Director Otto Preminger in the Senate Chamber of the US Congress. In fall 1961, Preminger’s film Advice and Consent became the first movie to be directed inside the Senate Office Chambers. The star-studded movie about a controversial secretary of state nominee who was caught between partisan politics was a huge success–not least because 58 senators sponsored premieres in their home states.
Although the balk of the filming was done on the Hollywood set of Capra’s Mr.Smith goes to Washington, for Washington scenes, Preminger used senators and socially prominent elites as extras, with $25 donations to their designated charities. [Preminger had tried unsuccessfully to get Martin Luther King, Jr. to play an African American senator from Georgia.]
the photo better than any preminger movie—preminger was mostly ego, with very little talent.