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used the reworked Senate set from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Most tellingly, the production team even had an action sequence shot in the Rotunda, when, in a climactic moment, the congressman slugs an evil gossip columnist right under the Dome! Although the filmmakers agreed to leave the Cap- itol as they found it—a condition of the shoot—the local Washington Times-Herald reporter who observed the filming noted that the production left the typi- cally messy aermath of location shooting, comparing it to that of 21 August 1814, when the invading British burnt the Capitol. 2 e reporter bemoaned the corri- dors littered with electric cords and the junky presence of movie paraphernalia, and then he went into down- and-dirty detail, stating: "Stacked in regular rows beside a doorway leading to the Statuary Hall were empty and half-empty so drink bottles. And underfoot were par- tially smoked cigarette butts." 3 It was the last time that congressional authorities allowed filming inside the Rotunda. If the interior of the Capitol became off limits, exteriors were still available to Hollywood projects. In the popular A Man Called Peter (1955), based on the inspiring real-life story of Senate Chaplain Peter Mar- shall (Richard Todd), we see the minister walk from the south side of the Capitol Plaza to enter the Senate side of the Capitol. Judy Holliday got to Washington and the Capitol one more time in the 1956 comedy e Solid Gold Cadillac. As a minor but outspoken shareholder of a New York company, Holliday comes to D.C. to see a defense contractor, and the film shows her walking up the steps of the Capitol on the Senate side. Ample interiors and exteriors of the Capitol were also on view in Advise and Consent (1962). ough it didn't paint the most positive picture of individual legis- lators, director Otto Preminger's film, which centers on a controversial confirmation hearing for a new secretary of state, presented some of the Senate in a positive light, and extensive location shooting in and around Capitol Hill gives the movie a resonance that is still engaging aer 55 years (fig. 4). ough Preminger was a major Hollywood figure of the day, he, too, was denied access to the actual Senate chamber and had to resort to the classic Mr. Smith set that had been used 10 years before in Washington Story. e film is a cornucopia of locale spotting for Washing- ton history buffs. It features on-location scenes around the Capitol, including the fabled Senate Caucus Room (site of the confirmation hearing), and the Senate's old underground monorail, as well as the East Front. ere were also sequences in the Old Senate Office Building (now the Russell Building). Advise and Consent was the last motion picture where a Hollywood production had such significant access to the Capitol and Senate sites. One kind of watershed in D.C. cinema was crossed in 1976 when the maverick actor-director Tom Laugh- lin, who had had a major success with his independent "hippy-western" Billy Jack (1971), came to town to film his version of Mr. Smith called, imaginatively enough, Billy Jack Goes to Washington. As in the earlier Capra classic, Billy Jack is a naïve westerner who is acciden- tally named a senator so he can be easily manipulated by political bosses back home. Laughlin's film, however, went off any number of rails, and apparently the direc- tor and his team were extremely arrogant and did actual damage in and around the Capitol. According to an informed location manager, "[Laughlin] was so rude to Congressional authorities that they refused any filming on the grounds" thereaer. 4 Today, to shoot anywhere in and around the Cap- itol, authorities on the Hill, like the Speaker's Office or the Architect of the Capitol, must give their blessing, and it's not easy in coming. Aer all, lawmakers think- their work is fairly important and should only be sub- ject to disruption for very good reasons, a Hollywood movie not being high on the list of priorities. One of the city's long-time and best-known location managers, Fig. 4. Stars Don Murray, Charles Laughton, and Wal- ter Pidgeon (le to right), all playing senators in Advise and Consent, stroll on the Mall as the film's director Otto Preminger trains his camera on the Capitol (1962). THE CAPITOL DOME 5