
ADVISE & CONSENT (1962) dir. Otto Preminger
This political drama depicts the debate sparked when controversial candidate Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda) is nominated as U.S. Secretary of State. As concerns are aired during the Senate investigation of Leffingwell’s qualifications, Senator Brig Anderson (Don Murray), the head of the committee, soon finds himself being blackmailed over an affair that he had with a fellow soldier Ray Shaff (John Granger) while they were both serving in the army during World War II. A worried Anderson visits Ray in New York and meets him in a gay bar.
The movie pushed censorship boundaries with its depiction of a married senator who is being blackmailed over a wartime homosexual affair, and was the first mainstream American film after World War II to show a gay bar.
If you understood, you could not talk of owing debt. Sam is a part of me and I’m a part of Sam, forever and ever. And it was long ago, when I was very young, that I learned that. But it was true and nothing can change it.
INGRID BERGMAN as LADY HENRIETTA FLUSKY in UNDER CAPRICORN (1949) dir. Alfred Hitchcock




