La dernière fanfare

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.

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" 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.

Last Hurrah, The (1958)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Spencer Tracy plays a Mayor who is running for office for perhaps the last time and he invites his nephew (Jeffrey Hunter) along to see how a campaign is run. I must admit that I was pretty letdown with this film considering the talent involved. When you have Ford directing actors such as Tracy and Hunter then I expected a lot more than what was actually delivered. The supporting cast contains brilliant actors such as John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, Dianne Foster, Pat O'Brien, Wallace Ford, Donald Crisp, Ricardo Cortez and Frank McHugh. There are signs a greatness throughout this film but they're often followed up with overly talky scenes that just drag on for no reason at all. Ford is trying to make all sorts of points about the political game but when he speaks these points he just keeps on and on. There's a scene inside a funeral that has political motivations behind it and this scene is the perfect example of a message being beaten to death and dragged down into boredom. There are several great sequences including one where Tracy blackmails Rathbone into doing some good for the city and there's another great scene when Tracy busts in on some bank managers who are using race to work against him. Tracy is good in his role but I don't think this is among his best performances. Hunter delivers a nice performance as well but I found his role to be rather underwritten. I think Carradine steals the film as the racist newspaper editor who holds a grudge against Tracy. All in all, this is an interesting movie but I don't think it takes off the way it should have and considering the talent involved, the movie should have been much better.

This movie was based on the novel of the same name by Edwin O'Connor, which in turn was inspired by the career of the colorful 4-time Mayor of Boston (and sometime Governor of Massachusetts and U. S. Congressman) James Michael Curley. Curley, although remembered today as a lovable rogue and a flamboyant old-time politician who made the voice of Boston's despised Irish heard in the halls of power, basically ran Boston into the ground during his tenure as mayor, destroying the city's credit rating, and dividing its people by appealing to old-time Irish-American fears and prejudices.

But, as far as this movie is concerned, that's neither here nor there. Spencer Tracy is outstanding as the mayor (in my opinion, only James Stewart was a better actor among the leading men of the Hollywood studio era) and the supporting players are superb, notably Pat O'Brien, Donald Crisp, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Jane Darwell and especially O.Z. Whitehead, who is brilliantly cast in a small role as the featherbrained son of a crusty Yankee banker. Also noteworthy are the usual patriotic and sentimental touches of director-producer John Ford.

What ever your political opinions may be, this is an outstanding look at old-time politics as it begins to give way to the era of mass media.