Sunday, August 10, 2014

She's in the Oval Office; He's Absolutely Lost, in Kisses for My President, 1964

A movie about a woman president. How can I resist that? It's 1964 and 40 million women have voted for the first ever woman president. (Wouldn't that have been nice?)

She takes over the oval office and her husband is just lost. He (Fred MacMurray) gets the canopied bedroom and the office full of pictures of former first ladies and nobody knows how to address him. First man doesn't have a nice ring to it, does it? I'm interested to see how this is handled when it really happens.

A comedy, the movie has many LOL moments as the "first man" locks himself out of the living quarters in his pajamas, ends up in a bit of a brawl in a strip club, and just has one unfortunate event after another. My favorite scene is when he attempts to give a tour of the White House, on camera, after having a few too many....errr..pills and drinks to calm his nerves. Priceless! Hilarious!

Meanwhile, the president's children are using their new status to get away with things, like the little boy threatening everyone at school and then using his Secret Service agents to protect him.

I laughed quite a few times, but the best part of the movie was watching a lady president, a no-nonsense woman, handle all the men who came her way, from a belligerent and threatening senator, to a somewhat amorous dictator. And of course, I loved the clothes. I love the sixties' clothes. And the actress (Polly Bergen) just did a superb job. She carried herself with grace and looked and acted the part superbly.

I enjoyed this movie, laughed often, got a kick out of it, but the ending...everything just came crashing down into a HUGE disappointment for me. I'm not going to give it away, but it's awful. Worst ending they could have come up with. What a way to disappoint and let down 40 million women. You'd think she'd have been more careful...

If you don't mind a crappy ending, the movie is worth the time just for the laughs and the woman president theme. Feminists will find themselves happy until the last five minutes. I'd also like to note that the picture was amazingly good. I've watched some not-so-great quality classic flicks and had some trouble with the picture, not so this time.

I rented this on Amazon.


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