Advise & Consent
Short description
A presidential nominee for Secretary of State, Robert Leffingwell, faces a Senate committee that must decide whether to confirm him. The panel is led by the idealistic Senator Brig Anderson, who holds a decisive vote and is reluctant to fall in line behind his party's leadership. His resistance turns him into a target: a ruthless colleague seeking power digs up damaging personal material about Anderson and threatens to expose it unless he votes the right way. What begins as a confirmation hearing becomes a test of loyalty and survival for everyone involved.
Otto Preminger directed and produced the film, the twelfth of the sixteen features he made, arriving between Exodus and The Cardinal. Wendell Mayes wrote the screenplay, and the large cast of ninety-one credited performers includes Henry Fonda as Leffingwell, Charles Laughton as Senator Seabright Cooley, Don Murray as Senator Anderson, Walter Pidgeon as the Senate Majority Leader and Gene Tierney as Dolly Harrison.
Released in June 1962, the drama runs 139 minutes and was made through Preminger's own production company. It took about 2 million dollars at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds a 7.8 rating from thirteen critics' reviews, while on TMDB it sits at 7.2 from 127 votes, a narrower gap between professional and viewer opinion than is typical for films of its era.
What's left behind the scenes
- Otto Preminger cast Peter Lawford (1923-1984) in one of the roles in the film because he had access to the Kennedy family. Lawford was a brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), who, in turn, was a passionate film buff and enjoyed having a film crew working at the White House.
- Director Otto Preminger (1905-1986) offered the role of a Southern senator to Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), believing it would be appropriate, despite the fact that there were simply no Black senators in the United States at the time. King seriously considered the offer and declined, reasoning that it would harm the civil rights movement.
- The description of the attempted blackmail is based on the situation involving Senator Lester K. Hunt of Wyoming (1892-1954), who was blackmailed by members of the Republican Party. Senator Styles Bridges told Hunt that if he ran for office again, details of his son's arrest would be leaked to the press. Hunt agreed to resign, and 11 days later, he committed suicide in the Capitol building.
- Practically every character in the film is based on a real person. Leif Smith was modeled after John F. Kennedy, Orrin Knox after Senator Robert A. Taft (1889-1953), Fred Van Ackerman after Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), and the President after Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945). Even the case involving the blackmail of Senator Anderson and its resolution were based on real events. The description of the Leffingwell situation is based on testimony given to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities by Alger Hiss (1904-1996). Harley Hudson is based on Harry S. Truman (1884-1972).
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