Kisses for My President

Tracy-and-Hepburn-esque comedy has Polly Bergen as the newly elected chief executive, and Fred MacMurray as her bumbling, impatient, addled husband, who's resentful of having to assume the role of First Lady. That's a pretty thin premise, and the screenwriters don't do much with it. The main plot points have to do with the prez's strained foreign relations with a wily, randy South American dictator (a hammy Eli Wallach), her sparring with a resentful senator from the opposition (Edward Andrews), and MacMurray's will-he-won't-he flirtations with an old flame (Arlene Dahl) who wants him in her employ, and in her boudoir. Bergen's a quite convincing, attractive, authoritative president, while MacMurray's unable to wring any real laughs out of his annoying character, and both spend too much time trying to raise their two rambunctious kids while attending to affairs of state. But it is, at least, a professionally done Warners production, directed by the reliable old studio hand Curtis Bernhardt, not overlong, and if the fadeout resolution looks ridiculous by today's standards, it was probably rather appealing in 1964. Around the same time, Irving Berlin and Lindsay and Crouse attempted a similar normal-folks-in-the-White-House Broadway musical, "Mr. President," and they quickly ran out of ideas, too. There still may be a winning comedy in the premise, and now that we may have an actual woman president on the way, somebody might want to give it a try. But it will have to be cleverer than this.