Drew Wants 'Young People' to See a President Worth Remembering

Eighty-four-year-old Robert Drew's A President to Remember: In the Company of John F. Kennedy is an incredibly intimate look into the world of John F. Kennedy as he ran for office, worked as president, and relaxed with his family. In Drew's work, you catch small moments—Jackie nervously tugging at her gloves before speaking at a rally, Kennedy smoking in repose, waiting for primary results, the family horsing around in the country.

Drew initially asked Kennedy whether he'd let cameras follow his primary race. He vividly recalled talking to the young senator: "We met in his townhouse in Georgetown. He came downstairs in a robe, coughing, wheezing, sniffing. 'What do you want?' he asked."

Drew, a LIFE photographer at the time, said, "We have a new form of storytelling—no lighting, no directing. If you try it, it will work."

Kennedy replied, "If you don't hear from me tomorrow, we're on."

That deal led to the first vérité look at Kennedy, Primary. After seeing it, Jackie asked Drew, "Did you make that yourself?" The filmmaker remembered, "She was short and pleasantly inebriated. She was beautiful. I was taller. She had a martini. It was very flattering to me."

Kennedy, on the other hand, took him aside and asked him, "What do you want to do next?" He then offered to let Drew and his crew (which would include Albert Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker), "come down and shoot the oval office for a day and see if I can forget you the way I forgot you on the campaign trail."

Drew had been inspired to put his Kennedy footage (which included Primary and several other films) together into President since "this country has been in a depression, with the leaders' ratings down. It's been 45 years since Kennedy died, and we're looking for examples. I want young people to see a successful president whose ratings were in the 70s, not the 30s."