Advise & Consent
Advise & Consent is a 1962 American political drama film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Advise and Consent by Allen Drury, published in 1959.[2] The film was adapted for the screen by Wendell Mayes and was directed by Otto Preminger. The film, set in Washington, D.C., follows the nomination process of a man who commits perjury in confirmation hearings for his nomination as Secretary of State. The title derives from the United States Constitution's Article II, Sec. 2, cl. 2, which provides that the president of the United States "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States." The ensemble cast features Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Burgess Meredith, Eddie Hodges, Paul Ford, George Grizzard, Inga Swenson, Betty White and others.
For the novel, see Advise and Consent.Advise & Consent
Otto Preminger
Alpha Alpina
- July 7, 1962 (United States)
138 minutes
United States
English
$2 million (US/Canada)[1]
Note
Production[edit]
Preminger offered Martin Luther King Jr. a cameo role as a senator from Georgia,[4] although there were no serving African-American senators at the time. King rejected the offer and put out a press release rejecting any claims that he accepted a role.[5] Former vice president Richard Nixon was offered the role of the vice president, but he refused and pointed out some "glaring and obvious" errors in the script, presumably including the critical fact that under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the vice president automatically assumes the office of the president upon the president's death, and would not have been able to cast a tie-breaking vote as vice president.[6]
Advise & Consent was one of a sequence of Preminger films that challenged both the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code and the Hollywood blacklist. It pushed censorship boundaries with its depiction of a married senator who is being blackmailed over a wartime homosexual affair, and was the first mainstream American film after World War II to show a gay bar.[4][7] Preminger confronted the blacklist by casting known left-wing actors Geer and Meredith. Fonda's character Leffingwell was seen as drawing particularly on real-life State Department official (and accused Soviet spy) Alger Hiss.[7][8][9]
The film's poster and advertising campaign by Saul Bass featured a logo: the nation's capital dome opening up like a teapot. Bass likewise designed the film's abstract titles which riffed on the stripes in the American flag.[10]
The film marked a screen comeback for Gene Tierney, whose breakthrough to major stardom came in Preminger's 1944 film Laura. Tierney had withdrawn from acting for several years because of her ongoing struggle with bipolar disorder. Advise & Consent was the last of four films she made for Preminger, and one of her last major film roles overall. Advise & Consent was Laughton's last film; he had cancer during filming and died six months after the film's release. Lawford, John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law, plays Lafe Smith, a senator from Rhode Island modeled after Kennedy, although in Drury's book the character represents Iowa. Betty White made her film debut in Advise & Consent, appearing in one scene as a young senator from Kansas.[11][12]
Many scenes were filmed at real locations in Washington D.C., including the Capitol, the canteen of the Treasury Building, the Washington Monument and the Crystal Room of the Sheraton Carlton Hotel.[13][14]