The Last Hurrah (1958)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

John Ford

Writers:

Edwin O'Connor (novel)
Frank S. Nugent (screenplay)

Release Date:

November 1958 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Big book! big cast! big picture!

Plot:

Frank Skeffington is an old Irish-American political boss, running for re-election as Mayor of of a US town for the last time.

Plot Keywords:

Politics | Mayor | Irish American | Boston | Election

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 2 wins

Cast

Spencer Tracy	...	Mayor Frank Skeffington
Jeffrey Hunter	...	Adam Caulfield
Dianne Foster	...	Mave Caulfield
Pat O'Brien	...	John Gorman
Basil Rathbone	...	Norman Cass, Sr.
Donald Crisp	...	Cardinal Martin Burke
James Gleason	...	'Cuke' Gillen
Edward Brophy	...	'Ditto' Boland
John Carradine	...	Amos Force
Willis Bouchey	...	Roger Sugrue
Basil Ruysdael	...	Bishop Gardner
Ricardo Cortez	...	Sam Weinberg
Wallace Ford	...	Charles J. Hennessey
Frank McHugh	...	Festus Garvey
Carleton Young	...	Winslow

Runtime:

121 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | USA:Approved (PCA #19086) | Australia:G | Finland:S

Filming Locations:

Columbia/Warner Bros. Ranch - 411 N. Hollywood Way, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Edwin O'Connor's 1956 novel "The Last Hurrah", on which the movie is based, is a fictionalized version of former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, a celebrated rogue who raised municipal corruption to an art form.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Cheers: Norm's First Hurrah (#5.23)" (1987)

the spirit, but not the fact

John Ford certainly does capture the spirit of how James Michael Curley would like to have been remembered. It's how he wrote his memoirs and how Edwin O'Connor wrote that brilliant piece of fiction.

Curley was a demagogue par excellence. He played ethnic politics to the hilt. He served one term as governor of Massachusetts and that term was noted for an outrageous scandal in which pardons were sold to prisoners who could cough up the money. And he was always the victim of those nasty Yankee patriarchs.

Spencer Tracy does a great job in cleaning up the Curley image and the rest of the cast is fine. I would like to call attention to two actors who typified the cultural divide that James Michael Curley never attempted to bridge in his lifetime, unlike in this film.

Willis Bouchey playing Roger Sugrue, disparagingly referred to as the Papal Knight, is this rabidly bigoted Roman Catholic who is forever finding fault with the rest of humanity and criticizing those of his fellow Catholics who are not as good as he. He nearly has a stroke after seeing a Monsignor played by Ken Curtis on TV playing golf with a rabbi. No wonder Donald Crisp playing the Cardinal refers to him as "that horrible man, Roger Sugrue."

And the other side of the coin is John Carradine playing Amos Force the descendant of old line Puritans who is as bigoted in his way as Roger Sugrue is in his. It's alluded to that back in the 1920s Carradine was in the Ku Klux Klan and you can believe it from Carradine's portrayal.

Bouchey and Carradine are the two best in a cast that is saturated with John Ford favorites. As a lesson in respect for diversity, The Last Hurrah has a lot to say. History it's not though.