Good Looks Kept George Clooney From Starring in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)...Until Now

Guest post alert! Today’s newsletter was written by John Hammontree, my dear friend and the venerable editor of Dust On The VCR since day one. John is quite the writer in his own right, and he’s contributed guest posts that range from the Alien theme park ride to holiday classics like Miracle on 34th Street and The Muppet Christmas Carol. John couldn’t believe it when I told him it’s been almost two years since his last guest post, but in his defense, he has two children under four. He did, however, just make a trip up to New York City (one week before I did!) to see George Clooney perform on stage, and it motivated him to pick up the proverbial pen again. He is a Murrow Award winner after all! Naturally, he dropped another banger—and a timely one at that. Take it away, John!

If he weren’t so handsome, George Clooney would’ve made a hell of a journalist.¹

The son of a TV news anchor, Clooney studied journalism in college and is clearly enamored with the intersection of media and politics. He’s addressed the topic repeatedly ever since he became a director.²

In 2005, as the national media credulously reported George W. Bush’s unsubstantiated claims about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, Clooney found a parable in the example of Edward R. Murrow, one of his father’s heroes. Clooney developed Good Night, and Good Luck as a directorial project with his writing partner Grant Heslov. But he felt he was too youthful (and perhaps just too damn handsome) to credibly play Murrow.³

Now that 20 years have passed, Clooney finally feels like he has the age and the gravitas for the role, and he’s adapted the story into a Broadway play of the same name. I was lucky enough to see it a couple weeks ago. And, oops, turns out the story is even more relevant today!

In 1953, Milo Radulovich, a lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve, got caught up in the Red Scare. The Michigan native was abruptly discharged because his family was accused of being communist sympathizers. When Radulovich and his attorney attempted to argue his case, they were told that the evidence against him was held in a sealed manila envelope and he was prohibited from seeing its contents. It would’ve been farcical if the allegations weren’t so serious.

The story caught the attention of Murrow, a CBS newsman who hosted and co-created See It Now (basically a precursor to 60 Minutes). So Murrow and his staff used Radulovich’s story as an entry point to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt.

At a moment when most Americans still tuned into (and trusted) nightly news, Murrow had a stern message for a rapt audience: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”⁴

The same day that I saw Clooney step into the role of Murrow on Broadway, ICE agents abducted University of Alabama engineering student Alireza Doroudi from his apartment in Tuscaloosa.⁵ He was one of many international students who have been disappeared to prisons and holding facilities in recent weeks. Just like the contents of the manila envelope that were used against Radulovich, the charges against Doroudi have not been made public.

The Trump administration has also sent thousands of Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador (with conditions that are effectively torture). Recently, they have admitted that “clerical errors” meant that they sent innocent people to that prison. Now they claim that they don’t have the jurisdiction to bring them back.

Clooney brought Murrow’s story to the silver screen to compel media and audiences to hold the government to account and question the narrative that would pull us into a forever war in Iraq. But as Clooney brings the story to the stage in 2025, the stakes are much closer to home—and, arguably, more urgent.

I won’t spoil the outcome of the film or the play for those that don’t know the true story, but let’s just say that Murrow and his staff deal with pressures from advertisers and the CBS corporation that look quaint compared to Donald Trump’s efforts to sue CBS and other media companies into oblivion.⁶ It’s easy to see Clooney’s parable as a clarion call to journalists to stand fast in the face of adversity.⁷

But Clooney also has a warning for consumers as well. The closing words of the film were originally applied to television, but perhaps they apply even more comfortably to our smartphones and social media: “We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information; our mass media reflect this. …[If] this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse, and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

Good Night, and Good Luck is not streaming anywhere for free, but I kinda had to give John a pass on this one, ya know? It is, however, available to rent. Also, the Broadway show is running through June 8 at the Winter Garden Theatre.

1. All due respect to Anderson Cooper.

2. He also penned an op-ed that helped drive Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race. Oops.

3. David Strathairn is superb in the role, so it all worked out fine.

4. He also repeatedly calls McCarthy “the junior senator from Wisconsin” in this speech, which must’ve been as devastating in the 1950s as calling someone Lil Marco was in 2016.

5. My alma mater. …Roll Tide?

6. Murrow also demonstrates that when you call out a demagogue like McCarthy, you strip them of their power.

7. Sorry for getting serious this week, Jeremy. I’ll go back to writing about Christmas movies next time!