John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a hero of World War II, unlike other Presidents and action heroes who found it necessary to invent their war records. Lt Kennedy commanded a PT boat in the Pacific until he was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Just exactly how he was silly enough to let that happen has been thoughtfully overlooked by historians. Kennedy’s strong leadership saved his battered and bewildered crew, getting them to a nearby island where he endured many hardships until he contacted the local natives, thereby the Australian coast watcher, and so arranged for the castaways to be rescued.
  Hollywood was so impressed by this that they decided to make a movie about it, called PT 109, made and released during Kennedy’s term as President, and it was a shocker. Too much loving detail about their hero, and tidied up to the point of numbing blandness, the film was far too long and tedious. The producers seemed to be utterly overawed by their subject. In sticking so close to the facts, they made the development of any drama impossible. Cliff Robertson was painfully wooden as JFK and seemed terrified that he might allow his character some slight trace eccentricity or personality, and played him as if he was in a recruiting film. He probably did it just the way the President’s press office wanted.
  What JFK thought of all this is not on the record. Suffice to say he observed the matter with his usual polite dignity. The only good thing about the whole exercise was that the film would shortly be overwhelmed and quickly forgotten in the light of the truly dramatic events that were soon to follow.