OVP: Kisses for My President (1964)

Film: Kisses for My President (1964)
Stars: Fred MacMurray, Polly Bergen, Eli Wallach, Arlene Dahl
Director: Curtis Bernhardt
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars (if I could go lower I would-this is the worst kind of movie)

In 1964, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine did something no woman had ever done before: she had her name put into nomination by a major political party's convention.  She wouldn't win, of course, but it was an incredible step forward for women in a time when few women held political office.  Sen. Smith had served in office since 1949, was the first woman to serve in both the House and the Senate, and as a fifteen year veteran of the upper chamber, would have been considered a serious contender regardless of her gender.  In fact, Smith was once considered for the vice presidential nomination in 1952 by General Eisenhower, and though she had a solid quip when asked in 1952 what she'd do if she ever woke up in the White House (she said, "I'd go to Mrs. Truman and apologize...then I'd go home"), she made it so that it wasn't a laughing matter for a woman to be considered for the highest office in the United States.

Fifty years after Sen. Smith's nomination, we still don't have a female president, but the concept is hardly alien to the United States.  Dozens of states have had female senators and governors, and it's not a matter of if but when the country will elect a female president.  Still, I can't help but feel, while I was watching the Fred MacMurray comedy Kisses for My President that some of the attitudes of the film still exist and how the film, which I found offensive, patronizing, and vomit-inducing, probably wouldn't make me want to throw my TV out the window so much if it didn't still have a nugget of truth regarding people's attitudes toward women in high office.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about the first female president, Leslie McCloud (Bergen) who was recently elected to the White House in large part due to the overwhelming support of the entire female populace, but it's more about her husband Thad (MacMurray) and his ability to cope with his wife being the most powerful person on earth.  The film follows Leslie as she must deal with a series of crises, including giving foreign aid to a dictator (Wallach) while balancing her husband's insecurities and occasionally wandering eye, as well as her children's well-being.  At the end of the film, it is not she but her husband who saves the day, and she ends up being pregnant and resigning the presidency to take care of her family.  The last line of the film, in fact, is a crack by her husband about the superiority of his gender since it took 40 million women to get her into the White House and only one man to get her out.

The entire film is, of course, incredibly dated, and I'm aware that the film was made in 1964 and attitudes have shifted greatly, but let's not pretend that the concept of a female president wasn't real (there's a reason I brought out the anecdote about Sen. Smith).  Women would continue to grow in stature and in 1972 three female House members (Bella Abzug, Patsy Mink, and Shirley Chisholm) would go on to run for the Democratic nomination.  The idea that a woman wouldn't be able to handle the presidency is pretty much on-display this entire film, and I found it appalling.  It's quite clear that the director only thinks of Polly Bergen's Leslie as a prop, someone that could play the part of the president but who couldn't actually do it.  The idea that a man would resign the presidency would be unthinkable in a movie of this era, much less to take care of his wife and children.  You also see that in the idiocy that Thad would continually be bothered by his wife's success-he would have been able to tell early on that she was going to win, and it's foolishness to think they wouldn't have discussed his role before the inauguration.  It's also foolishness to think that someone just "randomly" becomes president like it seems Leslie did, and if so, she wouldn't just resign it at the drop of a hat.  It takes hard work and determination to reach that high of an office, and the film is downright offensive in the way it treats its title character, and Fred MacMurray has never been more unlikable.  Arlene Dahl and Eli Wallach are both laughably bad in their supporting roles; honestly, the only person remotely resembling passable acting is Polly Bergen, and she gets nothing but grenades of awful chucked at her by the screenwriters.

The film earned one Oscar nomination, and I'm sad to say (considering the quality of the film) that the costume designs are pretty good.  The film is all modern clothing (there's no period aspects to this), but the clothing worn by Bergen is chic and elegant-a combination of Wallis Simpson and Jackie Kennedy-it looks like something Peggy Olson would have worn on Mad Men if she'd had the budget to buy Chanel.  Dahl's wardrobe is deliciously trampy, overtly feminine but with a hint of the gaudy.  I truly hope that The Night of the Iguana or Edith Head's A House is Not a Home manages to be something special, as I would hate to give the OVP title of Oscar-winning to such garbage.

Have you seen this film?  Are you just as appalled as I am by the plot and characters (and especially that corny ending)?  Do you feel that these stigmas still exist about women running for higher office?  And where do Howard Shoup's designs fall in your opinion in regard to the Best Costume category?  Share in the comments!