Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1100404
who had been a long-time superintendent of the Senate Press Gallery (itself effectively reproduced in the film). 10 at great Mr. Smith set was later revived for other film productions featuring Congress. It appeared in the obscure 1942 film Tennessee Johnson, wherein the impeached Andrew Johnson (Van Heflin) argues his case on the Senate floor (a pure Hollywood invention since Johnson never made such an appearance). e set was also dusted off and redesigned somewhat to appear in the above-mentioned Advise and Consent. A number of films have used models, reconstruc- tions, or stand-ins to present the Capitol. An early example was the miniature Capitol created by special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen for the cheesy science fiction feature Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). e film ends with an invasion of Washington by a fleet of flying saucers, a carnage that climaxes in one saucer crashing into the House side of the Capitol and then a second one slicing off the Dome! The sci-fi fantasy Logan's Run (1976) presents a futuristic world of 2274 when no one is permitted to live beyond 30 and from which the hero and his girl- friend escape. ey end up in an overgrown jungle that turns out to be—the Capitol grounds! Peter Ustinov— as a leover legislator—leads them around a set repre- senting a weed-infested House chamber. In Tim Burton's fantasy-farce, Mars Attacks! (1996), the Capitol again gets creamed. Militant Martians, having invaded a fantasy House chamber, zap all the legislators with ray guns and leave a smoking Dome (a model). Burton considered his movie a tribute to Ray Harryhausen's monument-destroying effects in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. 11 Worse was yet to come. In the disaster picture Deep Impact (1998), a renegade comet vaporizes a good part of the East Coast, including the District, but the movie ends with the surviving presi- dent (Morgan Freeman) standing in front of a devastat- ed Capitol—now under reconstruction. One noteworthy refusal to shoot within the Capi- tol was a turn down to director Stephen Spielberg when he was filming the period piece Amistad (1997). Since the film takes place in the years 1839–41, Spielberg wanted to use the site of the original Supreme Court in the basement of the Capitol, where a famous trial of slaves from the ship Amistad was actually held. ough the actual site might have made for great cinema (not to mention educating millions of Americans on this intriguing episode of history), the director was refused permission, apparently because of the disruption the filming might cause in the building. A special recon- structed set had to be used instead. 12 On occasion, a film's inability to shoot in D.C. has turned filmmakers to other options, such as other capitol buildings. For example, in the aforementioned Amistad, Spielberg and company used footage of Rhode Island's look-alike State House to represent the exterior of the nation's Capitol, even though the latter's dome would not be finished until 1863. In The Seduction of Joe Tynan, the Senate chamber shown in the film is actually the Senate chamber in the Maryland State House in Annapolis (the small size and the marblized walls give it away). Richmond, Virginia and its distinguished State House have done stand-in duty for major productions. In Dave (1993), a climactic scene has President Mitchell (Kevin Kline) speaking to a joint session of Congress in what is actually the House of Delegates chamber in the State House. e same space played a similar role in the Demi Moore vehicle G.I. Jane (1997) and was also used for the culminating scene in the 2000 political drama e Contender. Most recently, the Richmond House of Delgates stood in very effectively for the 1860s House of Rep- resentatives in Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), perhaps the best commercial film ever in treating major landmark legislation. e muted backgrounds combined with the striking facial highlights of the congressmen in debate produced a mood both serious and dramatic (fig. 6). Fig. 5. Director Frank Capra (lower le corner) looks over the masterful Senate set he had built in a Columbia Pictures studio for his production of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). THE CAPITOL DOME 7