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LBJ. Prod. by David Grubin. A KERA-TV Production in Association with David Grubin Productions for The American Experience, 1991. 4 hrs. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698)
This eagerly awaited but disappointing $2 million documentary mimics the worst of the literature. David Grubin's LBJ glossily perpetuates the stereotype of Lyndon B. Johnson as a wheeling-dealing Texas Macbeth, whose domestic legacy was murdered by the Vietnam War. Although offering an entertaining melange of music, still photography, and film, for which the PBS American Experience series is noted, as history this four-part documentary is shallow and grossly inaccurate. Yet it is the broadest film study of Johnson to date.
LBJ is not as objective as David Wolper's one-hour documentaries, The Making of the President, 1964 and 7 Days in the Life of the President (1965). Nor does Grubin's LBJ scintillate with the flesh-and-blood history of two powerful if flawed 1987 docudramas, NBC's LBJ: The Early Years, and the PBS telecast of...