President John F. Kennedy (played Cliff Robertson)
It was no accident that PT-109 was the first movie about a president made while that president was still in office. Former Hollywood mogul Joseph P. Kennedy oversaw the sale of the movie rights to Warner Bros. of Robert J. Donovan’s book about JFK’s wartime heroics, and the president himself had approval over the script, cast, and director. He chose Robertson, who’d served in the Merchant Marines during World War II, to play himself as a young lieutenant who proves his mettle in the Solomon Islands, first by whipping the decrepit torpedo boat of the title (and its crew) into shape, and then by rescuing his underlings when the ship is destroyed by swimming through open water to shore while towing the wounded men.
Aside from some shifts in chronology, the movie is generally accurate; even its far-fetched elements, like the message the marooned Kennedy carved on a coconut shell, have been confirmed as true. The movie plays like an extended commercial for a re-election campaign that never happened (the movie was released just five months before Kennedy’s assassination), but Robertson’s performance, as a young leader whose easygoing manner, common touch, and firm resolve prefigure Kennedy’s style as a politician, made the actor a star.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siR9hpxA19Y]