Film Review: Harvey

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

So says Elwood P. Dowd as played by James Stewart in this 1950 film based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Harvey.  And a more pleasant man you’ll be hard pressed to find for Elwood will be only too happy to invite you to join him for a drink at his favourite bar or have you round his house for a small informal dinner regardless of who you are or how many words you’ve exchanged. Yes, a very affable chap indeed.

Trouble is, he’ll soon introduce you to his very dear friend, Harvey – a six-foot, three-and-a-half-inch tall pooka in the form of a white rabbit. This is why his sister Veta (Josephine Hull in an Oscar winning performance), who lives with him and is desperately trying to climb the social ladder, resorts to having him committed to a sanatorium because every time she arranges a gathering of the local elite at home Elwood ruins her attempts at networking for a suitable suitor for her not-so-young daughter Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne) by stunning the assembled guests with his friend that nobody else can see.

What follows is quite possibly one of the gentlest, most charming comedy of errors I think I’ve ever seen. Dowd, whose penchant for a Martini makes him an unquestionable alcoholic  – a possible cause of his hallucinations – is so likeable and friendly that it’s hard not to overlook his whimsical little peculiarity. Stewart who had played Dowd on Broadway for almost three years prior to this film and would go on to reprise the role on London’s West End in 1975, brings his natural affability to the character and together with his innate talent, he received an Oscar nomination for his efforts. He is and always will be one of my all-time favourite actors.

The film is peppered with memorable characters played by some of Hollywood’s finest character actors. Jesse White as Wilson the gruff asylum attendant and Wallace Ford as the taxi driver have some hilarious moments. But saying that sounds unfair to the rest of the cast for there are many golden moments involving everyone. Indeed the entire 104 minutes is a golden moment.

Director Henry Koster had been nominated for another comedy with fantasy leanings three years earlier – The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young but it’s arguable that over a 30 year career, Harvey would be his finest hour.

Film Review – The Man From Laramie

I hope regular readers of my musings on this website will not react with a weary roll of their eyes when they see, once again, I’ve employed that timeworn word – “classic”. Though I suppose more than this, I actually hope there are regular readers of my musings on this website. Even just one. Or perhaps two or maybe even a handful. Well, being the optimist that I am – Hi, hello, thanks y’all for stopping by.

You see, the word “classic” gets bandied about all too often in my opinion. It seems to be used as an enticing adjective for anything that isn’t particularly young. Art, architecture, furniture, clothing styles, cars, literature, music – and so on. But surely, there’s more to it than mere age – after all we don’t say “his grandfather was a classic person” or “Hadrian’s Wall is a classic defensive fortification” do we? Not usually anyway.  So what quality must be present for something to warrant the term “classic”? What does Cary Grant’s Savile Row suavity have in common with an original Jaguar E-Type? And what do they both have in common with New York’s Flatiron building? They are, after all, three things that could be described as being about as “classic” as you can get. Style and popularity? Yes and yes and certainly important. But age? Well okay, they’re all of the past but is that what defines them as classic? If the new iPhone 5 can be described as having classic styling, then surely age can be dismissed as being an influencing factor.

Perhaps all it comes down to is an initial opinion. The very first one. An opinion offered by an admirer who uses the term “classic” and the ears that hear that opinion agree and so the label sticks. I’m sure we can all summon something to our minds that has long held the “classic” monicker, something which we utterly abhor and deem totally unworthy and likewise on the other side of the coin something we hold dear that hasn’t garnered the label. If this should prove true for you, I suggest writing about it and giving it the label yourself, after all, the certification starts somewhere right? Did Khufu glance over the plans of his new pyramid and say to his chief architect, “Yes, it’s a classic design”? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway I digress. Back to The Man From Laramie – a CLASSIC western if ever there was one. This was the last of eight collaborations between the film’s star (the wonderful James Stewart) and its director (the sublimely gifted Anthony Mann) and five of those eight were westerns. Over the years, Hollywood has churned out thousands of these horse operas and “cowboys and indians” films, many of which would blush with guilt at having to live up to being called “average”. But there are a good number of watchable ones too and of course as we reach the higher levels of excellence and artistry the number diminishes significantly just as it does in any other genre. But these five Anthony Mann westerns (and by the way, I already reviewed another one of his some months ago, see The Tin Star) can, in my opinion at least, sit right up there with all but the elite, the creamiest of the creamiest, the royalty of the genre.

Sometimes it’s hard to define, to put into words why something works so well when the same ingredients were used elsewhere less successfully. While there are plenty of things that can be said about these five westerns – Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend Of The River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), Far Country (1954) and The Man From Laramie (1955) – they are all sums of their parts with many things working together in harmony to create that perfect “whole”. Certainly Mann and Stewart were the main factors. In productivity terms, their partnership was as harmonised as Wayne’s and Ford’s, Bogart’s and Huston’s, Eastwood’s and Leone’s or for that matter, De Niro’s and Scorcese’s . For a start Stewart’s glittering star was at its peak throughout the 50s but a quick glance at Mann’s credits suggest that his value in Hollywood during that decade was substantial as well.

But let me get to the point. The Man From Laramie tells the story of Will Lockhart (Stewart) a former captain in the U.S. Army who rides into the isolated town of Coronado to deliver supplies from Laramie. He has a personal vendetta to fulfil while there – to search for and kill whoever is responsible for selling repeating rifles to the local Apache Indians, Apaches that attacked and murdered his brother at nearby Dutch Creek.

What he finds is a town run by ailing cattle baron Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), his worthless and vicious son Dave (Alex Nicol) and ranch foreman Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy). Plus of course a pretty woman in the guise of Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O’Donnell). Lockhart’s presence soon stirs things up like a mongoose at a snake party and it’s not long before he’s having to stand up to Dave and Vic. He’s persuaded to take a job with neighbouring rancher Kate Canady (Aline MacMahon), which he does in order to stick around and continue his investigations but again he’s soon facing the vicious Dave, who this time maims Lockhart in a most cruel way. As Lockhart begins to unearth the truth behind the sale of the rifles to the Apaches, conflict threatens to destroy the guilty party from within.

The film builds familiar themes like greed and betrayal into a tense climax however don’t for one minute think that ‘familiar’ here means average. This film has been described as a western version of King Lear and whilst that might be stretching the facts a little, it’s quite easy to see that Mann was hinting at something Shakespearean. The actors who do the most work are all terrific but the prize for audience captivation has to go to Stewart for yet another performance of brooding intensity (The Naked Spur being another fine example). An actor once said of his style, “It’s not what I say that’s important, it’s what I don’t say,” – a sentence that fits Stewart’s portrayal of Lockhart perfectly. He makes you feel what he’s going through as much by reading what’s behind his eyes as by what comes out of his mouth. He’s awesome. But then, he is James Stewart.

The Man From Laramie was adapted from a story of the same name in The Saturday Evening Post by Thomas T. Flynn in 1954. It was also one of the first westerns to be filmed in CinemaScope, a technique used for shooting wide screen movies which was popular from 1953 to 1967. It certainly helped Anthony Mann capture those sweeping vistas of scenery, which was something of a trademark in his James Stewart westerns. In this case it was the arid brown landscape of New Mexico but in The Naked Spur is was the mountainous beauty of Colorado and Lone Pine, California. Check it out. On film, you’ll never see it look better.

While there may be better examples of this most American of genres, they would be the exception rather than the rule. Anthony Mann was a director who never really garnered the praise he deserved and for all his contributions to cinema, he never won any awards. He received a few nominations, a Golden Globe for El Cid and three Directors Guild of America awards for El Cid, Men in War and The Glenn Miller Story but he was overlooked completely when it came time to hand out the Oscars. And yet, his body of work is truly solid and includes crime dramas, musicals, comedies, biopics, action adventures, historical epics and of course westerns. And he rarely failed to tell a story well. For me though, it’s his five westerns made with James Stewart that immortalises him in the pantheon of the great moviemakers for they are as “classic” as anyone else’s you’d care to mention.

Film Review: The Tin Star

Well, I don’t know about you but my weekend was wet and windy and, compared to of late, pretty darn chilly. At least for August. Had it been more clement, I would probably have busied myself with one or two little jobs that are awaiting my attention outside. Or I might have taken a languid stroll around the park. Alas, Hey Ho! the weather kept me indoors. So what better way to spend a wet Sunday afternoon than to watch an old sun-drenched western, particularly one directed by Anthony Mann whose CV includes some of the finest of the genre ever made.

While it may be easier to recall the more famous Mann westerns starring James Stewart, of which there were five (starting with Winchester ’73 in 1950 and ending with The Man From Laramie in 1955), The Tin Star, made two years later, stars Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. This time, instead of one main protagonist – the emotionally tortured soul that Steward embodied so well – here we have two main characters – Fonda’s laconic and sagacious bounty hunter and Perkins’ young and inexperienced town sheriff. There are no sweeping vistas of snow-capped mountains, beautiful pine sided valleys or white-water gorges here either, an element that Mann captured so beautifully in those earlier films. Indeed, in complete contrast to the Stewart films, there is no travel at all involved for the characters here, not in a geographical sense anyway. The only journeys undertaken are in the characters of the characters, if you get my drift.

It is dialogue that drives this movie forward more than an cross-country pursuit peppered with gunfights, that and the influence that Fonda’s age and experience has on Perkins’ naivety. Apart from a couple of forays out into the surrounding dusty countryside, the action takes place in a little old town in the middle of nowhere. It’s shot in black and white too which seems to add to the film’s parched appearance. Also worth noting is that the film opens with a shot of the town’s main street as Fonda trots in on his horse and closes with exactly the same shot with him riding out in a buggy. Whether Mann meant anything by this is down to one’s interpretation.

And so to the plot. Morgan Hickman (Fonda) rides into town with a dead outlaw slung over his pack horse. He goes to the sheriff’s office to claim the bounty on it. The townsfolk don’t want him around because bounty hunters are bad news. Ben Owens (Perkins) has been appointed temporary sheriff by the townsfolk (the last one having been killed) on account nobody else wants the job. Nobody that is, but the town bully Bogardus (Neville Brand) who would use the post as a licence to kill.

Owens is a likeable young man with a rather unconfident manner and a sweetheart who won’t marry him while he’s wearing a star and Bogardus is a distinctly nasty piece of work who has the townsfolk standing behind him because they’re all afraid of him. He is a racist bully and it’s not long before he shoots an Indian in the back claiming it was self-defence. Owens swallows hard and steps forward to do his job but Bogardus resists arrest, prompting Hickman to step forward and lend an experienced hand.

Hickman has to stick around a day or two while his bounty claim is processed and gets lodgings with widow Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer), a young woman who lives just outside of town with her son, a half-Indian boy named Kip (Michael Ray). Strong feelings rapidly develop between Morgan and Nona and Kip is thrilled to have a father figure around.

With Bogardus released from jail after witnesses claim he did indeed act in self-defence, the young sheriff asks Hickman for some coaching on how to become a better sheriff. Hickman, at first reluctant, telling Owens to quit while he still can and go marry his girl, has a change of heart when he admits to having once been a lawman himself before turning bounty hunter. For all his naivety, Owens is a decent, upstanding man but simply lacks the basic knowledge of being a lawman. He has the heart but not the tools. So Hickman begins to advise the younger man.

Later, the town doctor is murdered by two brothers and the town demands justice. Owens is adamant he wants to bring the perpetrators back alive so they can face a fair trial but Hickman is certain that filling them with lead is the only way the brothers will allow themselves to be brought in. Bogardus takes off with a large posse to capture them, his intention to string them up from the nearest tree.

With Hickman’s help, the brothers are taken alive by the sheriff and thrown in jail. But the rowdy posse – headed by Bogardus – threatens to storm the jail and hang the brothers in the street. Owens, having learned much from Hickman in the last few days, faces the crowd and Bogardus and soon earns the respect of the town. He is now the competent lawman he wanted to be. The film ends on a happy note with Hickman riding out of town to start afresh somewhere else a changed man, with a new woman and a young boy beside him.

Overall this is a very good film and an often overlooked western gem. The acting is terrific from a strong cast, particularly from the two leads. Fonda, who in my opinion, is always worth his fee, plays the jaded hero figure with just the right blend of cruelness and compassion. Sure, he’s as mean as hell, he’s got to be, it’s a tough job and someone has to do it. Perkins, who was only twenty five and in one of his first roles portrays being wet behind the ears at the outset with real honesty but by the end of the film, he’s grown in stature and maturity. A great performance from him.

The screenplay written by Dudley Nichols from a story by Joel Kane and Barney Slater was nominated for an Academy Award, something that very rarely happened to low budget westerns at the time (or ever). There are words of wisdom in Hickman’s dialogue as he tries to instruct Owens in the art of staying alive and in return for this, by collaborating with the younger, idealistic man, Hickman manages to re-find the virtues that he lost years ago through personal tragedy. The movie deals with racism, friendship, romance and the ways of the old west in an intelligent and subtle way that few of the genre ever did and whether you like ‘cowboy’ films or not, the penmanship is such that it’s simply a great story well told. Definitely worth seeing.