This Is An Open Thead
Fun Facts:
On July 29, 1974, as Democratic Rep. James Mann of South Carolina cast his vote for the impeachment of Richard Nixon, he paid homage to the 24 year old security guard Frank Wills with the following quote:
Americans revere their president, and rightly they should. … We would strive to strengthen and preserve the presidency. But if there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. The next time there may be no watchman in the night.
Watchman In The Night – NYT August 1, 1974
All the President’s Men (1976) opens with the man who actually stopped the Watergate burglary, but Frank Wills would receive little of the success, money, or recognition that followed.
He was not portrayed by an actor. Wills played himself.
On June 17, 1972, the 24-year-old security guard was making his rounds at the Watergate complex when he noticed tape covering a door latch. He removed it, assuming a maintenance worker had forgotten it.When he returned, the door had been taped open again.
That detail changed American history.
Wills called police, who discovered five burglars inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The arrests started the chain of events that exposed the Watergate conspiracy and eventually forced President Richard Nixon to resign.
Four years later, audiences watched Wills recreate the discovery in All the President’s Men. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman became the faces of the investigation as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Wills appeared briefly as himself, quietly finding the tape.
Then the film moved on.
Real life did too.
At the time of the break-in, Wills reportedly earned about $80 a week. He received public praise but no meaningful promotion. Media appearances made ordinary employment difficult, and the attention surrounding him never became lasting financial security.He eventually returned South to care for his mother after she suffered a stroke. They survived largely on her Social Security payments.
The man whose alertness helped expose corruption at the highest level of American government spent long periods unemployed and in poverty.
Wills never accepted the idea that his contribution was minor.
“If it wasn’t for me, Woodward and Bernstein would not have known anything about Watergate,” he said years later. “This wasn’t finding a dollar under a couch somewhere.”
He died in 2000 at only 52.
All the President’s Men celebrated the reporters who followed the evidence.
But before the sources, headlines, hearings, and resignations, there was one poorly paid guard who noticed a piece of tape and refused to ignore it.
Era Rewind August 22, 2026
Today’s Feature: All The President’s Men
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards
Academy Award winners Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star in this true story as Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose investigation of a seemingly minor hotel room break-in uncovers the greatest political scandal in United States history and leads to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.
1976 – Drama
This Is An Open Thread