Bob Dole’s resignation from the Senate was cinematic in its drama, and put us in mind of several movies involving the Senate that are worth a rental.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The most famous movie about the Senate, this 1939 Frank Capra classic with James Stewart has some very big things wrong with it — do you remember that Mr. Smith ends up being appointed to fill out a dead man’s term to the Senate because he is a heroic Boy Scout troop leader? (Enoch Baden-Powell for Senate. . . ) Its climax is a filibuster conducted by the idealistic Mr. Smith, a scene that forever glamorized the filibuster even though its primary use in decades to come was the blockage of civil-rights legislation. But listen, when Stewart directs that final speech to the once-great, now-corrupt senator played by Claude Rains “You remember hopeless causes, Mr. Paine, you said they were the only ones worth fighting for” and drives him to a shamed suicide, how can you resist?
Advice and Consent. See Walter Pidgeon riding the Senate subway! This 1962 Otto Preminger version of Allen Drury’s classic potboiling account of an ideologically charged confirmation hearing not only features some really interesting film footage of the Capitol itself, but also has the first gay- bar scene in modern American film — and the second senatorial suicide, after Claude Rains’s (Don Murray does himself in here).
The Seduction of Joe Tynan. A surprisingly ripe 1979 movie about politics from a peculiar source: Alan Alda, who wrote and stars in this account of an ambitious liberal senator who finds himself abandoning his principles when he cheats on wife Barbara Harris with the very young, very sexy Meryl Streep. Very juicy performance by Rip Torn as a Sam Ervin type with whom Joe Tynan engages in a gumbo-eating contest.
