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.
The Last Hurrah
1958
Action / Comedy / Drama
The Last Hurrah
1958
Action / Comedy / Drama
Plot summary
In a New England town, aging Frank Skeffington, descended from poor Irish immigrants, is conducting his fifth and last political campaign for Mayor - he thus far being undefeated - before he serves his last term leading into retirement from politics, he surrounded by his longtime campaign team. Despite his success rate largely from support of the Irish immigrant population in seeing one of their own doing good, Frank does have his detractors, not only the blue bloods of the town, but those that see him operating under an old boys network of doing favors for friends and every one of his actions having a self-serving political motivation. And there are others, including Frank's son, Frank Skeffington, Jr., who couldn't care less about politics, Jr. absorbed with his own fun-loving existence. A microcosm of the political division can be seen by the Caulfield household: non-political Adam Caulfield, a sportswriter for the Morning News newspaper and Frank's nephew, supports his uncle in liking him both as a man and uncle, while Adam's wife, Maeve Caulfield, has the same impression of Frank as her wealthy father, Roger Sugrue, who grew up in the same working class neighborhood as Frank and who sees Frank working on graft. Adam's boss, the Morning News Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Amos Force, has always opposed Frank, and mounts a concerted campaign for those in the anti-Frank camp to rally around his strongest opponent, political neophyte Kevin McCluskey, despite McCluskey's inexperience showing at every turn. As he can see the times changing in terms of the way political campaigns are run and covered with the onset of more electronic media such as television and radio playing a bigger part, Frank brings in Adam as an observer journalist of his campaign to witness the changing times, what Frank sees as his last hurrah before his means of operation to win elections will no longer suffice.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Freudian slip.
The Last Harrumph
I didn't get a Harrumph out of that guy!! That's because he died of boredom.
Like most of John Ford's over-rated ouvre, this movie is dull, earnest, stiff and a scrubbed-white version of America that never existed at any time except in Hollywood's imagination.
It's as static as a stage play. And if you'd seen it staged in a theatre you'd be grumbling that your wife dragged you to something do boring. And then you'd be snoring.
It's almost comical to think how highly regarded Ford was - and probably still is - considering none of this movies hold up to scrutiny all these decades later. I don't think he ever took a single chance in his entire career.
Here is the end of a political career and of an era.
"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.