All the Way: A Play

All the Way

Also by Robert Schenkkan

The Great Society (forthcoming from Grove Press)

The Kentucky Cycle

By the Waters of Babylon

The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune

Handler

Four One-Act Plays

The Dream Thief

Heaven on Earth

Final Passages

A Single Shard

The Devil and Daniel Webster

All the Way

ROBERT SCHENKKAN

Grove Press

New York

Copyright © 2014 by Robert Schenkkan

Introduction © 2014 by Bryan Cranston

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ISBN 978-0-8021-2344-2

eISBN 978-0-8021-9173-1

Printed in the United States of America

Published simultaneously in Canada

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that All the Way is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

Stock and amateur applications for permission to perform All the Way must be made in advance to Dramatists Play Service (440 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, 212-683-8960) and by paying the requisite fee, whether the plays are presented for charity or gain and whether or not admission is charged. First Class and professional applications must be made in advance to William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, Attn: Derek Zasky (1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, telephone: 212-586-5100) and by paying the requisite fee.

All the Way was developed, in part, with assistance from The Orchard Project, a program of The Exchange (www.exchangenyc.org).

All the Way was the recipient of the 2012 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, which is awarded through Columbia University.

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

To S. and J. Always.

INTRODUCTION

by Bryan Cranston

We interrupt this program to bring you a special report.

I was seven years old, at home with a cold, when I first heard those words coming from the family’s modest black-and-white television. It was a pretty afternoon in Southern California on November 22, 1963, but a dark cloud hung low over the nation. Walter Cronkite’s authoritative image took over the screen and began to tell us in a disturbing, halting manner that our president had just been shot to death in Dallas, Texas. Cronkite wiped away a tear.

My mother shrieked in disbelief and immediately went to the ringing phone. The calls were frequent and each carried the same sense of dread: I know, I can’t believe it either, it’s just awful. Each call was accompanied by copious tears. The entire neighborhood was in shock and great despair. Families gathered to share their grief. This was a horrible event on a scale that I had never experienced before. It scared me. I had never seen my mother so upset. My father too. Even at seven I realized something was much more important than my own existence, and I began to think that I should start to pay attention to other things, including who our president is and what he’s saying to America. That focus fell onto our new leader, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

My impression of Johnson was that he was ultra-serious. He seemed like a lot of old guys of the era. The men in the gray flannel suits. Confident, laconic, powerful, and wearing what seemed like a perpetual scowl on his deeply creased face. A look of consternation. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but years later I learned that my impression of Johnson was not correct at all.

Early in 2012, Breaking Bad gave notice. We would end production after shooting a final sixteen episodes by March of 2013. I was as proud as anyone can be of a body of work, but I was also satisfied with the decision because it would mean that we’d go out on our own terms. On top. It also meant that I should start looking for my next job, a compulsion inherent in most actors. I felt that after thirteen years on television (seven with Malcolm in the Middle and six with Breaking Bad) that a move away from the ubiquity of TV was my best option. I asked my team at United Talent Agency to look for a play and hoped that we’d find one that had a level of importance and gravitas that would be rewarding and worth the necessary devotion of time. They did their due diligence and came back with All the Way, by Robert Schenkkan. The title was derived from Johnson’s campaign slogan in 1964, ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ! I had been offered a few plays that were destined for the Broadway stage before, but nothing like this.

All the Way had all the elements that any good story needs to keep the reader interested—better yet, invested—in the characters and plot. It’s huge, it’s historic, and indeed, important. The central role of the eclectic and unpredictable Lyndon Johnson was captivating. Like King Lear, he is a man both great in desire and accomplishments and weak in his despair and self-pity.

While doing research for the Broadway production, I came to understand him, to like him, feel sorry for him. He was an extremely complex man. He could be funny, threatening, warm, vindictive, sympathetic, and crude. Those who knew him speak of fascinating experiences with him—not always enjoyable, but always fascinating. Bill Moyers, the famous journalist, served as the president’s press secretary from 1965 to1967, and recently described him as eleven of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.

Robert Schenkkan has masterfully crafted a play that tells the story of the first year of Johnson’s presidency. It illustrates in compelling detail the difficulties of passing the landmark legislation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Johnson’s quest to shed the label of accidental president and win the office on his own merit in November of that same year.

Robert’s play explores the inherent tension between Power and Morality by dramatizing Johnson’s political acumen in getting things done by any means necessary. His well-known manipulation of the key players in Washington was even nicknamed the Johnson Treatment, while other victims of the political arm-twisting aptly referred to it as receiving the old Texas Twist.

But there are parts of Johnson’s legacy that are more difficult to reckon with. He was the president who escalated the Vietnam War, a series of misguided decisions that haunted him and, I believe, informed the shocking and momentous decision he announced on March 31, 1968, not to seek a second term as president. The war had beaten him. In many ways he became a broken man. I suspect that the constant protests at the gates of the White House, the angry chants of Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? tore a hole in his heart, maybe even literally. His cardiovascular system weakened to an irreversible point, and he succumbed to a third heart attack (eerily, just as he had predicted) in January 1973. Dying in the way he feared most . . . alone.

Yet despite his political downfall, Johnson’s domestic accomplishments are legendary. No president in the twentieth century and beyond has had more success on the home front than he. Franklin D. Roosevelt comes to mind as the obvious contender to challenge that assertion, but he was in office before there were presidential term limits and served for nearly sixteen years until his death in 1944. Johnson himself invited the comparison to his idol Roosevelt, and even promoted the use of his own initials, LBJ, to echo FDR, one of the most famous presidents in American history.

Johnson was president for only five years, but his list of domestic accomplishments set down a foundation of laws that Americans depend on: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, a strict environmental protection act, urban and rural development, his War on Poverty that helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line, and the sweeping Immigration and Nationality Act, which removed all immigration origin quotas.

Even the Highway Beautification Act (a pet project of Lady Bird Johnson) gave the national highway system aesthetically pleasing scenery and landscaping to improve weary travelers’ sense of well-being. But the shining star of legislation then, and now, was the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This landmark bill is the centerpiece for the play. Signed by Johnson just six months after taking office, the bill banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, and employment. Protection for minorities was now enshrined in federal law. As history, and this play, illustrates, it was an extremely