(The New York Times) Tenacious and tireless, Billy Graham was blessed with what more than one observer called animal magnetism. When he died at age 99 in 2008, he was estimated to have preached in person to 210 million people.
He was also a savvy political player, and that’s the focus of the new PBS “American Experience” documentary, “Billy Graham.” Premiering Monday, the two-hour film, directed by Sarah Colt (“The Disrupted”), portrays a preacher drawn to power like a moth to a flame. After getting the cold shoulder from Harry Truman, a staunch believer in the separation of church and state, Graham went on to become a living, breathing seal of approval sought by every U.S. president until his death.
“He became an incredibly, tremendously powerful figure, a figurehead of the evangelical movement,” Colt said by phone from her New York office. “But it really was the intersection between him and political life, in particular the presidency, that was our focal point. We wanted to understand better what happened there, and what he did.”