Advise & Consent ***** (1962, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Lew Ayres, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Ford, Peter Lawford, Edward Andrews, Burgess Meredith, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone) – Classic Movie Review 3392

Producer-director Otto Preminger’s superb 1962 political thriller boasts  a wonderful array of old Sixties star character actors doing their unique and eccentric things.

Despite all the valiant efforts of Henry Fonda as Robert Leffingwell, Walter Pidgeon as the Senate Majority Leader, Lew Ayres (the US Vice President), Edward Andrews as Senator Orrin Knox, Burgess Meredith as Herbert Gelman, Gene Tierney as Washington socialite Dolly Harrison and Franchot Tone (the US President), it is Charles Laughton’s show all the way in his final film role as a wily Southern senator, Seabright Cooley.

Rather than being intellectual, incisive or cool, the film is slightly stagey, corny and overheated, but Preminger turns all three deficits into advantages, and it plays like a good old-fashioned night out at the theatre.

The fast-moving, riveting melodramatic plot, with the script by Wendell Mayes from Allen Drury’s novel, is about the American President (Tone) choosing a liberal secretary of state (Fonda) unpopular with the likes of Laughton’s Cooley, leading to an ambitious senator called Fred Van Ackerman (George Grizzard) blackmailing a politically undecided young senator named Brigham Anderson (Don Murray) with a closet gay past – and his subsequent suicide.

This attempted blackmail is based on the real-life story of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt, blackmailed by members of the Republican Party. Hunt was told by Senator Styles Bridges that if he ran for re-election, the details of his son’s arrest for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover officer would end up in every mailbox in Wyoming. Hunt agreed to step down but 11 days later committed suicide in the Capitol.

Also in the cast are Paul Ford as Senator Stanley Danta, Peter Lawford as Senator Lafe Smith, Inga Swenson as Ellen Anderson, Will Geer as the Senate Minority Leader, Eddie Hodges as Johnny Leffingwell, Paul McGrath, a 40-year-old Betty White as Senator Bessie Adams, Malcolm Atterbury, J Edward McKinley, William Quinn, Tiki Santos and Tom Helmore.

Preminger also directed Tierney as the star of his film noir thrillers Laura (1944) and Whirlpool (1949).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3392

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