The film "Advise and Consent" - from Alien Voices

Looking at  the film "Advise and Consent," after years of viewing C-SPAN, makes the Senate seem surreal. Some aspects remain the same: Privileges, Limos and the private underground subway between the Congress and the Senate Office Building. The leftist demagogue Senator's constant haranguing remain the same except here he is from Wyoming (this does not compute now a days) instead of being the self-righteous block chorus with "Ds" behind their big asininities. Yes, Charles Laughton was at his best. There are no longer any really sharp old 'Dixiecrats' as he played in this roll. He was an amazing actor. Ironically in the part, he is the prototype anti-degeneate, stalwart American Southerner; Laughton was an Englishman and homosexual in real life. 
There are no longer reasonably sized staffs, or a sense that Senators still could walk the streets of Washington as a private citizen at night and in safety. The last of the 'Dixiecrats' died off at the age of 100 after having the most amazing and contradictory lives. What remained were Old-Boys of questionable ethics in both parties like Trent Lott and Fritz Hollings.
The president in the drama is a devious and stubborn FDR-like charter who was still full of himself and still duped by Stalinism. m/r

The important aspect of the book's emphasis on the end justifies the means "progressive-communist" agenda is overshadowed.

Otto Preminger seems to have chosen to emphasize the more lurid aspects of the plot -- primarily the attempt to blackmail one of the primary characters because of a wartime homosexual experience -- while giving short shrift to the actual objections to the nominee: that he lied about past Communist associations and favors dialogue with, rather than confrontation of, the Russians.

The American Spectator : Alien Voices
By LISA FABRIZIO on 11.1.12 

...  I eagerly gathered up my trusty remote and fired up TCM, where they were featuring a night of political films, featuring All the President's Men and Seven Days in May, but beginning with one of my favorites, Advise and Consent. Although I have never read it, the movie is based on a book by conservative author Alan Drury and reflects his years as a U.S. Senate reporter for UPI; giving us the lowdown on the confirmation process of a fictional Secretary of State nominee.

Interestingly, both TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and his guest, Wolf Blitzer opined that the movie illustrates the contrast between the genteel relationships of senators of different parties in the 1960s and the supposedly toxic nature of those relationships today. Maybe this is the way liberals see it, but ask nearly any conservative what they think about Senate collegiality and they will no doubt recall with a shudder two words: power sharing.

Reading most modern reviews of the movie, one might never guess that it derives its plot from an anti-communist novel, but such are the ways of liberals. Indeed, maverick director Otto Preminger seems to have chosen to emphasize the more lurid aspects of the plot -- primarily the attempt to blackmail one of the primary characters because of a wartime homosexual experience -- while giving short shrift to the actual objections to the nominee: that he lied about past Communist associations and favors dialogue with, rather than confrontation of, the Russians.

The characterizations in the film are fine, with Henry Fonda predictably playing Robert Leffingwell, the perjury-prone yet noble nominee -- "It's a Washington kind of lie," he tells his son on one occasion -- whose Communist past is pooh poohed as a youthful indiscretion. ...

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