IIn the days leading up to Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, Atlanta is rolling out the red carpet in honor of the nation’s oldest living president.

The Fox Theater offers an eclectic musical tribute, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus, Bebe Winans, Carlene Carter, Chuck Leavall and the Drive-By Truckers for the “Rock & Roll President.” And the Carter Center is planning an all-day film festival, featuring films Carter screened at the White House, and another birthday mosaic, featuring Hollywood stars alongside everyday Americans.

Such glitz may seem at odds with a former president who endeared himself to so many with his modest work for Habitat for Humanity. But in fact, such events reflect the growing connection between popular entertainment and politics that occurred over the course of his life and that elevated him to the White House in 1976.

Jimmy Carter was born in a hospital in Plains, Georgia, in 1924, the same year that presidential hopeful Calvin Coolidge listened to the advice of his public relations adviser Edward Bernays, and invited a group of famous Hollywood and vaudeville actors and musicians, including Al Jolson, John Drew, the Dolly Sisters, Charlotte Greenwood and Ray Miller’s Jazz Band, for a campaign breakfast. Before a crowd of reporters and cameras gathered on the White House lawn, the Hollywood celebrities entertained guests and sang the campaign song “Keep Coolidge,” and news of the star-studded endorsement appeared in the national newspaper. Although we most often associate Coolidge with the first presidential State of the Union broadcast, he also appeared on film in his short campaign biography “Visitin’ Around in Coolidge Corner,” which, as historian Kathryn Brownell has noted, traces his small-town roots fourth. as an average, hardworking and frugal New Englander.

Over the next fifty years, these ties between show business and Washington only deepened. For example, in 1952, Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the importance of listening to Madison Avenue executives and Hollywood stars, such as Bruce Barton and Robert Montgomery, who recommended that Eisenhower embrace new media (television) to reach large audiences to speak and help he popularized his memorable campaign slogan ‘I like Ike’.

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By the end of the decade, deploying Madison Avenue techniques and the Hollywood star system in political campaigns had become the winning logic of presidential politics—a lesson that Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon learned the hard way as a candidate of his party and polar opposite of the president’s rising star. Democratic party on the presidential debate stage. John F. Kennedy, heeding the advice of his father and former Hollywood mogul Joseph, sold himself to the American public like a box of detergent, begging his friend Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack to provide the star power he needed had. win votes. Nixon eschewed these strategies in 1960, but knew better by 1968: he presented himself to the press and American public as the “new Nixon” in carefully scripted, staged performances.

With his eye on the Democratic nomination in 1976, Carter tried to present himself as an honest, authentic everyman—an antidote to the polished showbiz campaigns of the recent past that masked the political corruption surrounding Vietnam and Watergate. Carter’s campaign staff, especially advertising guru Gerald Rafshoon, advised against slick jingles and instead encouraged a change in showbiz politics, including the use of fashionable cinema verité techniques in political ads.

While Carter’s showbiz tactics were certainly not new, they were notable as a realistic Hollywood adaptation – for the way they enlisted regional celebrities, including the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson and Atlanta Braves home king Hank Aaron, in addition to Hollywood. and rock ‘n’ roll legends, such as Warren Beatty, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman and Bob Dylan, in Carter’s showbiz presidential campaign. Many of these A-list celebrities were part of the “Cecil B. DeMille Mafia Scene” that Rolling stone‘s celebratory bash in honor of Carter’s party nomination, even prompting famed gonzo reporter Hunter S. Thompson to look out for a moment and later appear or perform in his inaugural special.

Although now long overshadowed by the fame of his successor Ronald Reagan, in the fall of 1976 Carter possessed something of a political mystique that could perhaps only be properly documented by the likes of the new journalist Noman Mailer or pop artist Andy Warhol.

TIME’s 1976 “Wonder Man (of the Year)” struggled to exploit showbiz politics as a tool of governance, though he tried through frequent White House lawn concerts and his largely failed “People’s Program.” One of his biggest early showbiz flops might have been his appearance on the March 1977 CBS Special “Ask President Carter,” moderated by familiar host Walter Cronkite. The noble effort to provide Americans with direct access to the president was widely spoofed, most memorably by SNL leader Dan Aykroyd.

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Amid images of cardigan-clad Fireside chats or references to his “failed” one-term presidency, Carter’s celebrity side — largely overshadowed by Reagan’s more memorable showbiz performance — faded from memory until recently retrieved from the corners of our national archives and otherwise. celebrated in popular documentaries.

And this is fitting for a president who wanted to be remembered not for the stars he broke bread with, but for the lives he impacted through his global initiatives to expand freedom, prevent disease and alleviate human suffering with the Carter Center and his personal outreach through his church and nonprofits, such as Habitat for Humanity.

Now, at the age of 100, Carter will spend his birthday not rubbing elbows with the stars, but enjoying the company of his family and counting the days until he can perform another act of service to his country by vote in the upcoming presidential elections.

Future presidential candidates, however, will continue to follow Carter’s lead and imbue their campaigns with their own authentic forms of showbiz politics.

Amber Roessner is a professor at the University of Tennessee School of Journalism & Media and author of Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign, published by LSU Press in 2020.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Read more about Made by History at TIME here. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.