“Advise and Consent”

I joined author and podcaster Dr. Claude Berube on “The Senate” to discuss the one Hollywood movie filmed in the US Capitol complex, in 1962, Allen Drury’s “Advise and Consent.” Spoiler alert.

I’ve written previously about one of my favorite movies, “Advise and Consent,” by the late Allen Drury, a former United Press International congressional correspondent from the 1950s. Drury’s keen eye and intimate knowledge of the US Senate served him well while writing the 656-page novel, which was later converted into a stage play and a two-hour movie produced by Otto Preminger.

But I’ve never told “the rest of the story,” as the late Paul Harvey used to say, about the late and legendary Jack Valenti, the former senior aide to President Lyndon Johnson who later led the Motion Picture Association and became one of Washington’s most powerful and effective lobbyists.

Almost 30 years ago, MPA lobbyist, friend, and fellow Oklahoman Cindy Merrifield called me one day while I was in my Secretary of the Senate office (S-208, now the Republican Whip’s office). She said Valenti wanted to see me about a movie producers wanted to film in the US Capitol. Intrigued, I quickly agreed to the meeting.

The diminutive Valenti, gracious and charming, would not mention the movie or the producer, but claimed there was “precedent” for using US Senate as a movie set - Advise and Consent, filmed in 1961 after the book on which it was based sat atop the New York Times Best Seller list for 98 weeks. The gripping, suspenseful, and even “dark” movie is based on the travails of a presidential nominee for Secretary of State during the height of both the Cold War and the infamous “Red Scare” led by US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) investigation subcommittee hearings.

McCarthy aggressively sought to root out and expose communist and Soviet infiltration in government and Hollywood. An anti-communist fervor swept the nation as the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb in 1949, the same year that Mao Tse Tung’s Red Army swept into Beijing and drove the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek onto the island fortress of Formosa - now Taiwan.

A speech McCarthy gave to Republican women in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1947 began a seven-year era of “McCarthyism.” The House Un-American Activities Committee was created, during which a junior Congressman, Richard Nixon (R-CA), exposed perjury by a high-level State Department employee, Alger Hiss, leading to his conviction and imprisonment. However, over time, McCarthy’s increasingly scurrilous tactics ensnared innocent people, and his tactics were eventually overcome by Supreme Court rulings and being censured by the US Senate in 1954, precipitated by the Army-McCarthy hearings (“Have you no shame, sir?”). That same year, US Senator Lester Hunt (D-IL) committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Aside from health issues, Hunt was distraught over his son being arrested for soliciting a male undercover policeman in Washington, DC.

Not long afterwards, Hunt was approached by two McCarthy allies, Sens. Styles Bridges (R-NH) and Herman Welker (R-ID), and threatened that the scandal would be exposed if he chose to seek reelection. Bridges and Welker were eventually exonerated for contributing to the suicide, but it appears Drury found inspiration for his novel.

After the first edition, Drury made it abundantly clear that his novel was fiction, with the usual disclaimers that any resemblance to real people and events was coincidental. However, he admitted that some of the people and events may be “akin” to real people and events. No one ever sued him for his depictions.

The book was and remains powerfully influential for many of us, who were impressed and inspired by Drury’s depictions of the US Senate, although fictitious. It beautifully captured the Senate of that era, complete with social events resembling those hosted by the late Oklahoman and Ambassador to Luxembourg, Pearl Mesta. The late historian David McCullough served as an “extra.” Cameos included US Sen. Henry Jackson (D-WA) and future Supreme Court Justice Byron White, who was Deputy Attorney General when the movie was filmed.

While there are no “antagonists” in the movie, one demagogic Senator in the black-and-white film resembles McCarthy, the fictional Fred Van Ackerman of Wyoming, not as a far-right “Red Scare” afficianado, but as a Soviet accommodationist whose extortion of colleague and subcommittee chair Brig Anderson (UT) over a brief homosexual affair in Hawaii during World War II leads to the popular Senator’s suicide. In the book, Ackerman is censured, but not in the movie (but is threatened with expulsion by the Senate Majority Leader, played by the late Walter Pidgeon).

The Old Senate Building’s third-floor Caucus Room - now named after the late Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) in the Senate Office Building named for Richard Russell (D-GA) - was used as the set for subcommittee hearings on the nomination of Robert Leffingwell as Secretary of State. Some suggest Hiss was the “model” for Leffingwell. Former Vice President and Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace may qualify. There are scenes of Secret Service agents in fedoras and others walking through the Capitol Rotunda. And essential scenes were filmed in the “canteen” of the US Treasury Department. Efforts to use the Senate chamber were rebuffed. Preminger instead recovered the same set from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” starring the late Jimmy Stewart, for his movie’s Senate chamber scenes.

Several people turned down roles in the movie, including Martin Luther King Jr. as a US Senator (no African American Senators were serving then). Richard Nixon, who served as Vice President until January 1961, also declined. Still, his criticism of a scene involving a vice president's assumption of the Presidency may have led Preminger to alter the ending slightly. The movie’s suspenseful ending varies dramatically from the book, suggesting that sequels would be forthcoming. Drury wrote twenty books, passing away in 1998 - but no sequels to Advise and Consent. Drury and I briefly enjoyed sharing correspondence - his typed on an old-fashioned manual typewriter, mine hand-written - during my time as Secretary of the Senate. I wish I’d kept copies.

The film has many unusual aspects, including Drury’s refusal to divulge his characters as Democrats or Republicans, which he considered a distraction. The President’s name is never known, but he resembles an ailing Franklin Roosevelt. One Senator, the womanizing Lafe Smith, portrayed by the late Peter Lawford (John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, perhaps in a portrayal of the late President during his time in the Senate), was from Iowa in the book, but Rhode Island in the movie. Edward Allen’s portrayal of Senator Orrin Knox reminds me of the late GOP Senate leader around that time, Everett Dirksen (R-IL).

After Valenti made his pitch, I immediately contacted US Senator John Warner (R-VA), Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. “I know just who to call,” Warner told me over the phone. “Bob Bird,” referring to the late Robert C. Byrd (D-WVA), who was one of two Senators (the other being then-President Pro Tempore Strom Thurmond, R-SC) serving when Advise and Consent was filmed and famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Senate and its rules.

It didn’t take Warner long to get back to me. “Byrd says the movie was very disruptive, and if he could do it over again, he’d say no,” I vividly recall Chairman Warner telling me. “Call Jack and tell him ‘no,’” Warner directed, which I did. Valenti was clearly disappointed but didn’t push back.

No such movie has been filmed in the Capitol complex since, and I doubt ever will.

Over the weekend, I was interviewed by Dr. Claude Berube for his podcast, “The Senate,” about the book, the movie, and its parallels to actual events and people. Plenty of spoilers are here if you’ve not read the book or seen the movie. It’s a fun walk through the intersection of Hollywood and Congress for those interested in a glimpse of the US Senate the way it was.

Enjoy the podcast. The original movie can be found on YouTube (for free, perhaps with commercials).