Henry Koster (1950)
The title character, a 6′ 3½” tall rabbit, is the invisible best pal of middle-aged bachelor Elwood P Dowd (James Stewart). Elwood spends a lot of time in bars (although we never actually see a drop pass his lips) and he’s amiably eccentric, to say the least. Harvey could be an alcoholic hallucination or a reflection of mental illness. He could be the imaginary friend of a childhood out of which Elwood has never grown and which is a lot nicer than real adult life. There are times when Elwood seems to be aware Harvey is fantastical: at one point, he describes his faithful companion as a ‘pooka’ (a mischievous spirit in Irish folklore). Whatever he is, Harvey, to whom Elwood talks continually and regardless of other company, is highly conspicuous by his physical absence. He’s a source of exasperation and social embarrassment to Elwood’s sister Veta (Josephine Hull) and her daughter Myrtle May (Victoria Horne), who live with him. Veta takes steps to have her brother committed to a sanatorium. Her plan misfires in a comically big way. By the end of Harvey, she’s not sure that Harvey is merely a figment of Elwood’s imagination (and she’s not the only one). What Veta is sure of is that her brother will be happier, and better able to be himself, if his friendship with the rabbit is allowed to continue.
By the time it became a movie in 1950, Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play had run continuously on Broadway for more than four years. Henry Koster’s film, with a screenplay by Chase, Oscar Brodney and (uncredited) Myles Connolly, clearly betrays its origins – for example, in a flurry of exits and entrances that might be funny in a play but come across as merely artificial on film. The script depends heavily on characters interrupting or ignoring each other so as to miss bits of information that would prevent the crucial misunderstandings that keep the story going. It’s easy to imagine how the comedy-of-errors aspect of Harvey might build irresistible farcical momentum in the theatre but Henry Koster keeps breaking this, by a change of scenery or the interpolation of Frank Skinner’s anodyne music.
In doing so, Koster throws into relief the histrionic busyness of most of the cast. Josephine Hull, who originated the role of Veta on stage (and won an Oscar for recreating it on screen), is energetic to a fault and exhausting to watch: it’s hardly surprising that the self-approving Dr Sanderson (Charles Drake) makes the mistake of thinking that Veta, rather than Elwood, is the one who’s disturbed and needs a spell in the sanatorium. James Stewart, the last of four actors to play Elwood during the 1944-49 Broadway run, is an easeful contrast in the main role. His interactions with Harvey (whom Stewart looks up to, in spite of being 6’ 4” himself) are admirably natural – even if the whimsical joke wears thin well before this increasingly tiresome film is over. The best of the minor players are Victoria Horne and Harry Hines: Horne has a distinctive witchy desperation as Myrtle May, who’s increasingly anxious to get herself wed; Hines is excellent (though uncredited) as an old-lag drinking acquaintance of Elwood’s. Peggy Dow is a pretty nurse whom Elwood takes a liking to: she herself is mad about the dull Dr Sanderson (Charles Drake is one of the few performers who could do to be more lively). The head of the sanatorium, who ends up feeling a need for Harvey no less than Elwood does, is overplayed, quite enjoyably, by Cecil Kellaway.
3 December 2016
