When Newt Gingrich suggested that the first lady rent the movie "Boys Town" to see an example of how an orphanage should be run, Ted Turner listened.
Turner Network Television will air the movie next week as part of its "Our Favorite Movies" series. The host will be none other than the incoming House speaker himself. Turner suggested it, said TNT spokesman Jim Weiss.A self-described "movie nut," Gingrich, R-Ga., taped his statement Monday at his office. "Lawrence of Arabia" was bumped from the Dec. 29 schedule to accommodate the change, Weiss said.
"My only regret was that I really thought it would have been great to do it with Mickey Rooney," Gingrich said. Rooney co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the 1938 film about the home for troubled youths.
Tracy won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Father Edward Flanagan, who founded Boys Town in Omaha, Neb., in 1917. Rooney played one of the residents.
Gingrich, speaking earlier this month on NBC's "Meet the Press," urged Hillary Rodham Clinton to rent the movie before she criticizes his plan to deny welfare aid to teenage mothers and use the money to provide services to children, including orphanages or group homes. Hillary Clinton had said promoting orphanages was "unbelievable and absurd."
Seated before large black-and-white photographs of Tracy and Rooney, Gingrich talked of how he admired the way values were depicted in the movie.
"It's a film that really illustrates the alternative to the modern welfare state," Gingrich said. The film "gives you the sense of love and of caring and of friendship and spirituality, and the importance of the private sector in institutions like Father Flanagan, like the church and like Boys Town," he said.
He'd like to see someone do a remake, but "my fear is that Oliver Stone would remake it as a film about cannibalism in an orphanage."