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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - B 2 Mins Read

    Being There (1979)

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    Peter Sellers plays a mentally handicapped gardener named Chance, raised and protected by a rich old eccentric who dies and leaves him bewildered and homeless.

    Chance can’t read or write, and everything he knows he has learned from watching TV.

    Wandering the streets of Washington DC, he gets hit by a limousine carrying Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of dying billionaire financier Benjamin Rand (Melvyn Douglas), who is also one of the chief advisers to the President of the United States.

    Eve takes him home to heal, and because his stoic blankness convinces everyone he’s deep and wise, Ben Rand wants to make “Chauncey Gardiner” the head of a new institution to distribute financial assistance to businessmen.

    beingthereThe President (Jack Warden) wants to make him a personal assistant in a White House advisory capacity. Eve just wants to make him.

    Before Chance can get his thoughts organised to the point of telling them he needs a job as a gardener, the financial editor of theΒ Washington PostΒ is calling him for quotes, the TV talk shows are making him a celebrity, and the computers, the CIA, and the research morgues at the newspapers are all baffled.

    He has no identification, no Social Security number, no driver’s license, and the “man of mystery” ends up the front runner in the political chess game.

    All he wants is food, a nice bed, and a TV set that shows Big Bird,Β Hollywood Squares, and commercials for Posturepedic mattresses. Instead, there is a good chance he’ll be the perfect closed-mouthed candidate for the next election.

    Without a single gag or punch line,Β Being ThereΒ is hilarious. Some of the funniest moments in the film occur when nobody is saying anything at all. This is an accomplishment every comedy writer in Hollywood should be forced to study.

    Chance (Chauncey Gardiner)
    Peter Sellers
    Eve Rand
    Shirley MacLaine
    Benjamin Rand
    Melvyn Douglas
    President ‘Bobby’
    Jack Warden
    DrΒ Robert Allenby
    Richard Dysart
    Vladimir Skrapinov
    Richard Basehart
    Louise
    Ruth Attaway
    Thomas Franklin
    David Clennon
    Sally Hayes
    Fran Brill
    Johanna Franklin
    Denise DuBarry
    Lolo
    Oteil Burbridge
    Abbaz
    Ravenell Keller III

    Director
    Hal Ashby

    Video

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    Put some beefiness into your mid-week menu with these recipe ideas published in a Birds Eye advertisement from the Radio Times on 30 September 1965.

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