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    Movie Mystery & Suspense
    Movie Mystery & Suspense
    Movie Mystery & Suspense
    Ebook412 pages5 hours

    Movie Mystery & Suspense

    By John Howard Reid

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    As the author of the acclaimed "Merryll Manning" series of crime and detective novels, Movie Mystery and Suspense is a topic right up my alley. Of course, this is not the first, nor is it the only movie book, in which I've tackled the mystery and suspense genre. Other books include "Great Cinema Detectives" and "Mystery, Suspense, Film Noir and Detective Movies on DVD". These books are still in print, but earlier accounts such as "Suspense in the Cinema", "Mystery Movies" and "More Movie Thrillers" were also bestsellers in their day. Fortunately, "Movie Mystery & Suspense" is the book I personally regard as my best on this particular topic. You'll find detailed accounts of such classics as "Johnny Allegro" ("When is a Columbia film not a Columbia film? Answer: When it's deliberately made to look like an RKO film noir"), "House of Strangers" (now available on an excellent Fox DVD), "The High Wall" and "Black Angel"; plus famous serials like "Daredevils of the Red Circle" (one of Republic's best). I also cover many of the legendary movies, including "The Big Sleep", "To Have and Have Not", "The Big Carnival", "Angel Face" and "My Name Is Julia Ross". And then, of course, there are the surprises. Lots of surprises, including two bonus monographs, one on director Robert Siodmak, the other on producer/director Otto Preminger! Although published way back in December, 2006, in the U.S.A., Canada and Great Britain, this book is not in the least dated. In fact, it was recently published without any alterations in Australia. Of course, many of these superb movies are now available on DVD, and that would partly explain this book's continued popularity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Howard Reid
    Release dateApr 4, 2011
    ISBN9781458138514
    Movie Mystery & Suspense
    Author

    John Howard Reid

    Author of over 100 full-length books, of which around 60 are currently in print, John Howard Reid is the award-winning, bestselling author of the Merryll Manning series of mystery novels, anthologies of original poetry and short stories, translations from Spanish and Ancient Greek, and especially books of film criticism and movie history. Currently chief judge for three of America's leading literary contests, Reid has also written the textbook, "Write Ways To Win Writing Contests".

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      Book preview

      Movie Mystery & Suspense - John Howard Reid

      MOVIE MYSTERY & SUSPENSE

      John Howard Reid

      ****

      Published by:

      John Howard Reid at Smashwords

      Copyright (c) 2011 by John Howard Reid

      ****

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      ****

      Original text copyright 2011 by John Howard Reid. All rights reserved.

      Enquiries: johnreid@mail.qango.com

      ****

      Hollywood Classics 13

      2011

      --

      Other Books in the Hollywood Classics series:

      1. New Light on Movie Bests

      2. B Movies, Bad Movies, Good Movies

      3. Award-Winning Films of the 1930s

      4. Movie Westerns: Hollywood Films the Wild, Wild West

      5. Memorable Films of the Forties

      6. Popular Pictures of the Hollywood 1940s

      7. Your Colossal Main Feature Plus Full Support Program

      8. Hollywood’s Miracles of Entertainment

      9. Hollywood Gold: Films of the Forties and Fifties

      10. Hollywood B Movies: A Treasury of Spills, Chills & Thrills

      11. Movies Magnificent: 150 Must-See Cinema Classics

      12. These Movies Won No Hollywood Awards

      13. Movie Mystery & Suspense

      14. America’s Best, Britain’s Finest

      15. Films Famous, Fanciful, Frolicsome and Fantastic

      16. Hollywood Movie Musicals

      17. Hollywood Classics Index Books 1-16

      18. More Movie Musicals

      19. Success in the Cinema

      20. Best Western Movies

      21. Great Cinema Detectives

      22. Great Hollywood Westerns

      23. Science-Fiction & Fantasy Cinema

      24. Hollywood’s Classic Comedies

      25. Hollywood Classics Title Index to All Movies Reviewed in Books 1-24

      --

      Additional Movie Books by John Howard Reid

      CinemaScope One: Stupendous in Scope

      CinemaScope Two: 20th Century-Fox

      CinemaScope 3: Hollywood Takes the Plunge

      Mystery, Suspense, Film Noir and Detective Movies on DVD: A Guide to the Best in Cinema Thrills

      WESTERNS: A Guide to the Best (and Worst) Western Movies on DVD

      Silent Films and Early Talkies on DVD

      British Movie Entertainments on VHS and DVD

      Copyright 2011 by John Howard Reid

      --

      Table of Contents

      A

      Abandoned {Woman} 1949

      Ace in the Hole (see Big Carnival)

      Act of Violence (1948)

      Advise and Consent (1962)

      After the Thin Man (1936)

      Among the Living (1941)

      Angel Face (1952)

      At Sword’s Point (see Sons of the Musketeers)

      B

      Barricade (1939)

      Batman (1943)

      Betrayed (1954)

      Big Carnival (1951)

      Big Guy (1939)

      Big Noise (1944)

      Big Sleep (1946)

      Black Angel (1946)

      Blackbeard the Pirate (1952)

      Black Doll (1938)

      Black Friday (1940)

      Blackmail (1939)

      Blackmailer (1936)

      Blood on the Moon (1948)

      Bomba and the African Treasure (1952)

      Bomba and the Elephant Stampede (1951)

      Bomba and the Golden Idol (1954)

      Bomba and the Hidden City (1950)

      Bomba and the Jungle Girl (1952)

      Bomba and the Killer Leopard (1954)

      Bomba and the Lion Hunters (1951)

      Bomba and the Lord of the Jungle (1955)

      Bomba and the Lost Volcano (1949)

      Bomba and the Safari Drums (1953)

      Bomba on Panther Island (1949)

      Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949)

      Booloo (1938)

      Born Reckless (1937)

      Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937)

      Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938)

      Bulldog Drummond’s Bride (1939)

      Bulldog Drummond’s Peril (1938)

      Bulldog Drummond’s Revenge (1937)

      Bulldog Drummond’s Secret Police (1939)

      Bullets Or Ballots (1936)

      C

      Cage of Evil (1960)

      Call a Messenger (1939)

      Captain Mephisto and the Transformation Machine (see Manhunt of Mystery Island)

      Caribbean {Gold} (1952)

      Chicago Confidential (1957)

      Chick Carter, Detective (1946)

      China (1943)

      China Clipper (1936)

      Claw Monsters (see Panther Girl of the Congo)

      Clutching Hand (1936)

      Confidential Agent (1945)

      Crest of the Wave (See Seagulls over Sorrento)

      Crisis (1950)

      D

      Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939)

      Desperate Search (1952)

      Don’t Turn ‘Em Loose (1936)

      E

      Emperor’s Candlesticks (1937)

      Everything Happens At Night (1939)

      Extraordinary Seaman (1968)

      G

      Ghosts on the Loose (see Spooks Run Wild)

      Glass Bottom Boat (see Spy in Lace Panties)

      Government Agents vs Phantom Legion (1951)

      H

      High Wall (1947)

      His Kind of Woman (1951)

      Hit the Road (1941)

      Holt of the Secret Service (1941)

      Hounded (see Johnny Allegro)

      House of Strangers (1949)

      House of the Seven Hawks (1959)

      I

      Island in the Sky (1953)

      Isle of Fury (1936)

      It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)

      I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951)

      J

      Johnny Allegro (1949)

      Jungle Girl (1941)

      K

      King of the Rocket Men (1949)

      L

      Land of the Lost Jewels (1950)

      Last of the Mohicans (1932)

      Lost Planet (1953)

      Lost Planet Airmen (see King of the Rocket Men)

      Lost Tribe (1949)

      M

      Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945)

      Man with a Cloak (1951)

      Mark of Cain (1948)

      Mister 880 (1950)

      Monsters from the Moon (see Robot Monster)

      My Forbidden Past (1951)

      My Hero (see Southern Yankee)

      My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

      O

      O.S.S. (1946)

      P

      Panther Girl of the Congo (1955)

      Phantom Cowboy (1941)

      Phantom Creeps (1939)

      Purple Heart (1944)

      Q

      Queen of the Amazons (1946)

      Question of Suspense (1961)

      R

      Real Glory (1939)

      Robinson Crusoe of Clipper {Mystery} Island (1936)

      Robot Monster (1953)

      S

      Sanders of the River (1935)

      Seagulls over Sorrento (1954)

      Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

      Slippery Pearls (see Stolen Jools)

      Sons of the Musketeers (1952)

      Southern Yankee (1948)

      Spider Returns (1941)

      Spooks Run Wild (1941)

      Spy in Lace Panties (1966)

      Stolen Jools (1931)

      T

      Three in Eden (see Isle of Fury)

      To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

      To Have and Have Not (1944)

      Three in Eden (see Isle of Fury)

      U

      Uncivilized (1936)

      Union Station (1950)

      --

      Otto Preminger

      Robert Siodmak

      --

      Abandoned

      Dennis O’Keefe (Mark Sitko), Gale Storm (Paula Considine), Jeff Chandler (Chief McRae), Meg Randall (Dottie Jensen), Raymond Burr (Kerric), Marjorie Rambeau (Mrs Donner), Jeanette Nolan (Major Ross), Mike Mazurki (Hoppe), Will Kuluva (Little Guy DeCola), David Clarke (Harry), William Page (Scoop), Sid Tomack (Mr Humes), Perc Launders (Dowd), Steve Darrell (Brenn), Clifton Young (Eddie), Ruth Sanderson (Mrs Spence), Bert Conway (Delaney), Bruce Hamilton (Doc Tilson), Francis McDonald (Wingy), Virginia Mullen (Nurse Sully), Edwin Max (Morrie), Isabel Withers (Mrs Humes), Charles Jordan (Charlie), Frank Cady (city editor), William Tannen (taxi driver), Marcella Cisney (Nurse Kay), Sally Corner (Head Nurse Tripp), Maudie Prickett (Nurse Ferris), Jerry Hausner (orderly) Earl Smith (Sammy), Edward Clark (clerk), Mary George (Nurse Ward), Beatrice Gray (nurse), Franklin Pinky Parker, Dick Ryan, Stuart Wilson (plainclothes policemen), Billy Gray (boy), Howard Mitchell (judge), Felice Richmond (telephone operator).

      Narrated by Jeff Chandler.

      Director: JOSEPH M. NEWMAN. Screenplay: Irwin Gielgud, with additional dialogue by William Bowers; from articles by Irwin Gielgud published in the Los Angeles Mirror. Director of photography: William Daniels. Special photography: David S. Horsley. Sound: Leslie I. Carey, Joe Lapis. Music: Walter Scharf. Art directors: Bernard Herzbrun, Robert Boyle. Set decoration: Russell A. Gausman, Ruby Levitt. Costumes: Yvonne Wood. Make-up: Bud Westmore, Emil LeVigne. Hair styles: Joan St Oegger, Emmy Eckhart. Production manager: Howard Christie. Dialogue director: Jack Daniels. Assistant director: William Holland. Script supervisor: Dorothy Hughes. Film editor: Edward Curtiss. Producer: Jerry Bresler.

      Copyright 8 September 1949 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York opening at the Criterion: 26 October 1949. U.S. release: 28 October 1949. U.K. release: 24 October 1949. Australian release: 2 March 1950. 7,050 feet. 78 minutes.

      Original release title: ABANDONED WOMAN.

      SYNOPSIS: A young woman, Paula Considine, comes to Los Angeles to find her missing sister. She is befriended and assisted by a newspaperman, Mark Sitko. Unfortunately, they soon discover that the sister died of an apparent suicide shortly after giving birth to a baby. All the evidence points to a baby-stealing racket. Impersonating the distraught mother, Considine infiltrates the racket in the hopes of breaking open the whole scandalous operation while rescuing her dead sister’s child. Kerric, a mobster involved with the phony adoption scheme, decides to double-cross his partners.

      VIEWER’S GUIDE: Okay for all.

      COMMENT: This film is spoilt by the crummy and all-pervading additional dialogue supplied by William Bowers. The purpose of additional dialogue is basically to pad out scenes when the original script does not run long enough for a feature. Of course, this basic purpose should never become obvious as it does here. This tedious dialogue slows the film’s pace to such an extent that only director Joe Newman’s skilled actuality filming and William Daniels’ striking low-key photography rescue it. The principals are not much help, though the racketeers as played by Marjorie Rambeau, Will Kuluva and Mike Mazurki make some impression. There is a good climax.

      OTHER VIEWS: Told in semi-documentary style, this film is an exposure of well-organised crime in which the victims are usually unmarried mothers. It is very well and excitingly presented by Joseph Newman. Gale Storm is attractive as the heroine, and Marjorie Rambeau’s essay into villainy is distinctly effective.

      — Lionel Collier in Picturegoer.

      Abandoned is first and foremost a sensationalized melodrama. However, there are several elements that allow Abandoned to function as a noir film, most significantly William Daniels’ photography. Daniels, who had just received the Academy Award for best black and white cinematography for Jules Dassin’s New York based Naked City, imbued Los Angeles with a sinister, almost surreal, visual malevolence.

      — Film Noir.

      A fast-paced film noir gem.

      — The Motion Picture Guide.

      --

      Act of Violence

      Van Heflin (Frank R. Enley), Robert Ryan (Joe Parkson), Janet Leigh (Edith Enley), Mary Astor (Pat), Phyllis Thaxter (Ann Sturges), Berry Kroeger (Johnny), Nicholas Joy (Mr Gavery), Harry Antrim (Fred Finney), Connie Gilchrist (Martha Finney), Will Wright (Pop), Tom Hanlon (radio voice), Phil Tead (clerk), Eddie Waglin, Johnny Albright (bellboys), William Phillips, Dick Simmons (veterans), Larry and Leslie Holt (Georgie Enley), Garry Owen (attendant), Fred Santley (drunk), Dick Elliott (pompous man), Irene Seidner (old woman), Ralph Peters (Tim, bartender), Douglas Carter (heavy-jowled man), Frank Scannell (bell captain), Rocco Lanzo, Rex Downing, Mickey Martin (teenage boys), Bill Cartledge (newsboy), Don Haggerty, Paul Kruger, Wesley Hopper, Jim Drum, George Backus (policemen), Nolan Leary, Barbara Billingsley (voices), Harry Tenbrook (man), Everett Glass (night clerk), Phil Dunham, William Bailey, Wilbur Mack (ad lib drunks), Howard Mitchell (bartender), Ralph Montgomery, Cameron Grant, Walter Merrill (men), Roger Moore, Mahlon Hamilton (winos), Candy Toxton (veteran’s wife), Florita Romero (girl), George Ovey, Jimmie Kelly, David Newell, Fred Datig Jr, Margaret Bert, Mary Jo Ellis, Ann Lawrence (bystanders), André Pola, Rudolph Anders, Roland Varno (German voices), Robert Skelton (cab driver).

      Director: FRED ZINNEMANN. Screenplay: Robert L. Richards; from an unpublished story by Collier Young. Director of photography: Robert Surtees. Sound: Douglas Shearer. Music score: Bronislau Kaper. Conductor: André Previn. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters. Set decoration: Edwin B. Willis, Henry W. Grace. Costumes: Helen Rose. Hair styles: Sydney Guilaroff. Make-up: Jack Dawn. Assistant director: Marvin Stuart. Film editor: Conrad A. Nervig. Producer: William H. Wright.

      Copyright 8 December 1948 by Loew’s Inc. An M-G-M picture. New York opening at Loew’s Criterion: 22 January 1949. U.S. release: February 1949. U.K. release: 30 May 1949. Australian release: 2 June 1949. 7,477 feet. 83 minutes.

      SYNOPSIS: A disabled war veteran, Joe Parkson, has traveled from the East to find a man named Frank Enley. Enley is a respected contractor and civic-minded man, but in a prison camp during the war he was responsible for the death of his men by revealing their plans for escape. Actually, Enley informed his captors of the plan believing that the plan would not succeed and his men would be spared if he interceded; but all of the men were massacred except Parkson. No one knows of the incident except Parkson and the guilt-ridden Enley; and, as Parkson begins to create terror in Enley’s mind, he first confesses to his wife and then flees into the night world of the city. Taking refuge with Pat, a woman of dubious reputation, Enley meets Johnny who offers to help by killing Parkson for money.

      NOTES: Act of Violence was originally announced in 1947 as an independent production starring Howard Duff. Subsequently in 1948, Hellinger Productions-SRO Releasing announced the film was to star Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart.

      Locations at Big Bear Lake, California.

      VIEWER’S GUIDE: Adults.

      COMMENT: Despite some sterling efforts by director and photographer, it is hard to work up much interest in this psychological thriller. The characters are unconvincing — and the stars don’t help: Van Heflin goes through his usual motions (Register shock, Van!), Janet Leigh lays on the mousey housewife bit with a trowel, Phyllis Thaxter once again does her duty by the worried and sympathetic friend, and Robert Ryan is so hammily obvious a neurotic nut, it’s impossible to understand why he was not carted off to the psycho ward the minute he stuck his head out of doors. The supporting cast is better, with Mary Astor, Taylor Holmes and Berry Kroeger trying valiantly to give their roles depth and conviction — though they are largely defeated by the script. Still, at least they succeed in making their portrayals interesting — which is more than one can say for the star performers. The actual plot mechanics are dated and old-hat now, but the script could have succeeded — despite its unconvincing characters — had it made some efforts to preserve the dramatic unities. Here is a yarn that is a natural for a ten or twelve-hour time span and for confinement to the environs of a particular locale. Instead, the story meanders all over the place, introducing superfluous characters at every turn and having no sense of urgency. And then it tacks on a ridiculous, melodramatic climax that conveniently avoids having to deal with the moral or social issues raised!

      OTHER VIEWS: In Act of Violence, director Fred Zinnemann has arrestingly blended the varying styles of the semi-documentary and the psychological thriller. The bizarre prologue with its startling introduction of the limping man motif, is a masterful amalgam of outré Wilder (see the credits for Double Indemnity) and Fritz Lang. What greater contrast could possibly be offered to this than the scene with which the film proper commences? The setting is a small town in California, two years after the war. A young engineer, ex-G.I. Captain Van Heflin, is discovered with his wife, Janet Leigh, at the opening ceremony of a block of houses for which he has been mainly responsible. Notice how economically Zinnemann captures the atmosphere, the feeling of small town mores; how he has profited by his mistake on The Search by drawing upon the creative talents of his art director (Cedric Gibbons), his photographer (Robert L. Surtees, who later worked with him on Oklahoma), and his composer (Bronislau Kaper). The work of the costume department is especially noteworthy: Heflin, bare-headed, wearing an alpaca suit, Miss Leigh in a cloche hat and a drab suit with a wide collar, an official with a boater and a striped shirt, an elderly woman in a flowered print. One has the feeling that one really is in a small town, not on the sound stage of a Hollywood studio. That night, Miss Leigh is awakened by the sound of limping foot-falls prowling around the house. Heflin tells her that the stranger is Joe Parkson, who bears a grudge since they were in prison camp together. Parkson turns out to be Robert Ryan, who, despite the pleas of his fiancée, Phyllis Thaxter, persists in his vendetta against Heflin who had betrayed an escaped plot to the Nazi commandant. Heflin flees to an industrial convention, where he becomes involved with a prostitute (a wonderfully natural performance by Mary Astor) and a vicious thug (Berry Kroeger) who arranges to murder Ryan at a lonely railway station. Here the folly of both empty vengeance and moral cowardice is played out in a tragic climax.

      The bizarre elements of the film are the more effective for being contrasted with the ordinary domesticity of Heflin’s home, and the melodrama of the screenplay Robert L. Richards (who was later to collaborate on Winchester ‘73) worked up from a story by Collier Young, has been brilliantly channeled into a sensitive exposition of human conflict.

      — John Howard Reid writing as George Addison in Films and Filming.

      --

      Advise and Consent

      Henry Fonda (Robert Leffingwell), Charles Laughton (Senator Seabright Cooley), Don Murray (Senator Brigham Anderson), Walter Pidgeon (Senator Bob Munson), Peter Lawford (Senator Lafe Smith), Gene Tierney (Dolly Harrison), Franchot Tone (the President), Lew Ayres (the Vice-President), Burgess Meredith (Herbert Gelman), Eddie Hodges (Johnny Leffingwell), Paul Ford (Senator Stanley Danta), George Grizzard (Senator Fred Van Ackerman), Inga Swenson (Ellen Anderson), Paul McGrath (Hardiman Fletcher), Will Greer (Senate Minority Leader), Edward Andrews (Senator Orrin Knox), Betty White (Senator Bessie Adams), Malcolm Atterbury (Senator Tom August), J. Edward McKinley (Senator Powell Hanson), William Quinn (Senator Paul Hendershot), Tiki Santos (Senator Kanaho), Raoul De Leon (Senator Velez), Tom Helmore (British ambassador), Hilary Eaves (Lady Maudulayne), René Paul (French ambassador), Michele Montau (Celestine Barre), Raj Mallick (Indian ambassador), Russ Brown (night watchman), Paul Stevens (Louis Newborn), Janet Jane Carty (Pidge Anderson), Chet Stratton (Reverend Carney Birch), Larry Tucker (Manuel), Johnn Granger (Ray Shaff), Sid Gould (bartender), Bettie Johnson (Lafe’s girl), Cay Forester (President’s secretary), William H.Y. Knighton Jr (president of White House Correspondents’ Association), Honorable Henry Fountain Ashurst (Senator McCafferty), Honorable Guy M. Gillette (Senator Harper), Irv. Kupcinet, Robert C. Wilson, Alan Emory, Bruce Zortmann, Jessie Stearns Buscher, Milton Berliner, Allen W. Cromley, Wayne Tucker (journalists), Al McGranary, Joe Baird, Harry Denny, Leon Alton, George Denormand, Ed Haskett, Virgil Johannsen, Paul Power, Maxwell Reed, Mario Cimino, Edwin K. Baker, Clive L. Halliday, Roger Clark, Robert Malcolm, Dick Ryan, Gene Mathews, Leoda Richards, Bernard Sell, Brandon Beach, Hal Taggart (senators), Meyer Davis and His Orchestra.

      Produced and directed by OTTO PREMINGER from a screenplay by Wendell Mayes, based on the 1959 novel by Allen Drury. Photographed by Sam Leavitt. Music: Jerry Fielding. Title song lyrics by Ned Washington. Art director: Lyle R. Wheeler. Set decorations: Eli Benneche. Film editor: Louis R. Loeffler. Titles designed by Saul Bass. Costume co-ordinator Hope Bryce. Miss Tierney’s clothes designed by Bill Blass. Make-up: Del Armstrong and Robert Jiras. Hair styles: Myrl Stoltz. Sound effects: Leon Birnbaum. Assistant to the producer: Max Slater. Production manager: Jack McEdward. Technical advisor: Allen Drury. First assistant director: L.V. McCardle Jr. Costumes: Joe King, Adele Parmenter, Michael Harte. Title tune sung by Frank Sinatra. Sound recording: Harold Lewis and William Hamilton. Photographed in Panavision. Location scenes filmed in Washington D.C. An Alpha-Alpina Production, released by Columbia.

      Additional credits: Camera operators: Saul Midwall, Emil Oster Jr. Music editor: Lee Osborne. Music recording: Murray Spivack. Sound effects editor: Leon Birnbaum. Script supervisor: Kathleen Fagan. Unit manager: Henry Weinberger. Production assistant: David de Silva. Production secretary: Florence Nerlinger. Assistants to the assistant director: Don Kranze, Larry Powell and Charles Bohart. Still photographs: Al St Hilaire, Josh Weiner. Construction manager: Bud Pine. Key grip: Morris Rosen. Property master: Meyer Gordon. Supervising electrician: James Almond. Westrex Sound System. An Otto Preminger Film.

      Copyright 1 June 1962 by Alpha-Alpina Productions. Presented by Otto Preminger. Released through Columbia Pictures. New York opening simultaneously at the Criterion and Sutton Theatres: 6 June 1962. U.S. release: 6 June 1962. U.K. release: 14 October 1962. Australian release: 9 November 1962. Sydney opening at the State. Running times: 140 minutes (U.S.A.), 138 minutes (U.K.), 134 minutes (Australia).

      SYNOPSIS: When the seriously ill President of the United States asks the Senate to advise and consent to the appointment of Robert Leffingwell, a highly controversial figure, as the new Secretary of State, official Washington is thrown into a turmoil. The President’s chief support comes from Bob Munson, the Senate Majority leader, while the principal opposition is raised by Seab Cooley, a Southern Senator who uses the testimony of a mentally unbalanced clerk, Herbert Gelman, to brand Leffingwell as an ex-Communist. Although Leffingwell confesses the truth of the accusation to the President, it is dismissed as a youthful indiscretion, and Leffingwell denies the accusation while testifying under oath before the Senate subcommittee. The committee chairman, Brigham Anderson, learns of the perjury and demands Leffingwell’s nomination be withdrawn. When the President refuses, Anderson decides that for the good of the country he must make the truth public. Before he can do so, however, he is threatened with blackmail by Fred Van Ackerman, an overly-ambitious Senator who warns Anderson that if he fails to approve the nomination his own youthful indiscretion, a wartime homosexual experience in Hawaii, will be exposed.

      NOTES: Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller (over 2 million copies) was also adapted for the stage. It opened on Broadway at the Cort Theatre on 17 November 1960. Loring Mandel did the script, Franklin Schaffner directed and Robert Fryer and Lawrence Carr produced. Chester Morris was Bob Munson, Richard Kiley was Brigham Anderson, Henry Jones was Seab Cooley, Kevin McCarthy was Van Ackerman, Ed Begley was Orrin Knox, Judson Laire was the President, Tom Shirley was the Vice President, and Staats Cotsworth played the Leffingwell role (in the play the character was called William A. Huntington). The play closed after a successful run of 212 performances.

      A top box-office success in the U.S.A., the movie failed dismally in other countries.

      Number seven on the New York Daily News list of the Ten Best Pictures of the year.

      Burgess Meredith, Best Supporting Actor, — National Board of Review.

      Charles Laughton was out-voted by Terence Stamp (Billy Budd) and Mickey Rooney (Requiem for a Heavyweight) for Best Supporting Actor in The Film Daily’s annual survey of American film critics.

      Gene Tierney’s first film since The Left Hand of God in 1955.

      VIEWER’S GUIDE: Adults.

      COMMENT: One of Preminger’s most spectacular box-office flops in England and Australia is still a quite interesting film. The early scenes showing the machinery of the election of the U.S. Secretary of State are carried out in expert dialogue and confirm the director’s skill in showing contemporary America. Note the filibuster by Walter Pidgeon spoken over Ayres clearing a point of order and Paul Ford trying to have a motion withdrawn. However, when the Don Murray sub-plot takes over, there are many errors of emphasis and the sunny ending negates the outspokenness of what has gone before — corrupt senators, personal grudges and a president ready to suppress the truth, included. Laughton remains magnificent but Pidgeon runs him close for acting honors.

      — Barrie Pattison.

      OTHER VIEWS: Part of the appeal of Allen Drury’s best-selling, Pulitzer prizewinning novel was that it was a tantalizing Who’s Who of Washington, a hint-and-run foray among the political movers and shapers of the 40’s and early 50’s. In Otto Preminger’s film, the identity tags are so blurred as to be almost unintelligible. Preminger has selected elements of the original and has re-arranged them, altering the highlights and shadows. The President is less of an immoral pragmatist; the secretarial nominee, although he still tells his lie, is more sympathetic; the homosexual blackmail is more extensively articulated; Drury’s anti-intellectual, anti-liberal bias is watered down.

      All the scenes in public buildings were shot on location, except those in the Senate chamber and in the President’s office. These scenes, plus multitudinous details of authenticity, give the film a realistic background that jars somewhat with the ceaseless Renaissance plotting and counter-plotting in the foreground. The risk in dramatizing any profession is in making that profession seem continually dramatic. Here one might infer that a senator is more private eye than public official.

      Acting is the film’s strong point. Walter Pidgeon is the best I have seen him — that is, he is entirely credible, which he has never been before. Henry Fonda and Don Murray are their accustomed selves. Franchot Tone is convincing and Burgess Meredith is poignantly restrained as a neurotic witness. Gene Tierney is back on the screen, deserving a welcome with her portrayal of a Washington hostess. George Grizzard is particularly strong as the McCarthy-type villain. Bosley Crowther criticized Tone’s performance as tasteless because he portrayed the President as a sick, testy man of peculiar principles, tolerant of cheap conniving and the telling of lies under oath. I think this displays an astonishing political naivety. To me, while Tone is not building a recognizable portrait in whole or in part of any actual President, he does build a recognizable portrait of a man. In his last role before his death, Charles Laughton gives one of his most memorable portrayals. In the words of Time’s reviewer, A jowly, jiggling panorama of obesity, Laughton’s Seab Cooley drips rhetoric like a honeyed asp.

      Advise and Consent is a story of Washington politics centering about the bitter conflicts set in motion when the President of the United States asks the Senate to confirm his controversial choice of Secretary of State. Superbly equipped to advise on the intricies of national politics and the intrigues in the Senate, since he covered the Senate and the national scene in all its aspects for over 15 years, Drury acted as Mr Preminger’s technical adviser.

      Places where cameras turned on Capitol Hill include the historic reception room just off the Upper House chamber, the Senate sub-way and the Rotunda, the vast circular hall directly below the Capitol Dome. Scenes were filmed in the Old Senate Building’s large caucus room in which were held the dramatic McCarthy, Kefauver and McClellan hearings. Other location sites in Advise and Consent were the New Senate Office Building’s cafeteria and the Treasury Building. Exterior sequences took in the Washington Monument, the Mall, Washington Air Terminal, the Capitol Building and grounds and the Potomac River.

      A major sequence — a glittering Washington party — was photographed at Tregaron, the estate of the late Joseph Davies, one-time Ambassador to Russia.

      — Columbia Publicity.

      Advise and Consent, which I made in 1961 after I finished Exodus, had a cast of wonderful performers: Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Burgess Meredith, Lew Ayres, a quiet man who hadn’t been in a film for a long time, Franchot Tone who also had been out of films for more than a decade, Peter Lawford, Walter Pidgeon, a newcomer George Gizzard, who was just beginning his successful career, and Gene Tierney, making a comeback attempt after her serious mental breakdown.

      The novel had a complicated plot about some unpleasant wheelings and dealings in Washington. It wasn’t critical of the American political system but of the men who hold high office and abuse it. It was both prophetic and understated, as Watergate demonstrated almost twelve years later.

      Nevertheless, at the time it was considered in some quarters practically an act of treason. There were complaints that making a film about misbehaving politicians constituted a sinister attempt to overthrow the government.

      I was convinced that just the opposite was true. The fact that we could make the picture in Washington with the co-operation of the government, even shooting some scenes in Congress itself, proved that our system was sound and strong. This country’s tolerance of free expression is its greatest asset. I believed that the picture would show the world that liberty isn’t an empty word in America.

      Years later, there was a retrospective of my films in Paris and I met with some students from the Sorbonne. They were obsessed with the fact that the film had been made in Washington with the government’s knowledge and participation. Their reaction

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