Advise & Consent (1962)

Attached is fun overview of the book/movie by Steve Hayes. He has a fun YouTube channel that talks about older movies.

Betty White should have had a better role

Bigger*

JFK screened it pre release in the White House. He liked it. Was Lem Billings credited as technical advisor for the gay bar scene?

OP what about the gay content?

[quote] They feel like real people, with real backgrounds

It was the first of a series of Washington novels with these and evolving characters. I enjoyed them but it helps to know something of the political players of the era.

Drury was a long time Washington political reporter and the major characters are thinly disguised versions of real DC movers and shakers. Henry Fonda represented as a principled patrician Alger Hiss, back when people actually still disbelieved he was a long time Soviet agent and Burgess Meredith represented dumpy Whittaker Chambers who was telling the truth about Hiss. Peter Lawford was playing stud Jack Kennedy. Orrin Knox was Robert Taft. Fred Van Ackerman's character was Joe Mccarthy. The unprincipled president was FDR and the underestimated out of the loop VP was Truman. etc

R6 I figured the out of loop VP was John Nance Garner or Dick Nixon.

Drury is great at giving the characters an entire story. I know about Seab Cooley grew up poor, how he could never be with his one true love, but he was at her deathbed, and his loneliness. Stuff like that really impacts how you read a character. At the beginning of the story, you think he is the villain, but he comes through at the end.

Bob Munson, on the other hand becomes the tragic antihero.

No comments?

Still waiting to hear details about the gay elements

Gay bar scene. Not too different 50 years later.

Brig's blackmailer from that clip (the blond one, who of course falls into the muck) showcases his terrific ass at the end of that clip.

What is more horrifying for other closeted men than to show a fat unattractive middle-aged bartender shrieking out "WELL, DON'T JUST STAND THERE... C'MON IN!" while a spotlight hits you as you enter a gay club for the first time.

Laughton's Senator- I don't get him. He seems like a bad guy, until the end. What's the deal with him?

r12: He's a corrupt rogue, but in the end he does the big right thing despite all of the corruption.

60 years later, R10.

I have always considered Don Murray hot. I like this scene in the movie where he and his wife are discussing his "old friend". I like Don's beefy pecs covered with dark curly hair. Don is still alive and will be 93 on July 31rst !

We just had a thread about this movie a few weeks ago, and I watched it for the first time then. I really liked it.

Though I’m very literary and very Gay I was completely unaware of this until reading Secret City last month, which is a Gay history of Washington DC from FDR through Clinton. I’ve very interested in doing this double feature as well, book before movie, but I’ll need to work through my TBR list first.

R17 Did you get around to watching it?

It’s one of Preminger’s best movies, and incredibly evocative. Certain aspects of the story, such as the gay Congressman being a Mormon, and his wife barely suppressing her awareness that he’s gay, seem as if they could be out of a movie made this year.

R19 True. I guess I need to rewatch because I watched it as soon as I finished the book.

[quote] I have always considered Don Murray hot

His grandson is Andrew—

R10 Very melodramatic.

Of course he throws his athletic to fall exactly into the muck.

Fonda said Otto Preminger was an 'Egomaniacal blowhard Kraut!'

Now where did Fonda learn to use a six-syllable word like that?

This movie is so unrealistic. We all know there are no closeted gay senators!

This old, black and white movie is full of geriatrics jabbering at each other.

'Grizzard' is an unfortunate surname.

So why is he playing the homophobic villain?

DL icon Betty White ...being Betty White.

The book was amazing. I really appreciated that it was accepting of being gay.

R28 Agreed. Every characters becomes a person.

[quote]Now where did Fonda learn to use a six-syllable word like that?

The University of Minnesota

Related

I am surprised Sinatra allowed them to use his song in the bar scene. But then maybe he did it for Otto since Frank had done a film for him before.

R32 It was a special favor. The song is unique to the movie

[quote] an 'Egomaniacal blowhard Kraut!'

Preminger had a terrible temper, but used it selectively. Tom Tryon and Dyan Cannon had the worst experiences of their careers on Preminger films, subjected to his unchecked wrath. Many actors liked worked with him: he preferred actors who came prepared to do the work, without asking a lot of questions or expecting to do Method-y explorations of their character on the set, but he could be extremely supportive and patient with young actors he liked (or loved, in the case of Dorothy Dandridge). Jane Fonda said Preminger was "happy and charming and I loved working with him, contrary to many actors," and considers her performance in "Hurry Sundown" one of her very best.

Jean Simmons hated him.

I don't like him.

The only good thing about Preminger was that he imported the fascinating Martita Hunt after her New Your triumph.

But he got lumbered with the dull Jeanne Crain for the lead role in that film.

The film had supposedly Hollywood's first gay bar scene but it seems very mild and hardly worth the repulsed reaction Don Murray gives it.

[quote] the repulsed reaction

Yes, so melodramatic, like Grand Guignol.

Otto Preminger liked working with Lee Remick, Laurence Olivier, George C. Scott, Vincent Price, Gene Tierney, Charles Laughton, Dana Andrews, John Gielgud, Peter Lawford, and Frank Sinatra.

That's it.

Damn good company.

[quote] Otto Preminger liked working with … …

I don't know how you can claim that.

The movie making industry exists ONLY to take money from us consumers. The workers in the industry are chosen for their box-office appeal.

Preminger worked with Peter Lawford seven times and Dana Andrews and Vincent Price six times.

Five times with Tierney and four times with Sir John Gielgud.

Martita Hunt and George C. Scott three times.

Twice with Sinatra, and once only with Olivier, Laughton and Remick.

[quote]The film had supposedly Hollywood's first gay bar scene but it seems very mild and hardly worth the repulsed reaction Don Murray gives it.

You have to understand the scene within the context of the film Murray's character is being blackmailed over a gay affair he had while in the service. Murray is going to the bar to meet the blackmailer. Murray has been living a "straight" life, is married to a woman and has a daughter. His look of repulsion is repulsion with himself. He realizes he's still drawn to that life.

I'm watching it now and just saw the bar scene. Very camp now, though no doubt shocking then. Love the bartender who's all, "Don't be bashful, Mary!"

[quote]The film had supposedly Hollywood's first gay bar scene but it seems very mild and hardly worth the repulsed reaction Don Murray gives it.

Gee, what a shock that a movie made in 1962 wouldn't have presented a version of a gay bar that would hold up and seem realistic 60 years later.

Charles Laughton should have won the Academy Award

R45, it's not the gay bar that's unrealistic but his reaction to it

[quote]The movie, on the other hand, was a disappointment. Otto Preminger left out so many important nuisances

I don't understand this. Did you mean NUANCES?

So is this going to be another 50s 60s potboiler doorstop book that I never finish (Some Came Running, The Naked and the Dead, Raintree County, Anatomy of a Murder) or will it be one that once I'm into it, it's hard to put down (Marjorie Morningstar, Peyton Place)?

Betty White's first movie. 1962.

Her next movie was in 1998- Lake Placid.

Crazy.

[quote]Charles Laughton should have won the Academy Award

YES. He totally gave me those old Southern snakes like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.

It always gets confused with "The Best Man," which came out a few years later and also starred Henry Fonda. It had similar themes (and was written by Gore Vidal from his own play. )

R47 - yes he did everything but bite his fist.

Charles Laughton is an amazing actor. I wasn't even aware of him until a few years ago (I'm Gen X). Why isn't he better remembered? Witness for the Prosecution is one of my all time favorite movies, and he was great in this. Night of the Hunter is memorable and creepy.

Don Murray talked about how funny Charles Laughton was in that documentary on Preminger. On one day they were fussing about how to photograph Laughton and he said something like Don't fuss - I always look like the backside of an elephant.

r49, I found the novel quite unputdownable, though I found Marjorie Morningstar even more unputdownable. But I had just finished reading The Winds of War, and was quite taken with Herman Wouk. Have you read all of his work?

I tried reading the novel a couple of years ago and couldn't get into it. Lasted maybe 10 pages. Is it just the beginning that's a bit dense? I really want to try again after this thread.

R54 He is remembered. He was the bridge between 1800's actors like Sir Charles Hawtrey and more modern actors like Laurence Olivier.

R57 It took me a few chapters to get completely hooked.

R58 No one on Datalounge knows the long-dead Sir Charles Hawtrey.

Americans only know Americans.

R59 I do. I am on DL and an American.

R58 You must be special.

Can you tell us the link between Sir Charles Hawtrey and Banal Charles Hawtrey?

R56 I keep trying to get into the novel of Caine Mutiny, but his play version of it just moves faster, and the video versions of the play faster still. And I meant to read Don't Stop the Carnival when it was being turned into a musical years ago, and I never did. And the plot of Youngblood Hawke seems like something I would enjoy.

But what's wrong with me? The idea of reading Wouk seems to be more appealing than what happens when I actually pick up the book and try to follow through.

Are Winds of War/War and Remembrance just two more wartime doorstops like Naked and the Dead, From Here to Eternity, Don't Go Near the Water (which is more comic), Run Silent Run Deep, and so many others that became films?

r62, I loved Winds of War and War & Remembrance, especially the latter. I think I've read each three times. Wouk's characters are people I might like to know, especially Natalie, Aaron, and Briny in these two novels. Winds was my first of his books. My mother bought it for me while I was recovering from wisdom teeth extraction. Then I read Marjorie Morningstar. I've always been a sucker for a Nice Jewish Girl story (or Nice Jewish Boy, for that matter).

Plus I'd always been interested in anything Italian, and Briny's story starts when he starts working with Natalie (another NJG) at Aaron's house in Siena.

I liked both War books more than either Naked and the Dead or From Here to Eternity. I'm not sure I ever finished Naked and the Dead.

- r56

I read Wouk's Don't Stop the Carnival about a dozen years ago. Interesting read just for its 1965 Mad Men NY type setting before the story moves to the Caribbean, but it was ultimately far too dated in its subject matter and satiric style to land. I don't know his other books but it seems this one, being essentially comical, was very different from most of the others.

I want to read Marjorie Morningstar but I can almost remember trying it out years ago and getting the impression it felt much more like 1955 (the year it was written) than the mid-1930s, when it's set. Seemed like Wouk didn't have a lot of interest in properly setting the time period details of the Depression. I could be wrong, I only read a chapter or two and I'd really like to give it another go.

I was a child in the late 50s/early 60s so I'm fascinated by a lot of bestsellers of those years. Raintree County, Exodus and The Nun's Story are three of that era I've read. But all three have aged badly and seemed very dated in their prose (not so much their plots) to me.

This was Gene Tierney's big comeback movie too, right?

R64 your last paragraph describes what I feel so well. I often chide myself for not being more well-read, especially in terms of true English classic literature. I've tried many times over the years and I don't know if it's my brain or my attention span or what, but I can't get into it.

So that leaves me with these "literary bestsellers" from the 20th and 21st century, and so often when I finish them, I think "what have I read, besides a good plot?" I expect a 400+ page book to change me somehow, or have some life-altering takeaway, if I'm going to give it the hours and attention it takes to read it. Maybe my hopes are too much, because obviously I don't expect the same from, say, a sitcom bingewatch that I give that same amount of time.

Anyway, very much enjoying this discussion. Will probably check out Advise and Consent just for the gay subplot. It's fascinating to me to read these works from yesteryear and how gays are depicted or encoded.

OP you realize this movie is a right-wing, neoconservative fave, right?

[quote] I expect a 400+ page book to change me somehow, or have some life-altering takeaway, if I'm going to give it the hours and attention it takes to read it.

Seriously? How about reading for enjoyment?

Can't it be both R68?

Who said it couldn't be both? Not me. But [bold]EXPECTING[/bold] a life-altering takeaway just because you read 400 pages is silly.

R66 I took away from Advise & Consent that politics is a dirty game and literally everyone is fair game. The ONLY senator who is not a complete monster is Elizabeth "Bessie" Adams.

She was inspired my legendary Maine Senator and Lt. Col. Margaret Chase Smith. There was a time for about 14 years (aggregate) where she was the only woman in the Senate.

She and Eleanor Roosevelt appeared together on Face the Nation.

She also publicly chastised McCarthy on the Senate floor. When McCarthy removed her from an important committee spot, she said:

"If I am to be remembered in history, it will not be because of legislative accomplishments, but for an act I took as a legislator in the U.S. Senate when on June 1, 1950, I spoke ... in condemnation of McCarthyism, when the junior Senator from Wisconsin had the Senate paralyzed with fear that he would purge any Senator who disagreed with him."

What a badass. What an honor to be played by Betty White in the film adaptation.

R71 did she and Eleanor Roosevelt get together

[quote] this movie is a right-wing, neoconservative fave

How so, R67?

[quote]this movie is a right-wing, neoconservative fave

The book came down heavily on the side of Republicans but Preminger wanted the movie to remain neutral.

The novel is also based on Senator Lester C. Hunt, DDS.

Hunt challenged McCarthy. In 1954, Hunt's son was arrested for sodomy. McCarthy, along with Senators Styles Bridges and Herman Welker, blackmailed Hunt into not seeking reelection or his son's arrest would be exposed. The trio also blackmailed the Washington DC police chief.

The Eisenhower Administration offered Tariff Commissioner if Hunt never ran for the Senate again. Hunt said he was determined to win reelection.

Hunt sadly shot himself in his Senate office in 1954. He was 61.

Welker lost reelection by a landslide in 1956 and died of a brain tumor in 1957 at age 50. McCarthy died from cirrhosis in 1957 at age 48. Bridges had a fatal heart attack in 1961 at 63.

Seab Cooley is based on Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar.

McKellar was in Congress from 1911 to 1917 and the Senate from 1917 to 1963.

He brought an old school style to politics that was obsolete in the 1950's. He was President pro tempore twice and attended cabinet meetings. He was a shrewd senator who liked to play politics the "old school way."

He lost reelection to a young albert Gore in 1952. He died in 1957 at the age of 88.

Bob Munson was based on Senator Alben Barkley

Born in a log cabin in Kentucky, he went on to be one of the greatest senators of all time. A Democrat, he worked closely with the Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower administrations on a myriad of matters. Whether he fully supported an issue or not, Barkley was there fighting in the senate for the betterment of America. Barkely got good legislation passed.

When FDR died in 1945, Truman asked Barkely to be Vice President. The disagreed on a lot of issues, but the two men respected each other. He threw in his name to run for president in 1952, but at 74 was deemed too old to win.

He died in 1956 at the age of 78.

In his final speech speech, he quote the book of Psalm 84:10: "I'm glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.

I found the documentary on Otto Preminger online but only the first half which doesn't cover A&C.

R78 Link? Is it on Youtube?

I used to get Fonda's two '60s D.C. movies mixed up! My take on double Henry...

R80 TERRIBLE picture of Gene Tierney in that link

R78

[quote] It always gets confused with "The Best Man,"

'The Best Man' isn't half as discursive as 'Advice and Consent'. It doesn't the silly melodrama shown at R10.

And it contains a wonderful appearance by a great British stage actress as Fonda's abused wife.