Movie night at the White House: a century of screenings, decoded

By Matthew Sweet

Bill Clinton once told a journalist what he regarded as the biggest perk of being president. (No, not that.) “It’s the wonderful movie theatre I get here,” enthused the commander-in-chief.

The White House Family Theatre is a small wonder, converted in 1942 from an East Wing cloakroom, known as the Hat Box, by a pair of movie nuts called Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Space has always been limited to 42 – with front-row armchairs and foot rests for the First Family – but over the years it has become more like a proper picture palace and less like the breakfast room of a frosty DC hotel. In the George W. Bush years, the movie industry paid for red velvet and raked seating.