly argue forever that the people they interviewed possessed important information about the country that Americans deserved to know.
However, that information probably benefited Woodward and Bernstein more than any other human beings. They didn’t work at CREEP and blow the whistle on the conspirators — they persuaded others to do it for them. Is it fair to ask, in this movie, whether they seem “grateful” enough for what they’re being told? They did earn it ... but from people in agonizing situations through no fault of their own; people who want to report things that trouble them but don’t want to be pariahs. At best, Woodward and Bernstein offer only minimal encouragement that their subjects are indeed doing the right thing. Their most successful tactic at getting people to talk, according to the movie, is pretending to be clueless.
Woodward and Bernstein are clearly at a McDonald’s, based on the wrappers at their table, but logos are not shown. This suggests McDonald’s did not pay for any product placement (which may have been controversial for a film such as this one) but that the filmmakers wanted to show the reporters as low-budget everymen who didn’t have time to cook during these long days and would take a break with fast food. (Notice they are eating hamburgers and fries, not the Chinese food of “A Few Good Men” and other films of more elite types.) Around the Post newsroom, males typically have sleeves rolled up (or short sleeves, in some cases), collar unbuttoned, tie loosened.
The movie entertains at its daily news budget meetings. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that newspaper stories, and story ideas, get mocked at news meetings. That happens in “All the President’s Men” when an editor draws groans for suggesting Page 1 treatment for the “district home rule” story. Another editor bluntly declares in that meeting, “Nobody cares about the Dahlberg repercussions.”
An implication of the movie is that rather than being a slick operation, the Nixon conspiracy was carried out by a bunch of incompetents. However, the Post reporters aren’t spared from such implications either. They come up with ridiculous ways to get sources to “confirm” very important information, and sometimes they — or the source — misunderstand the goofy instructions. It’s fair to wonder how stories about significant White House wrongdoing could be greenlighted based on whether someone does or doesn’t hang up within 10 seconds. The key mistake — a big Woodward-Bernstein story said that an actual fact was told by Hugh Sloan to a grand jury, when Sloan actually didn’t tell the grand jury of this fact — would’ve been avoided by veteran reporters who would’ve more clearly questioned Sloan about details.
It almost certainly must be true that the vast majority of Woodward and Bernstein’s work in 1972 would’ve been making phone calls or researching documents in libraries. In fact, the most entertaining moments in the movie probably are people’s reactions to phone calls. Kenneth Clawson has a dog and a cat; Kenneth H. Dahlberg’s neighbor was kidnapped; John Mitchell has no idea if it’s 11 a.m. or 11 p.m. (which is also, by the way, a very late time to call a subject of a news story for a response).
Robert Redford and his watch.
The reporters seem to be able to reach VIPs on the phone rather easily. Woodward has spoken of how calls and messages get rejected but that people will talk when you visit them in person and that he and Bernstein found 8:18 p.m. a good time to visit people. Still, “All the President’s Men” surely takes some artistic license in implying that house calls were the norm. In real life, it just takes too long to get around town. People often aren’t home. Or they have company or are eating dinner. In “Men,” whenever Woodward and Bernstein pay a visit, standing on doorsteps, almost always in jacket and tie (that’s not really how it happens anymore), it’s always like the residents are just waiting for them, sometimes with a speech.
No question, the Nixon White House was obsessed with leaks. And it had the famous Enemies List. But the level of actual danger of the characters in “Men” might be something like that of “The Amityville Horror,” in which characters are convinced there’s something unnatural going on, and Pakula invites the audience to draw its own conclusions. Pakula, whose cinematographer is Gordon “Godfather” Willis, often films apartments or rooms with a recessed camera, dark, and then a door slowly opens with a framing of light. In scene after scene, people either imply, or bluntly declare, they or others are being watched, and are in some kind of danger. Are people being assassinated in public like in Redford’s “Three Days of the Condor”? That was not an article of impeachment against Nixon. Cameras will show the characters looking over their shoulders or back around corners. Generally, there’s no one there, but sometimes a car speeds by.
Hollywood found the collective effort of “All the President’s Men” more compelling than the star power. Redford and Hoffman were not nominated for Oscars, but Jason Robards (who won) and Jane Alexander (who lost) were nominated in supporting categories. The movie received nominations for best picture and best director and did not win, but its most interesting Oscar win is that of Goldman’s adapted screenplay. According to a 2022 Washington Post account, Goldman’s initial effort was ridiculed by the filmmakers and the reporters but was “bullied” into art by Pakula and Redford and the cast. Relationships went south when Goldman was asked to read an alternate script by Bernstein and his girlfriend, Nora Ephron, and promptly walked out of the meeting.
Jane Alexander at the 1977 Academy Awards.
Other Oscar wins went to George Jenkins and George Gaines’ art direction/set decoration and best sound (Arthur Piantadosi, Les Fresholtz, Dick Alexander, James E. Webb). Robert L. Wolfe was nominated for editing. Eight Oscar nominations and four hard-fought wins, in a year of juggernauts including “Rocky,” “Taxi Driver” and another prominent movie about media, “Network.” Pretty good.
The subject still moves voters. 39 years later, in a much different world of print media, “Spotlight,” a movie in which journalists take a similar approach to a sensitive topic, won the best picture Oscar, best original screenplay Oscar and received three other nominations. The subject of Richard Nixon perhaps doesn’t bring as many awards but is still inspiring new movies. Among many others, there was “Secret Honor” in the 1980s, Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” in the ’90s, “Frost/Nixon” in the 2000s, and there was “18½” in 2021. Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” was a 2017 best picture nominee.
Made for under $10 million, “All the President’s Men” was a big financial success. Part of that may have been a result of the rating. Gene Siskel revealed that the film was initially given an R, then changed to PG, confirmed by Redford in 2011. Siskel writes that he was told by rating code administrator Richard D. Heffner that “if a movie contained just one mention of the common four-letter word for intercourse, that movie automatically would get an R-rating.” Siskel said that rule was “waived” for “All the President’s Men” as Heffner cited the “historical and educational nature” of the movie. That word can be heard not from Ben Bradlee, but Jack Warden’s Harry Rosenfeld, around the 20th minute. Warden was a prominent character actor at the time but probably isn’t needed here; as Woodward & Bernstein’s champion, he is quickly squeezed aside by the presence of Bradlee.
It is to the filmmakers’ credit that “Men” avoids speculation about the Nixon administration while focusing on the ups and downs of the reporters. The downside is that it, like “JFK” much later, does not attempt to address some of the assertions made by characters in the film. “JFK” though is about wild speculation. “All the President’s Men” is about rigorous fact-checking. Did these White House activities actually work? And why, as one Post editor wonders, would the Republican Party, in a commanding position, resort to such things. Observers through the years have offered all kinds of theories. Maybe the Nixon team was bored by retail politics and just liked the extracurricular activity.
A great deal of emphasis is put on the Edmund Muskie presidential bid; Deep Throat states that Nixon operatives “destroyed” the Muskie campaign and that the White House wanted to run against McGovern, and that’s what happened. But whether someone writing a letter including the word “canuck” under someone else’s letterhead is really enough to sink a formidable presidential campaign seems a stretch. As does the notion of people checking out library books on Ted Kennedy somehow keeping Kennedy from entering the 1972 race (he had plenty of self-inflicted baggage).
In the beautiful way that movies can, or used to, shape pop culture, most people probably think that Woodward and Bernstein brought down the Nixon White House. The fate of the Nixon presidency was most likely determined not by the Post’s fine reporting, but Alexander Butterfield’s revelation about tapes. Without recordings of the president referring to Watergate-esque activity, the White House would’ve issued denials forever and eventually run out the clock on its opponents. Once the tapes entered the conversation, a sense of urgency and curiosity took hold.
How did it all get to that point? Pakula actually underplays the Watergate break-in, yet it’s still among the most powerful scenes in the movie. It correctly starts the film and Woodward’s involvement in the story, even though we learn later that much of the “plumber” activity was in motion before the summer of 1972. There is high drama in this arrest for what it portends for the country, but Pakula zips through the scene, which takes place mostly in the dark, like most of the movie. No one was hurt, yet this is among the most alarming, and dumbest, crimes of the century. Had it not been attempted, the “plumbers” probably could’ve gotten away with whatever they were doing until Nixon’s second term was over. What’s astonishing is how, as the movie and interviews with Redford, Woodward and Bernstein indicate, the break-in was mostly a “local” story for a while.
It set the reporters on the slogan of “Follow the money.” Siskel writes, “The bulk of the film shows two reporters trying to nail down one fact: Who controlled the secret campaign cash fund that financed all the dirty tricks?” In many ways, that break-in scene is more powerful than all of Woodward and Bernstein’s phone calls and house calls put together. Ebert writes, “Frank Wills, the Watergate guard who found the fateful tape on the lock, plays himself.” Siskel notes that Pakula took artistic license with “the way the tape was placed on the lock.”
Was the Post really ahead of the FBI and Justice Department? Perhaps even an organization as powerful as the FBI has things it doesn’t really want to know. Deep Throat says in the movie that, “If it didn’t deal directly with the break-in, they didn’t pursue,” as though they were lazy. Hugh Sloan says, “The committee’s not an independent operation; everything’s cleared through the White House. And I don’t think that the FBI or the prosecutors understand that.” But maybe there’s a valid reason for lack of more intensive FBI activity: that whether a governmental organization pursues an investigation of an administration or campaign is itself a statement and, in the eyes of some, politicizes the organization. Look at the mess James Comey found himself in regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Robert Mueller was later asked to investigate the Trump administration’s connections to Russia and seemed wholly uncomfortable at rendering an opinion that could’ve been involved in an impeachment inquiry (but wasn’t). To this day, there is enormous turmoil in the federal government over Justice Department investigations related to presidential candidates. There can be accusations of bias. There can be attempts at payback. What investigator really wants to handle a political case?
Pakula is a rare director who had great success in the ’70s and continued to have success into the ’90s. “Klute,” in 1971, got two Oscar nominations and a win for Jane Fonda. After “All the President’s Men,” Pakula helmed “Comes a Horseman” and “Starting Over” and “Sophie’s Choice.” In the ’90s, he directed the hits “Presumed Innocent,” “The Pelican Brief” and “The Devil’s Own.” Pakula died in an almost-freakish type of car accident in New York in 1998 at 70.
Gene Siskel’s 1976 review of “All the President’s Men” in the Chicago Tribune.
Doing movies about presidencies in real time is a questionable business decision. Presumably, they are a tough sell because the subject is regularly on the nightly news; how much about this person can the consumer take. Oliver Stone’s “W.,” released in autumn 2008, got no traction. Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” got a little; Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” got none. Same for 2024’s “The Apprentice,” though it did receive a best actor nomination. The filmmakers of “All the Presidents Men” correctly framed their film as about underdogs, not Richard Nixon.
Redford says Washington Post ownership was “very nervous” about a current-events film. Kay Graham, he said, “didn’t want the film made” and then, realizing it might be made anyway, asked not to have the Post name or her own in the movie. By the time it was complete, Graham was “disappointed” that she wasn’t portrayed, according to a Washington Post account. One scene had been written for her. Her son Donald Graham said “it’s too bad that it was left out.”
Pauline Kael apparently did not review “All the President’s Men” but called it “poisonously mediocre” and a “celebration of the journalistic benefits of having an informer tucked away in a garage.” Neither Kael, nor Ebert, nor Siskel mentioned the demographics of the film. Nor did any of them live long enough to witness what some might say has been a decadelong constitutional crisis that dwarfs the secret fund of Watergate. There is something to be said for nostalgia.
4 stars
(March 2025)
“All the President’s Men” (1976)
Starring
Dustin Hoffman as
Carl Bernstein ♦
Robert Redford as
Bob Woodward ♦
Jack Warden as
Harry Rosenfeld ♦
Martin Balsam as
Howard Simons ♦
Hal Holbrook as
Deep Throat ♦
Jason Robards as
Ben Bradlee ♦
Jane Alexander as
Bookkeeper ♦
Meredith Baxter as
Debbie Sloan ♦
Ned Beatty as
Dardis ♦
Stephen Collins as
Hugh Sloan ♦
Penny Fuller as
Sally Aiken ♦
John McMartin as
Foreign Editor ♦
Robert Walden as
Donald Segretti ♦
Frank Wills as
Frank Wills ♦
F. Murray Abraham as
Arresting Officer #1 ♦
David Arkin as
Eugene Bachinski ♦
Henry Calvert as
Bernard L. Barker ♦
Dominic Chianese as
Eugenio R. Martinez ♦
Bryan E. Clark as
Arguing Attorney ♦
Nicholas Coster as
Markham ♦
Lindsay Ann Crouse as
Kay Eddy ♦
Valerie Curtin as
Miss Milland ♦
Gene Dynarski as
Court Clerk ♦
Nate Esformes as
Virgilio R. Gonzales ♦
Ron Hale as
Frank Sturgis ♦
Richard Herd as
James W. McCord, Jr. ♦
Polly Holliday as
Dardis’ Secretary ♦
James Karen as
Hugh Sloan’s Lawyer ♦
Paul Lambert as
National Editor ♦
Frank Latimore as
Judge ♦
Gene Lindsey as
Alfred D. Baldwin ♦
Anthony Mannino as
Arresting Officer #2 ♦
Allyn Ann McLerie as
Carolyn Abbott ♦
James Murtaugh as
Congress Library Clerk ♦
John O’Leary as
Attorney #1 ♦
Jess Osuna as
Joe, FBI Agent ♦
Neva Patterson as
CRP Woman ♦
George Pentecost as
George ♦
Penny Peyser as
Sharon Lyons ♦
Joshua Shelley as
Al Lewis ♦
Sloane Shelton as
Bookkeeper’s Sister ♦
Lelan Smith as
Arresting Officer #3 ♦
Jaye Stewart as
Male Librarian ♦
Ralph Williams as
Ray Steuben ♦
George Wyner as
Attorney #2 ♦
Leroy Aarons as
Financial Editor ♦
Donnlynn Bennett as
Reporter ♦
Stanley Clay as
Assistant Metro Editor ♦
Carol Coggin as
News Aide ♦
Laurence Covington as
News Announcer ♦
John Devlin as
Metro Editor ♦
John Furlong as
News Desk Editor ♦
Sidney Ganis as
L.A. Stringer ♦
Amy Grossman as
Reporter ♦
Cynthia Herbst as
Reporter ♦
Basil Hoffman as
Assistant Metro Editor ♦
Mark Holtzman as
Reporter ♦
Jamie Smith Jackson as
Post Librarian ♦
Barbara Litsky as
Reporter ♦
Doug Llewelyn as
White House Aide ♦
Jeff MacKay as
Reporter ♦
Irwin Marcus as
Reporter ♦
Greg Martin as
Reporter ♦
Ron Menchine as
Post Librarian ♦
Christopher Murray as
Photo Aide ♦
Jess Nadelman as
Assistant Metro Editor ♦
Noreen Nielson as
Reporter ♦
Florence Pepper as
Message Desk Receptionist ♦
Barbara Perlman as
CRP Receptionist ♦
Louis Quinn as
Salesman ♦
Peter Salim as
Reporter ♦
Shawn Shea as
News Aide ♦
Marvin Smith as
Reporter ♦
Pam Trager as
Reporter ♦
Carol Trost as
Ben Bradlee’s Secretary ♦
Richard Venture as
Assistant Metro Editor ♦
Bill Willens as
Hippie ♦
Wendell Wright as
Assistant Metro Editor
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula
Written by: Carl Bernstein (book)
Written by: Bob Woodward (book)
Written by: William Goldman (screenplay)
Producer: Walter Coblenz
Associate producer: Jon Boorstin
Associate producer: Michael Britton
Music: David Shire
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Editor: Robert L. Wolfe
Casting: Alan Shayne
Production design: George Jenkins
Set decoration: George Gaines
Makeup and hair: Gary Liddiard, Romaine Greene, Lynda Gurasich
Fern Buchner, Don Cash
Executive production manager: E. Darrell Hallenbeck
