Black & White World

Advise & Consent (1962)

Director Otto Preminger had a well-deserved reputation for constantly pushing the boundaries of Hollywood censorship—The Moon is Blue, Anatomy of a Murder and The Man With the Golden Arm were all banned and/or not approved by the MPAA; Exodus credited blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (released simultaneously with Spartacus which also credited Trumbo, which effectively ended the blacklist).  Occasionally, the controversy overshadowed the film itself (The Moon is Blue is reportedly pretty tame, which I recall became a plotline in an episode of M*A*S*H; Exodus is said to be overlong and dull; Anatomy of a Murder might have been very cutting edge for its time but comes off as misogynistic and simplistic today.

Advise & Consent doesn’t fall victim to that Preminger curse, however.  While the plot does tend to get muddled around the midway point, there are enough unexpected twists along the way to keep the viewer engaged and guessing.  The subplot about blackmailing a senator about his homosexual past is maybe even more controversial for its time because the closeted senator is a sympathetic character, a good guy—any suggestion of gay characters prior to this were almost always evil sadistic villains.

Performances are uniformly excellent, not a weak link to be found.  Charles Laughton’s final role is a memorable one, the irascible South Carolina minority leader and Senate Pro-Tempore.  Both Franchot Tone and Lew Ayres are memorable in their respective roles as President and Vice President (at the outset I said, “America is being run by 1930’s B movie stars!").  Walter Pidgeon, Don Murray, Paul Ford, Henry Fonda, George Grizzard, Peter Lawford and Gene Tierney all battle for screen time as well, each as good as the other.  Look for Betty White and Inga Swenson (later famous for playing Kraus on TV’s Benson) in small but memorable roles as well.  Political insider movies like these seem to hold up pretty well over the years, maybe because the inner workings of Washington DC haven’t changed much over the years.

1. Respectful correction: the President Pro-Tem of the Senate is traditionally the senior senator of the majority party. Although Allen Drury didn’t name the parties in his novels,senators from the southern states in those days tended to be conservative Democrats—thus, Laughton’s Sen. Cooley is in the same party as Pidgeon Liberal Sen. Munson. (As memory serves, the minority leader was Edward Andrews’ Sen Knox.)FYI, in real life the current PPT is Sen. Byrd of West Va. who got the post when the Dems got the Senate back in ‘06; his Rep counterpart was Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

   Posted by  on  07/07  at  10:46 AM

2. Duly noted—I had assumed that Cooley and Munson were opposite parties.  It’s been years since I studied these details of our government in school, probably worth looking it over again.

   I want to read the novel, sounds like there’s lots of good stuff that was cut for time from the film.

   Posted by  on  07/07  at  12:31 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages