Whit Bissell, one of the great character actors of his time, portrayed Woodrow Wilson who he slightly resembled. At the time this was broadcast on February 14, 1965, Wilson was still a great liberal Democratic hero, his anti-black animus being recalled only by black and Republican historians. The show features his appointment of Brandeis to the Supreme Court, one of two appointments made to the Court by Wilson in 1916. This strikes me as odd in that the whole controversy of his appointment was very much old news in 1965 and something the average television viewer would have no memory of. Additionally Brandeis on the Court was actually a mixed bag for liberals, Brandeis being in his career on the Court very concerned about governmental abuse of its power. He developed into an interesting jurist and by no means a mere ideologue.
Unusually for its time, the episode does touch tangentially on Wilson’s relationship with Mrs. Mary Hulbert Peck while he was married to his first wife, who died early on in his term in office. The show does its best to whitewash it, but a viewer could read between the lines and conclude the relationship was fairly sketchy, which it was. Wilson usually came across as the desiccated professor he had been, but while in office there was a fair amount of sexual gossip about him which could not be ignored even by the most Wilson friendly historians.
Perhaps the weakest in the Profiles in Courage episodes, but not without points of interest as a television artifact from 57 years ago.
Bonus: Whit Bissell in The Caine Mutiny (1954):
