Preminger Puts Kibosh on Televising of “Advise and Consent”

May 9, 1965 - Producer-director Otto Preminger (pictured) will not allow CBS to televise his film, “Advise and Consent,” next season as scheduled because he believes the network has made too many cuts in the picture.

The producer’s action is one of two incidents that point up the growing problems facing television’s presentation in the years ahead of motion pictures dealing with controversial subjects. The other involved the same network’s deletion of scenes from “The Apartment,” a 1960 film produced and directed by Billy Wilder.

“Advise and Consent” is an adaptation of Allen Drury’s best-selling novel about high-level political infighting in Washington. CBS said Preminger had objected to the deletion of scenes dealing with the homosexuality of one of the characters.

In the film, a Senator who is played by Don Murray is discovered by an unscrupulous politician to have participated in a homosexual act during World War II. The disclosure results in the man’s suicide.

It was also disclosed that 15 minutes of playing time had been cut from the beginning of “The Apartment,” a highly acclaimed comedy produced and directed by Wilder for United Artists.

The film, which is scheduled for a Thursday-night showing on CBS next season, is about an ambitious young man who, for purposes of advancement, lends his apartment to married executives for their illicit affairs. It starred Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, and Ray Walston.

Wilder’s contract with CBS, unlike Preminger’s, did not give him the right to withdraw the film.

CBS defended its editing of “Advise and Consent” on grounds that the film would have been televised next season in some areas of the Midwest at 8 p.m. The network did not believe, the spokesman said, that homosexuality was a suitable subject for family viewing during prime time.

Preminger’s action points up a problem that is destined to provide more headaches for network executives as time goes on. With the depletion of film libraries, television has been forced to buy more and more motion pictures produced in the 1960s, a period in which sex is being treated with more frankness than previously.

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