Otto Preminger’s adaptation of Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer Prize winning novel is loaded with Hollywood stars.  The film involves a nominee for secretary of state (Henry Fonda) who runs into opposition from a southern senator (Charles Laughton in his final role) and is charged with being a communist.  Scandals pile up and threats are made both to those who support and oppose the nominee.  All the while, the president (Franchot Tone) is ill and simply hoping he can push the nominee through to secure his legacy.  A young senator (Don Murray) is blackmailed with evidence of his youthful homosexuality and eventually commits suicide.  In the end, the president dies and the vice-president (Lew Ayers) decides that he would rather pick his own man.

The film is long and talky.  The use of homosexuality as a theme, controversial at the time, will seem puzzling to modern audiences.  Preminger certainly films the gay bar the senator visits as a den of iniquity and, while I sense he was sympathetic to those who suffered during the witch hunts of the 1950s, his prejudice towards gays has not held up well.  I left the film feeling as though the filmmakers really believed that homosexuality was something that could not be lived down.  Still, the performances are often excellent and the film presents a clear vision of politics in the United States.  Even if that view is ultimately inaccurate, the film’s vision is worth seeing.

✰ ✰ ✰.

MJM  12-10-2011