Harvey ***** (1950, James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake, Cecil Kellaway, Wallace Ford, Ida Moore, Jesse White) – Classic Movie Review 3175

‘The Wonderful Pulitzer Prize Play… becomes one of the Great Motion Pictures of our Time!’ Don’t undersell it, will you?

Director Henry Koster’s enchanting 1950 comedy enshrines one of James Stewart’s most delightful and beloved performances as boozy, mild-mannered, eccentric bachelor Elwood P Dowd, who brings along with him Harvey, a six-foot-tall white rabbit only he can see as his best friend. All goes happily until Elwood’s social-climbing sister, Veta Louise Simmons, and her teenage daughter, Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne), come to live with him and grow concerned that his imaginary friend will get in the way of their social ambitions.

Stewart was Oscar nominated as Best Actor but missed out and it was Josephine Hull who won her Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress as Stewart’s worried sister Veta.

Though it is opened out to provide many more characters, director Koster doesn’t bring much to it as a film, and, dare I say it?, colour would have been nice. But this doesn’t matter in the slightest because Mary Chase’s Pulitzer-prize-winning classic stage hit play (Chase co-adapts her own play with Oscar Brodney and Myles Connolly) and the players (Hull, Horne and Jesse White as the orderly Wilson are all from the original Broadway production) are the only things that matter, and they, unlike the rabbit perhaps, are the real deal.

Also in the cast are Peggy Dow as Miss Kelly, Charles Drake as Dr. Sanderson, Cecil Kellaway as Dr. Chumley, Wallace Ford, Ida Moore, Nana Brant, William H Lynn as Judge Gaffney, Grayce Mills, Clem Bevans, Pat Flaherty, Don Brodie, Eula Gay, Grayce Hampton, Dick Wessell, Maudie Prickett, Sam Wolfe, Ruthelma Stevens, Edwin Max, Anne O’Neal, Almira Sessions, Minerva Urecal, Harry Hines, Sally Corner and William Val.

Stewart played it again on the London stage in the 70s, and remade it as a TV movie in 1972 (but with Helen Hayes replacing Hull), and he was even better when he’d matured into the role. Hull made only five films, including most famously, Arsenic and Old Lace. Gorden Kaye played the Stewart role on the London stage in the 90s. It was remade for TV again in 1996 with Harry Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Swoosie Kurtz. The original Broadway production opened on November 1 1944 at the 48th Street Theater, ran for 1775 performances and won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1945.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3175

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James Stewart and Josephine Hull in Harvey (1950).