The lobby of Washington's Trans-Lux Theater was lined with two rows of Senate pages handing out bright orange programs. The house was full: on hand were 76 Senators (enough to override a presidential veto), Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and William Brennan, Postmaster General J. Edward Day, USIA Chief Edward R. Murrow, Marine Commandant David M. Shoup, and some 400 lesser lights—all gathered for a private movie showing of Advise and Consent, based on Allen Drury's novel about the U.S. Senate.
"Never mind how many Senators," said Producer-Director Otto Preminger, waiting happily under the marquee. "I'm only interested in the Robert Kennedys." Finally, Ethel Kennedy arrived; Bobby had begged off—he had just finished a long day of testifying on Capitol Hill. "Come in and be a star," said Otto to Ethel. In they went, and the screening got under way.
To many in the audience, the film seemed a bit like a 2¼-hour filibuster in black and white. But there were some highlights, notable among them the performance of Charles Laughton as South Carolina's Senator Seab Cooley—in accents learned from careful study of the drawl of Mississippi's Senator John Stennis. The audience chuckled ruefully when Henry Fonda defined "a Washington, D.C., kind of lie: that's where I'm lying but he knows that I'm lying and he knows that I know that he knows that I'm lying." Gene Tierney drew laughs with a shaft aimed at Washington hostesses: "They say any bitch with a million bucks can be the best." After it was over, some Senators offered advice and dissent. Snorted North Carolina's B. Everett Jordan: "I didn't recognize a thing in it.""We're much more complicated than that," said Minnesota's Eugene McCarthy. Growled South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, who objected to the movie's scenes dealing with one Senator's homosexuality (and consequent blackmail): "I don't think it will be wholesome for either our people or those abroad." Ed Murrow, a man not often at a loss for words, did not even care to think about what the film would do to the U.S. image overseas. "Aw," he groaned, "I don't want to get near that one—not tonight."