Truman’s grandson plays president for ‘Give ‘em Hell, Harry!’ at Roxy’s in Wichita

Clifton Truman Daniel’s introduction to “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” was on an airplane.

The grandson of the 33rd president recalled that the movie version of the one-man show was the in-flight entertainment when he was 19 and on a trip with his mother, Margaret Truman — she in first class and he in coach.

“She declined to watch it,” he said from his home in Chicago. “The flight attendant said, ‘You know they’re showing “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” (in first class)’ and she said, ‘Oh for God’s sake, I’ve seen the damn thing’ and I said, ‘Well, I haven’t.’ … Yay, first class!”

Daniel will bring “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” – believed to be the first acting performance where a presidential descendant plays that president – to Roxy’s Downtown for one performance next weekend. Daniel said Tom Frye, a longtime Wichita drama teacher, actor and producer, had talked to him about licensing the one-man show for an actor friend, then asked if Daniel would come to Wichita for a performance.

The 1975 film version of the James Whitmore one-man show left Daniel’s radar for many years, as he took on jobs as a journalist and director of public relations for Truman College in Chicago.

The 65-year-old said he took early retirement 10 years ago and “didn’t know what to do with myself.”

He tried a time on the lecture circuit, talking about his grandfather and other presidential descendants.

The combination of a growing number of people telling him he was starting to resemble his grandfather and wanting a constructive way to spend his time turned into his debut in October 2017 in his former home of Wilmington, N.C., for a two-week, eight-performance run.

“The first eight performances were terrifying,” he recalled. “I wasn’t worried about the portrayal – I thought I got his accent pretty well and his mannerisms – but as you go along you worry less about that. You’re there to do an impression, not a hyper-realistic painting.”

Already a theater veteran, with leading roles in “Mister Roberts,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Arsenic and Old Lace,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus” to his credit, Daniel said it was intimidating to try and tackle a one-man show without the luxury of other actors to give cues on lines.

“All I could think in my head was, ‘What’s the next word?’ ‘What’s the next line?’ Over the years it’s gotten easier,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun now.”

The oldest of four sons of Margaret Truman, a singer-turned-novelist, and Clifton Daniel, former managing editor of the New York Times, Clifton Truman Daniel was 15 when his grandfather died Dec. 26, 1972.

He said he has fond memories of Truman and his grandmother, Bess.

“They were just my grandparents, Gammy and Grandpa,” he said. “I knew it came with perks – if you went somewhere with him, you went right to the head of the line or snuck in the back door – and there were police around, making sure you’re safe.

“He was a fun grandpa. He got kind of stern as he got older, but that’s because there were pre-teenagers in the house,” he said with a laugh.

Daniel said his family would usually go to his grandparents’ home in Independence, Missouri, for Thanksgivings and/or Christmases, and occasionally they would visit him and his family in New York. Spring break with his grandparents in Key West, Fla., were a highlight as well. The president had a summer home there, and the “Little White House” was refurbished in recent years to its 1949 glory.

His own memories of his grandfather’s voice were not enough for him to study to prepare for the performance, Daniel said.

“The voice was not the same,” he said. “It’d gotten quieter … he didn’t speak as clearly as he did when he was younger.”

Vintage recordings were of little help since his grandfather’s voice sounded “tinny” and sped up “to sound like Mickey Mouse playing Harry Truman,” Daniel said, but found useful material from Truman’s speeches at the 1944 and 1948 Democratic National Conventions,

Daniel said he had to adjust his normal voice to play Harry Truman.

“He had an interesting accent,” he said. “You have to pitch it up a little because his voice is higher and more nasal than mine is. And he has that Midwestern accent, but it’s an interesting combination of Southern and Midwestern. He’s say, ‘aah-ee’ instead of ‘I,’ and he had a weird pronunciation of ‘war,’ he’s say ‘wahr.’”

Daniel’s wife travels with him to each production, in charge of hair, makeup, costumes and props.

From his start in 2017, Daniel has played Truman 6-10 times a year. He’s written two books about his grandparents and is the honorary chairman of the board of trustees of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the nonprofit partner of the facility in Independence.

Daniel laughs when talking about the favorite anecdote about his grandfather, which made its way into the script of “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” about the former president, returning to Missouri, who refused to cut the grass at his home.

“After he left the White House, my grandmother got after him one day and said the lawn was getting shaggy,” he recalled.

“He said, ‘I hate mowing the lawn.’

“She said, ‘That’s true you hate it, but you’re not president anymore and you’ve got to cut your own lawn.’

“He waited until Sunday morning and started mowing the lawn. Everyone in town is on their way to church and going past the house and here’s the ex-president clearly not going to church but cutting the grass instead. He waved to everybody who went by, calling out to people, so they would see him doing this.

“My grandmother went out there, snatched the mower away from him and said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ He said OK,” Daniel said. “And they hired a yard guy after that.

“I liked what my mother said that she didn’t know what my grandmother was thinking. ‘The man outwitted Stalin, I don’t know how she could get him to cut the grass.’”

‘GIVE ‘EM HELL, HARRY!’

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, May 13

Where: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas

Tickets: $50 for show only, $100 for meet-and-greet with wine and hors d’oeuvres, from roxysdowntown.com or 265-4400