You're correct, the female Senator from Kansas was in the book. Haven't read it in over 20 years, and she wasn't a major player in the novel either. Still, Preminger included her in the movie, and with a nice piece of casting.
I know that Lafe Smith was from Iowa in the book(s), but I've always believed the reason Lawford was chosen for the role (aside from the fact that he was something of a rake himself) was that he happened to be the real-life brother-in-law of the then President, John F. Kennedy. JFK had been a Senator from Massachusetts, and since politically, ethnically, sociologically and geographically, Rhode Island is the next-closest thing you can get to Massachusetts, casting the President's in-law as a Senator from RI seemed to be making a thinly-disguised reference to JFK. Clearly, Lawford's accent and air of urbane sophistication didn't fit at all with someone from Iowa, so he was better suited as a Senator from Rhode Island anyway, but I suspect that if Lawford hadn't been cast, Lafe Smith would have remained an Iowan. (Although in making the switch of states they should've changed his first name: "Lafe" sounds altogether too rustic, too Midwestern. A Senator from RI should be named John or Claiborne or something.)
For another Kennedy connection, there was Gene Tierney, with whom Jack had had a torrid romance in Hollywood back in 1945. The two actually wanted to get married, but she was already married (to Oleg Cassini) and Jack's father feared his marrying a divorcee would scuttle his political career before it had even begun. Besides, Gene was a staunch Republican, so things died away. But I know JFK had the cast to the White House during filming in 1961, and I gather he and Gene had a pleasant reunion. I also wonder whether she broke from her party and voted for him over Nixon in '60.
On this matter of prescience, however, the novel ended with the Soviets making the first manned moon landing; Drury rather missed the boat on that one. On the other hand, in the book the VP who succeeds to the presidency is a former Governor of Michigan, which sort of presages Gerald Ford; whereas in the movie, the VP is a former Governor of Delaware, which vaguely connotes Joe Biden; so both Drury and Preminger could get points there, though it is stretching things a bit, and neither real man was Governor.
But back to this business about casting: I'd like to have seen Preminger follow through with his notion of having a black man as a Senator from Mississippi, just to show that such a thing might one day be possible, and especially if he had had his wish to cast none other than Martin Luther King, Jr., in the part. But in 1962 that would have seemed too outlandish and have provoked too much controversy to make it worthwhile, and King himself was wise to ultimately decline. Besides, to learn a southern accent Charles Laughton spent some weeks in the office of Sen. John Stennis (D-Mississippi), who would no doubt have been much less forthcoming had he known a black man would be cast as one of his state's Senators. (Today, MS does have a black Representative, but a black Senator remains highly unlikely in what is still a very conservative, and now Republican-leaning, state.)
Of course, there were some real senators in the movie. You've doubtless seen the names beginning with "The Honorable" at the bottom of the cast list in the opening credits. One was Guy M. Gillette, who had been a Democratic Senator from Iowa (!) from 1936-1945 and again from 1949-1955. He played one of the older members of the majority. The other was Henry Fountain Ashurst, a Democrat who had been one of the first two senators from Arizona, serving from 1912-1941. He played Sen. McCafferty, the old geezer who was always being woken up to vote. You've always heard tales about Congressmen from the hinterlands who become so enamored of Washington that they never leave, but Ashurst was perhaps the most notorious example. After winning reelection in 1928, he returned to Arizona only once during his entire six-year term, and after winning in 1934, he never went back home at all during the ensuing six years! This finally led to his undoing in 1940, when he was beaten in the Democratic primary (then tantamount to election in what was virtually a one-party state at the time) by Ernest W. McFarland (who would go on to become Senate Majority Leader from 1951-53 and lose his bid for a third term to Barry Goldwater in 1952, which set the stage for the 1964 election by elevating Goldwater to the Senate and Lyndon Johnson to Democratic Leader). Anyway, Ashurst remained in Washington for the rest of his life, a courtly relic of a bygone era, one of D.C.'s characters; he died just before the film came out.
Finally, some Senators didn't like the plot of this movie and objected to it strongly. The irascible Sen. Stephen M. Young (D-Ohio) denounced the film on the floor of the Senate, as did a few others, but of course nothing came of it. (The same thing had happened with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 23 years before.) But apparently the biggest reaction from the film's D.C. audience came in the party scene where hostess Gene Tierney goes into her house from the garden and runs into the real Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington, with his fiancee Ellen. (He had met her the previous January when he ran into her in the Senate elevator with her employer, the recently reelected Democratic Senator from New Mexico, Clinton P. Anderson, who soon lost his new secretary.) Tierney asks, "Scoop, would you like another drink?", and he stiffly replies, "No, thanks." Reportedly, the entire theater filled with Capitol bigwigs burst into laughter, as it was apparently well established that Scoop Jackson never turned down another drink!
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fmarzz
13 years ago
You know your stuff. This IMO is the greatest political movie of all time. Dr. King would've been great in this, but he knew what would have happened had he taken a small cameo role. McFarland later became governor and chief justice of our state too. Probably the greatest (and sadly, most forgotten) Arizona politician after Hayden and Goldwater.
This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made. This was his gift to me.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Thank you, fmirzz. Movies and politics, that's about it.
I have family in AZ and lived there off and on for several years. My uncle is an attorney there and knew McFarland when he was Chief Justice (1966-1970), and thought highly of him (though, unfortunately, he's a Republican). I gather the main reasons McFarland was elected governor over Howard Pyle in 1954 were, first, Pyle having ordered a state police raid on a polygamist sect in northern AZ in '53, which cost him the Mormon and rural vote, and second, some public remorse at having dumped McFarland for Goldwater in 1952. I've often wondered whether McFarland would have won a third term as governor in 1958 had he chosen to run for that instead of his old Senate seat. But he was named to the Court in 1964 and that was a fitting coda to his long and honorable career. Of course, his Senate defeat brought him back to Phoenix and led him into the partnership that founded channel 3 in 1953, which proved a lucrative investment!
One man I'd have liked to see elevated to the Senate was Hayden's aide Roy Elson, often called "the third Senator from Arizona." He lost his bid for Goldwater's seat in 1964 by just 12,000 to Paul Fannin, one of the least prepossessing governors or senators in history. And of course, he stood no chance against Barry, running for Hayden's seat in 1968, but still managed 43%. He would have been an excellent Senator.
There's a great story about Carl Hayden's last Senate race in 1962. His opponent was none other than Evan Mecham, then a State Senator. Congress stayed in session until the beginning of October, whereupon Hayden was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a check-up and routine tests. Mecham, true to form, charged that Hayden was dying, perhaps even dead, and that Kennedy had threatened to court-martial any of the naval docotrs who revealed the "truth". Hayden was so incensed at this that he called what was only his fifth [!] press conference in 50 years on Capitol Hill to deny Mecham's bizarre charge. Even the Republican Phoenix papers, the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette, endorsed Hayden, and without ever coming back to the state (shades of Henry Ashurst!) he won by 35,000, a solid margin back then, losing only Yavapai County. The real fun with Mecham had to await the passage of another quarter of a century.
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fmarzz
13 years ago
Mecham, there's officially nothing good about that guy. I would've loved to have lived in Arizona from the 60s to the 80s, the politicians were colorful, Phoenix city limits ended at Cactus (just guessing for the 60s) and people were piling in to the desert. Today it's nice and all, but I guess I'm nostalgic.
On a side note, this is probably the first time 3TV has been brought up on imdb! Good station, I prefer ABC 15 though. My mom's friend was the mother of the old weatherman.
This is my story. This is the sacrifice my father made. This was his gift to me.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I share your nostalgia. I was first in Phoenix as a kid in 1957 and it was much nicer then, still limited and mostly pure desert beginning in Paradise Valley, and across the Scottsdale border by the McCormick Ranch. Ah, well....
And only two congressional districts -- CD 1 Maricopa County, CD 2 everything else, back in the days when districts didn't have to be of equal population. Easy redistricting in those days! It was the switch from electing two representatives at-large from 1942-1948, to going to districts in 1950, that led to the election of John Rhodes in CD 1 as AZ's first-ever Republican congressman in 1952.
Of course, channel 3 (I can't remember its call letters) was the ABC affiliate until most of the channels began switching allegiances in the 90s -- 5, 10, 3, 15, with 3 left out in the cold when the dust settled, with no network affiliation. But they've done all right. Wallace and Ladmo had a long run on 5, too, though they never made it to the Senate.
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