The Last Hurrah

"The Last Hurrah" is about the end of a political career and also the end of an era in American local government. I first saw the film when I was ready to launch a career in public administration, and I didn't like the sympathy Spencer Tracy gave the role of big city boss. Over the subsequent years, I have enjoyed the film more each time. Now, I thoroughly enjoy and am amused by the way Frank Skeffington manipulates the powerful to champion the underdog.

The film is more drama and comedy than history. Yet, men like James Michael Curley, Richard J. Daley, and David L. Lawrence combined ambition for power with a desire to achieve municipal progress as they saw it. They used their understanding of human nature and the ignorance of the body politic effectively. Skeffington shows how. Today, their successors use other methods for similar purpose.

They must have had a very good time in the old town when they shot this movie in the late 1950s. Ford's best movies were behind him, but he's gathered a cast of old character actors, enough to have a genuine party, with Ford sobbing in his beer about how the old days are gone forever. O.Z. Whitehead, Edwin Brophy, Basil Rathbone, Donald Crisp, Jane Darwell, Jeff Hunter, Carlton Smith? Some of the names escape me.

Ford's Irishness goes over the top in his puncturing of the WASPS who were his opponents in old Boston. (I suppose Spencer Tracy is supposed to be Mayor James Curley -- as in the campaign jingle, "Vote early and often for Curley.") The movie drips with sentiment and a sense of loss for a more innocent time -- before TV ads. One of the best lines in the movie is when Basil Ruysdael as the Protestant Bishop brings Tracy up short by asking him frankly, "Aren't you being a little TOO Irish?"

The novel was a bit better, as most novels are compared to their transformative expression in film, if only because there is time and space enough for the characters and the story can be more fully developed. The focus of course is on the mayor, a lovable rogue. The last line in the novel is from an admirer, "He was a grand man altogether."

For what it's worth, the political agenda is built around the substory of two political enemies, Tracy and Rathbone (the latter made into a former member of the KKK in case we didn't get the point otherwise) and their sons, each of them failures. Tracy's son is a ne'er-do-well whose only interest is new cars and women and who assures Tracy, "Ah, you'll win, Pop. You always do." Rathbone's son (Whitehead) is a rich dull bulb who is easily manipulated into making a fool of himself so that Tracy can blackmail Rathbone. Whitehead is given a lisp to make him as silly as possible. "Do you do much sailing?" "Oh, yeth. Printhicipally on my thloop."

In the early scene in Skeffington's office we see a row of old photos of bearded men hanging on the wall behind his desk. Prominent among them is probably the best known portrait ever published of Sigmund Freud, taken about 1912. Maybe the prop master recognized it subconsciously for what it was and sensed that it was a photo of a prominent-enough figure to be worth displaying in the Mayor's office. This is known as a Freudian slip.

Never have I seen a film which is so terrible on the one hand, yet so watchable on the other. I was bothered to no end, but I was actually touched at the film's end. This fierce split in my opinion is easy to explain, however. The script of The Last Hurrah is one of the worst ever written. That's shocking considering the man who wrote it and the man who directed it, Frank S. Nugent and John Ford respectively, created many great movies together, including The Searchers and Mister Roberts. I say that the script is awful because of two main reasons, and they are huge reasons:

1) It is very unfocused. What is its point? Is it an in-depth political expose, a character study, or a melodrama? These categories are not mutually exclusive, but you wouldn't know that by watching The Last Hurrah. It goes from one of them to the next without ever mixing two. Shouldn't the role and relationship of Adam, the mayor's nephew, be more clearly defined? 2) all supporting characters, every single one of them, is a sit-com level caricature from Ditto to Junior (and especially Ditto and Junior). There are clear good guys, and clear bad guys. They might as well all be wearing black or white ten gallon hats so that we can discern who is who more quickly.

Really, there is only one pro, but, to be sure, this pro makes the movie totally worth watching: Spencer Tracy. Man, is he great in this film. His character, Frank Skeffington, is really not much less of a caricature than the rest of them, but Tracy imbues him with so much life and personality that he becomes very endearing. To judge only by the script, I should not have cared what was going on at all, yet Tracy made me care, deeply, at times. Up until tonight, I always bragged in a jokey manner that, despite my having seen over 1,200 films, films from every decade, every genre, every period of America films, not to mention a plethora of foreign ones, I had never, ever seen a movie with Spencer Tracy. Maybe it wasn't so much a brag as it was an oddity. Now I can safely brag that I have seen him act, and that he was one of the greatest. I cannot afford to put him off any longer, one who so amazingly saved such a train wreck of a movie, The Last Hurrah. 7/10.

John Ford's version of the book, THE LAST HURRAH, is a behind the scenes look at one last election campaign for an aging mayor (Skeffington) of a town whose name is never mentioned in the film. In many ways, the film is a bit cynical as it showed the way that politicians wheel and deal and manipulate--but in this case, always for a good cause. While Skeffington is definitely not above using these questionable tactics, at the same time, he is shown as fundamentally decent and very, very sentimental--with a true love for his constituents. This is a very difficult balancing act for the film--combining gritty realism with sentimentality, but it manages to do so.

In many ways, this is highly reminiscent of the real life Ford, as he was by many accounts a highly manipulative son of a,.....well, you know what I was going to say. Yet, at the same time, sentimentality abounds in his films like no other film maker. You can see it here in his liberal use of old and almost forgotten supporting stars--such as Eddie Brophy, Frank McHugh and Jane Darwell.

Overall, the film is very interesting and manipulative (in a good way), as you find yourself pulling for Skeffington and feeling his pain as well--even though he is a fictional character AND a politician! The film is well worth seeing and the film is extremely well-acted and directed.

I was 10 years out of a college in the Boston area when this movie came out, and we remembered Mayor Curley of Boston, a brilliant orator, a charming Irish rogue whom everyone - or almost everyone - found fascinating, even when he was in prison. This story, reduced to specific wonderful vignettes of Mayor "Skeffington's" last election and defeat is admirably played by a group of great character actors of the time. Many faces are hauntingly familiar. Tracy, already old, is superb. I consider this one of his greatest and most convincing roles. Slightly dated now, in black and white without the technical tricks we accept in our time, the plain story is sufficient to hold our attention, make us laugh and make us cry. Watching it now, we feel nostalgia for a simpler time, but realize that some things taking place in politics haven't changed that much. Cheers for Spencer Tracy. Cast your vote for "Skeffington" even though the name is not Irish, and "Irish"is the story.