American celebrities have been aligning themselves with presidential candidates for more than a century. The trend began with the 1920 election when celebrities were pulled onto front porch campaigns.
While political campaigns have long drawn the influence of star power, the actual impact on a campaign is squishy at best. An August 2024 Harvard study showed that while celebrity association helps drive more voters to the polls, whether or not it affects outcomes is hard to quantify.
“I really wonder if any celebrity endorsement ever won a candidate a race, unless of course they were celebrities already, such as George Murphy, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger,” says New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts professor Laurence Maslon. “I think the reality and the irony is that an endorsement does more for the endorser than the endorsee.”
He explains that most celebrity endorsements are like a lobbying event, as the bold-faced name makes noise and raises money but is also then ”affiliated with the potential power of a winning candidate. In other words, the celebrity has more to gain than the candidate.”
Here are seven celebrities through history who lent their star power to political campaigns.
1. Al Jolson
Even before entertainer Al Jolson starred in the first movie talkie The Jazz Singer in 1927, he was already using his voice on the campaign trail, supporting Warren G. Harding in 1920. As one of the country's most popular celebrities of the era, he joined the Republican senator at his Marion, Ohio, home as part of the politician’s “front porch” presidential campaign.
Recruiting a group of fellow actors, Jolson led a march through the Ohio streets to the candidate’s house, where he performed a song he penned, “Harding You’re The Man For Us.” The tune became the official Republican campaign song with lyrics like: “So it’s Harding, lead the GOP / Harding, on to victory / We’re here to make a fuss / Warren Harding you’re the man for us.”
Harding won, becoming the 29th president, but died in office in 1923 from a heart attack, succeeded by his vice president Calvin Coolidge. Jolson went on to campaign for Coolidge during the 1924 election.
2. Babe Ruth
Baseball great Babe Ruth may have best been known for homers, but off the field, he had a reputation for schmoozing with presidential candidates. When poet Carl Sandburg asked him which president was the best role model for young men, Ruth replied, “President Wilson was always a great friend of mine.” Though the extent of their ties is unclear, Wilson was the first president to attend a World Series game in 1915, though Ruth was just a rookie pitcher.
Though Ruth was a Democrat, he reportedly considered going to one of Harding’s front porch sessions for the money, though it didn’t end up happening. That said, Harding invited Ruth to the White House while in office, and the president was spotted in the stadium during some of the athlete’s most legendary games. After the president's death, Ruth wrote his widow a condolence letter, referring to him as a “personal friend.”
But Ruth’s greatest political move was during the 1928 campaign when Hebert Hoover asked to pose for a photo at Washington’s Griffith Stadium that September. The baseball player turned him down, reportedly saying he was for his opponent Al Smith. Though Ruth later released a statement calling it all a “misunderstanding,” he stuck with Smith, as a fellow Catholic who related to growing up modestly. In a 1928 radio address, he said: “What a wonderful thing it is to think that…There is a chance for every boy to get to the top in America, whether he wants to be a president or a ball player.”
3. Frank Sinatra
With a mom (Dolly) who was involved with politics in his hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey, it was inevitable that Frank Sinatra would follow in her footsteps. During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1944 reelection campaign, the president invited the crooner to the White House. Bing Crosby had already shown his support for FDR’s opponent Thomas E. Dewey, so siding with a popular singer seemed like a savvy move.
Sinatra joined other well-known names like Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles on the 32nd president’s campaign trail, donating money and speaking on radio addresses and at Carnegie Hall. At one point, he called him “the greatest guy alive today and here’s a little guy from Hoboken shaking his hand.” He even joined Welles at a Fenway Park rally in Boston the weekend before the election.
The New Jersey Democrat then threw himself into John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. Along with the Rat Pack, Sinatra held numerous fundraisers and turned his song “High Hopes” into the campaign anthem. “Sinatra was given a seat at the table—literally,” Maslon says, noting the singer was put in charge of Kennedy's Inauguration Ball.
But it all fell apart when JFK didn't show up for a Palm Spring weekend at Sinatra’s home in 1962 and vacationed with Crosby instead. “Kennedy was told in no uncertain terms that Sinatra was now toxic because of apparent mob connections,” Maslon explained. “Sinatra had spent a fortune preparing to host the president and was broken-hearted when he was passed over. Apparently, it turned him into a Republican.”
By 1970, he was supporting Ronald Reagan for California governor, and eventually endorsed the actor-turned-presidential candidate, whom he called an “old friend,” in 1980.
4. Judy Garland
Actress Judy Garland had a special sort of relationship with John F. Kennedy. Daughter Liza Minelli said in the authorized biography Judy that while filming her show The Judy Garland Show in 1963, days would get so tough that at the end of the week, she’d say she was calling “Jack” and call the White House to talk to JFK. At the end of every call, Minelli recalls her mother giving into Kennedy’s request to sing the last eight bars of her famous The Wizard of Oz (1939) song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
But one thing’s for sure, Garland was a supporter, standing by JFK’s side at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. She was such a close friend, she had her own house near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
5. Sammy Davis Jr.
While Sammy Davis Jr. was a campaign supporter, his efforts didn’t always have the right effect.
“Despite his intense lobbying for JFK, Davis was actively disinvited from the Inauguration Ball, told by southern Democrats that no Black entertainer who was married to a white woman would be tolerated at the ball,” Maslon says, adding that he was left “brokenhearted by the betrayal.”
At the 1972 Republican National Convention’s Young Voters Rally, Davis served as the master of ceremony. At one point, Davis spontaneously hugged Richard Nixon from behind as both men grin—a moment that Nixon called the most memorable in his memoirs.
After the embrace, he told the crowd that Davis had visited him in the White House a few weeks before, talking about their shared backgrounds coming from poor families. “I want to make this pledge to Sammy, I want to make it to everybody here, whether you happen to be black or white, or young or old, and all of those who are listening, I believe in the American dream,” Nixon said. “Sammy Davis believed in it. We believe in it because we have seen it come true in our own lives.”
But the hug was not received well. “This completely ruined Davis's relationship with the Black community and he was nearly booed off the stage at a Chicago rally for Jesse Jackson's charity Rainbow PUSH a few months later,” Maslon said. “Nixon dangled some vague appointments in front of Davis when he won reelection, but again—and poignantly—the endorsement caused far more consequences for the entertainer than the candidate. Who knows if Davis's hug helped get Nixon even one more Black vote?”
6. Jim Brown
Jim Brown has been called one of the greatest football players of all time. In 1968, Brown leveraged that legacy to support presidential candidate Richard Nixon.
“Nixon did his best to win favor from Black athletes,” says Northwestern University history professor Brett Gadsden. “Black celebrities might matter a bit more on the Republican side of the ledger during that period, especially given conservatives’ historic opposition to race reforms.”
Brown avidly supported Nixon in 1968, as the candidate promised federal programs that would drive up Black ownership, fostering more jobs, opportunity, pride, and power. Before his death in 2023, Brown supported Donald Trump as well.
7. Barbra Streisand
When Barbra Streisand supported Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, it wasn’t the first time she had backed Clinton's presidential run. The singer had also been a staunch supporter of Bill Clinton’s 1996 election where she performed at Beverly Hills fundraiser, emceed by Tom Hanks, with the Eagles, Neville Brothers and Chicago, as well as readings by Maya Angelou.
But perhaps Streisand’s most outspoken moment was when the political magazine George accused her of giving Bill Clinton free advertising during an online chat encouraging young folks to vote. She retorted in a letter to the magazine stating: “I am a strong supporter of President Clinton and many of his policies,” citing key issues: “preserving the environment, ensuring a woman’s right to choose, reforming education, strengthening gun-control laws, fighting for health care reform, saving Social Security, and increasing the minimum wage.”
She went on to say that despite being a Democrat, she had also “occasionally” supported Republican and Independent candidates, writing: “I judge each candidate by his or her record and not by party affiliation.”
