It’s hard to imagine that Upton Sinclair would have made a very good California governor in 1934, but he never had a fair shot thanks to the birth of the modern smear ad. From a Smithsonian post about the dirty race which saw the writer’s populist campaign undone by Hollywood filmmakers:

“Nothing matched the impact of the three ‘newsreels’ produced by Irving Thalberg, the boy wonder of the motion picture business, who partnered with Louis B. Mayer and helped create Metro Goldwyn Mayer while still in his early twenties. Mayer had vowed to do everything in his power to stop Sinclair, even threatening to support the film industry’s move to Florida if the socialist were elected governor. Like the other studios, MGM docked its employees (including stars) a day’s pay and sent the money to [Frank] Merriam’s campaign.

Using stock images from past movies and interviews by an ‘inquiring cameraman,’ Thalberg produced alleged newsreels in which actors, posing as regular citizens, delivered lines that had been written to destroy Sinclair. Some actors were portrayed as reasonable Merriam supporters, while others claiming to be for Sinclair were shown in the worst light.

‘I’m going to vote for Upton Sinclair,’ a man said, standing before a microphone.

‘Will you tell us why?’ the cameraman asked.

‘Upton Sinclair is the author of the Russian government and it worked out very well there, and I think it should do here.’

A young woman said, ‘I just graduated from school last year and Sinclair says that our school system is rotten, and I know that this isn’t true, and I’ve been able to find a good position during this Depression and I’d like to be able to keep it.’

An African-American man added, ‘I’m going to vote for Merriam because I need prosperity.’

The inquiring cameraman also claimed to have interviewed more than 30 ‘bums’ who, he claimed, were part of a wave of unemployed workers ‘flocking’ to California because of Sinclair’s plan. Stock footage showed such ‘bums’ hopping off packed freight trains. (Unemployed people did move to California, but did not pose the social and economic burdens implied by the newsreel.)

Greg Mitchell, author of The Campaign of the Century, wrote that the newsreels devastated Sinclair’s campaign. ‘People were not used to them,’ Mitchell stated. ‘It was the birth of the modern attack ad. People weren’t used to going into a movie theater and seeing newsreels that took a real political line. They believed everything that was in the newsreels.'”