By the end of February 1961, as renovations on 129 East Sixty-fourth Street were nearing completion, Preminger was eager to return to his day job. He began working with Wendell Mayes on the screenplay of another best seller, Advise and Consent, by Allen Drury A story of a U.S. president’s nomination for secretary of state, the novel contains enough ingredients, including a sexual scandal in the Senate and political skulduggery that reaches into the Oval Office, to qualify it as another controversial Preminger undertaking. In late March and April the director made several trips to scout locations in Washington, where he expected to shoot the entire picture beginning in September, and to curry favor with senators in order to gain permission to go where no filmmaker had ever gone before—inside the Senate chamber itself.
In May, satisfied with the progress Mayes was making, he took time off to go to the Cannes Film Festival, where Exodus was screened out of competition. Leading a party that included cast members Sal Mineo, Jill Haworth, and Peter Lawford, Preminger arranged a flashy entrance. He chartered a Caravelle jet to fly one hundred French theatrical and political figures from Paris to Cannes. At the Carlton Hotel he hosted a sumptuous lunch for the press, in effect treating the Exodus screening as the film’s European bow. After Cannes he traveled with his three actors to London for a May 9 opening at the Astoria, a theater he had helped to remodel for the film’s reserved-seat engagement. He and his entourage then moved on to Paris, where
Mr. and Mrs. Otto Preminger and the two young stars of Exodus, Jill Haworth and Sal Mineo, at the Cannes Film Festival screening, May 1961.
Exodus opened on May 17 at two mammoth theaters on the Champs-Élysées. The next day Exodus bowed in Tel Aviv, with all receipts going to the Weitzmann Institute, as Preminger had promised. At the end of the month Otto returned to London to respond to critical blasts. At a luncheon he hosted, he chastised his guests for reviewing the politics of the novel rather than those of the film; called some of the notices “malicious;” and expressed resentment that several British critics had made a point of mentioning that both he and Leon Uris were Jewish. “We are first of all Americans, and Exodus is an American picture,” he announced.14
When he returned to New York in June, in long daily meetings with Wendell Mayes he completed the script of Advise and Consent. As on Anatomy of a Murder, Preminger and Mayes were working on a good yarn, an insider’s exposé of Washington power plays. But they had their work cut out for them. Their first task was to trim Drury’s prolix novel. Their second, as Preminger, a lifelong Democrat, stated, was “to correct Drury’s conservative Republican bias. It is our intention to disguise the political affiliations of the characters.”15 Otto wanted to detach the film from Drury’s Cold War agenda, which presents appeasement toward Communist Russia as a potentially
Burgess Meredith (seated, second from the left), a fearful witness, denounces the president’s nominee for secretary of state (Henry Fonda, standing) as a former Communist. Preminger called Meredith’s performance “one of the greatest” he had ever seen.
mortal threat to the nation. But he was going to retain the novelist’s view of politics as the art of the possible, a set of maneuvers requiring compromise, subterfuge, and diplomacy on a grand scale. The question Drury’s omniscient narrator poses in the last line of the novel, “whether history still had a place for a nation so strongly composed of great ideals and uneasy compromise as [America],” epitomized the equivocal realist tone Preminger was hoping to capture.
“The Senate itself—our remarkable system of checks and balances— will be the hero,” Preminger said.16 And indeed, as the script was evolving, no single character, neither the president nor his nominee nor any individual senator, dominated the action. Nonetheless, Preminger assembled an all-star cast of mostly elder Hollywood statesmen with a well-bred air. (In the Camelot era, wasn’t it reasonable for politicians to be played by charismatic film stars?) As the controversial left-of-center nominee with a possibly Communist past: Henry Fonda. As the defiant president: Franchot Tone. As the august majority leader of the Senate: Walter Pidgeon. As a Southern demagogue enraged by the specter of appeasement: Charles Laughton. As the self-effacing vice-president: Lew Ayres. As a witness against the nominee: Burgess Meredith. As a Washington hostess: Gene Tierney, making a comeback after years of mental illness.
For the role of a playboy senator, Preminger’s first and only choice was Peter Lawford, who as everyone at the time was aware was President Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Lawford was right for the part, but Preminger knew the casting would ensure publicity and he was hoping the actor might help in obtaining permission to shoot some scenes in the Oval Office and in the president’s living quarters. “One phone call from Peter to Jack was all it took to smooth the way,” as Lawford’s biographer, James Spada, reported. “The President—still such a movie buff that he would call Peter to discuss the British box-office receipts of Ocean’s 11—thought it would be fun to have a movie crew around for a few days, and he granted Preminger permission to film in the White House.”17
To play a black senator from Georgia, Preminger hired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I sought Dr. King for the role and he accepted simply because his appearance will make a positive statement for this country here and abroad,” Preminger said. “It should indicate that it is possible for a Negro to be elected to the United States Senate at any time, now or in the future.”18 Casting Dr. King, as Otto fully expected, generated an avalanche of publicity, but the civil rights leader reconsidered and withdrew.
Two roles were hard to cast: Senator Brigham Anderson, head of the subcommittee charged with investigating the president’s controversial nominee, who is blackmailed because of a wartime homosexual relationship; and Fred Van Ackerman, a hyper-eager, power-hungry senator who masterminds the blackmail plot. “I understand that several stars had turned down the role of Brigham Anderson because of the homosexual element,” recalled Don Murray, who accepted the part.
Otto asked me if playing a homosexual would bother me—remember, this was a very different time. Homosexual characters barely existed; happily, forty years later attitudes have changed. I told Otto that in Bus Stop I had played a cowboy: does that make me a cowboy? I did hesitate, however, but not because of the gay angle; I hesitated because of Otto’s reputation. I’d worked successfully with another director, Henry Hathaway who had the same reputation, and I’d learned how to handle a bully. I figured that people who were bullies acted that way because they are basically insecure about addressing people in a normal way. I decided from the first meeting with Preminger that I would be assertive, very direct, and very definite
because if you show people like that any kind of weakness, they attack; they’re like sharks when they smell blood.19
“Frank Sinatra wanted to play Van Ackerman, but Otto wanted an unknown,” recalled George Grizzard, who at the time Otto cast him had been in four plays on Broadway and only one film, From the Terrace.
When I went in to see Otto, I hadn’t read the book: you can’t act the book. But I had read the script and next to Charles Laughton’s, Van Ackerman was the best part in the film. You didn’t have to audition for Otto, which I liked. I was simply brought in to talk to him; he saw something in me that he wanted for the role, and he cast me. I went in not afraid of Otto, mostly because I had enjoyed hearing about a conversation he’d had with Charlton Heston, who wanted to play Laughton’s part. When Otto told Heston he wasn’t right for it, Heston said, “Have you seen me in a beard?” “How else have I seen you?” Otto had replied.20
Many times in advance of his September 5 starting date, Preminger traveled to the capital, where, as skillfully as he had in Israel, he cultivated a cadre of local movers and shakers who became liaisons, scouts, and advisers. But despite his influential lobbyists and his own perseverance, Otto was not allowed to shoot in the Senate chamber; he would have to re-create the Senate on a sound stage at Columbia Pictures. He was, however, granted an extraordinary privilege—his art director,
Lyle Wheeler, and his set decorator, Eli Benneche, were admitted into the Senate to take extensive photographic documentation; once the photos had served their purpose, all of them had to be destroyed.
Preminger’s primary inside man in Washington was Paul Green, a former journalist who ran Hollywood-on-the-Potomac. “Preminger was the most striking person I have ever met,” Green recollected. “He dripped personality, and he had the most marvelous accent. He was masterful, dominant, yet everybody seemed to like him. I certainly liked him instantly. I never witnessed one of his rages—he was always polite. And Nat Rudich, his assistant who handled the press, was also a very nice guy.” Green, who was on the Senate staff working for Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat, knew his way around Washington and had Hollywood connections besides. “Estes was a rascal,” Green said. “He had a keen interest in movies and in starlets and he couldn’t wait for the film people to come to town; he wanted to meet all of them. I had no trouble getting clearances for the film crew’s
Otto on the set of the Senate, a replica of the actual chamber in Washington, D.C., constructed for Advise and Consentat Columbia Pictures in Hollywood.
cumbersome equipment, which cluttered Senate hallways and meeting rooms for days on end. I arranged it so that Preminger could film anywhere inside and outside any building or room on Capitol Hill except for the Senate chamber itself”21
In what was probably the most persuasive public relations performance of his career, the filmmaker turned Washington into an Otto Preminger set as he courted politicians and the press throughout the five weeks of location work. “He really presold the film by having the world press there throughout the Washington shooting,” George Grizzard observed. “Every Sunday night he would hold a banquet for the press and he expected all of the actors to be present. You had to have a note from your mother to miss that.”22 For a scene in which the president addresses the Washington press corps the extras were the real thing. A Washington hostess, Mrs. E. Fontaine Brown, lent Preminger her estate for a dinner party scene, populated by 360 eager socialites who, arrayed in their finery, arrived at seven and did not depart until after two in the morning. “Prince Otto made all but 80 wait in a garage without food or drink for four hours. No one could leave until 1 a.m.,” Richard Gehman reported in the New York Journal American on September 27. Partygoers were treated to some mild Otto barbs. “You did not smoke in the previous take,” Preminger bellowed, ordering one guest to put out a cigarette. “Get out!” he snapped when one partygoer moved in the wrong direction. “I’m from Look,” the banished man protested. “ ‘ You look!’ Preminger retorted, visibly pleased with his own joke,” as Willi Frischauer commented.23
Throughout the shoot, as Time reported, Preminger himself, “Hollywood’s aging (54) enfant terrible … thundering like an Erich von Stroheim Prussian officer, was really the show.”24 Journalist Donald Zec, on location for the New York Daily Mirror, noted that “the balding, brilliant filmmaker … known as Otto the Terrible and Otto the Ogre, has captured the capital, and the mesmerized neighbors have surrendered without a fight.”25 Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon, Preminger “got a standing ovation usually reserved for potentates from lands other than Hollywood, and took it in his usual snide,” Time punned. In a much publicized turn of events, the overscheduled Preminger twice declined a lunch invitation from President and Mrs. Kennedy. “I see where Otto Preminger has snubbed two invitations from Kennedy on the excuse he was too busy. HE was too busy?” clucked gossip doyenne Louella Parsons. “This is the man who rants and raves and seems to have Washington bowing in humble submission. What gives?”26
When it finally took place, the twice-deferred gathering was a triumph. “Preminger and the president were very knowledgeable about each other’s work,” Don Murray noted. “Otto was so interested in politics and so well informed he could have been the politician; the good-looking president could have been the man who was in show business.”27 During the lunch Preminger believed that he would be shooting some scenes in the Oval Office as well as in the president’s private quarters. But later that day, through his press secretary Pierre Salinger, the president informed him that Mrs. Kennedy objected to the shooting and that, reluctantly, he would have to withdraw permission.
As Otto himself quipped, “This is the first time a movie about the democratic process has been made by an absolute dictator.”28 Ultimately, his persona would destroy him and mar his legacy; but in Washington in 1961, his reputation was buoyed by the enormous box-office success of Exodus, and his “Prussian” image was fused to the then widespread belief that he was a “brilliant filmmaker.” Once again Otto had good timing. “It was a wonderful moment to be in Washington,” as George Grizzard commented. “This was Camelot, after all, when all the bright young things were there to build a new world.”29
The five weeks the Advise and Consent company spent in Washington proceeded under a particularly lucky charm. The troupers from Hollywood and the Washington politicos and socialites, mesmerized by each other’s glamour, enjoyed a kind of social interaction rare at the time. “I would have thought Washington would have been more blasé,” Preminger noted wryly.30 The goodwill filtered onto the set, where Preminger was working with an ensemble of virtually untouchable and gentlemanly professionals. Don Murray, who had the most difficult part, set the tone. “Don was the sweetest man in the world,” Grizzard said.31 “Fortunately, we had no Marilyn Monroes on the set,” recalled Murray, who had worked with Monroe in Bus Stop.32
“Everyone was waiting for Otto and Charles Laughton to have a fight, but it never happened, and I knew it wouldn’t,” Hope recalled. “Before we
Preminger with Charles Laughton, struggling with a Southern accent, on location in Washing-ton for Advise and Consent.
started shooting Otto had invited Laughton to dinner and when he arrived the first thing he said to me was, ‘My dear, your husband is purest mush.’ From that moment he was one of my favorites.”33
The famously self-critical Laughton, who unlike most of his costars made acting look like hard work, was no problem except to himself. Overwrought about developing a Southern accent, he asked Paul Green to take him to see the Senate in operation. “He wanted to listen to some of the debate on the floor and to familiarize himself with a variety of Southern accents,” Green recalled. “Several speakers were Southern, including John Stennis and Olin Johnston, both with broad regional accents. Laughton kept his eye and ear on the floor, often leaning over to hear better. He was very intent.”34 “As a Southerner, I knew the accent Laughton worked out was phony,” Grizzard said. “He was wonderful in the long shots but up close he was hambone: classy hambone.”
In a troubled production Gene Tierney visibly nervous about making a comeback, might have been a flash point, but not here. “Gene was frightened,” as George Grizzard recalled. “ ‘Do you think Otto is going to yell at me today?’ she would ask me. But no, Otto didn’t yell at her.”35 “Otto was very gentle with Gene,” Don Murray said. “He could have been cruel, but he wasn’t. She was very subdued and didn’t express much joy of living. There was something missing in Gene: she lacked a spark.”36
A completely friction-free set would have been anomalous and no doubt uncomfortable for Preminger, who thrived on starting fights and testing other people’s limits. Inevitably, on the set of a director whose creativity was fueled by abrasion, a few fuss-ups occurred. Otto periodically screamed at his sometimes slow-moving cinematographer, Sam Leavitt. “For one of my big speeches Otto said I was being too theatrical,” Grizzard recollected.
Under my breath I muttered, “That’s where I come from, maybe I should go back.” “What makes you think you belong in the theater, Mr. Grizzard? I’ve seen you, you’re not so good,” he said in front of everyone, and then he added, “He’s done one play and some summer stock and he thinks he’s John Barrymore.” Peter Lawford gave me a big wink, and somehow I got through it. I haven’t yet recovered from Otto yelling at me in front of everyb
ody, but I liked him anyway. Otto Preminger was a pain in the neck, but he was a lot of things—a lot of good things—besides being someone who yelled. At the time I knew nothing about filmmaking and I learned a lot from him. “Don’t make it so big, I have to come in for a close-up,” he told me. Otto taught me how to bring it down for the camera.37
“Otto had trouble with Inga Swenson [in the demanding role of the wife of the senator with a homosexual past] and Inga had trouble with Otto,” Hope said. “She was a very nice girl, but she was afraid of Otto. The house where her character lived was a real house that was in the traffic pattern of Dulles Airport and because of that the sound was a big problem in some of her shots. Things had to be done quickly to get shots before the sound of the planes interrupted us. It was a hot set, and crowded, and Inga would get flustered and then Otto would start shouting.”38 Lew Ayres, disturbed by Preminger’s treatment of Inga Swenson as well as of Sam Leavitt, spoke “gently to Otto about his behavior,” Don Murray said. “Otto did not get upset—nobody could get upset with Ayres, who was the most beautiful person; it was an honor to be in the same room with him. But I don’t remember that Otto’s attitude toward Inga or Sam changed much either.”39
After finishing the Washington scenes in mid-October, Otto moved the production to Columbia, where replicas of the Senate chamber and the Oval Office had been built. He was finished shooting by early November and by early December he had completed final editing and scoring. In order to qualify for Academy Award consideration, he planned to open the film just before Christmas at the Warner Beverly Theatre in Beverly Hills. But a contractual stipulation—his film could not open if a first-class production of the play of Advise and Consent was running either on Broadway or on the road—thwarted him. An adaptation by Loring Mandel, directed by Franklin Schaffner, had opened on Broadway on March 17, 1960, and had closed on May 20, 1961; but under a new management, in October 1961, the play had gone out on tour starring Chester Morris from the original cast and Farley Granger. The road producer, Martin Tahse, along with the original Broadway producers, Loring Mandel and Allen Drury sued Otto to block the film from opening. Otto’s defense was that the tour was not first-class. As a theatrical expert he called Hal Prince, then at the start of a career as producer and director that would earn him a record twenty-one Tony Awards (and counting). “I regret to say that I never met Preminger,” Prince recalled. “I would certainly have liked to. I was flattered that he had called me to testify in the case—it was the only time I have ever been called upon in a trial as a theatrical expert. I hope I helped him; I was told that my testimony did.”40 Although Prince did say that the touring production did not fully satisfy his understanding of “first-class,” the judge nonetheless ruled that Otto could not release Advise and Consent until June 1962. The plaintiff, however, said that Otto could release the film in December for “substantial cash payment.” “Exorbitant,” Preminger responded.41 He canceled the Beverly Hills booking and rescheduled a June 1962 opening.
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