The Howards of Virginia (1940)
Posted: July 5th, 2007, 12:03 pm
Cary Grant, glowering or hiding behind a tree in this movie?
Perhaps it was just me, but how did anyone else react to this movie? I was really looking forward to The Howards of Virginia (1940) on TCM since I'd never seen it before. Let me also begin by stating that Holiday, In Name Only, His Girl Friday, Mr. Lucky, Arsenic and Old Lace, None But the Lonely Heart, Gunga Din, North by Northwest, and even Sylvia Scarlett are probably among my favorite movies of all time. Whether serious or silly, I almost always enjoy the presence of Cary Grant before the camera. He can be quite effective when given some serious action to do, as he demonstrated nimbly in Gunga Din, Destination Tokyo and North by Northwest. His darker characters in None But the Lonely Heart, Notorious and People Will Talk were also interesting to me, but without strong direction and a halfway comprehensible character to play, even one of the greats seems to have been at a loss here.
Naturally, I was curious about The Howards of Virginia, which seems an ideal fit for the 4th of July. I looked forward to the interweaving of early American ideals with revolutionary events, the real conflicts between rebels and Tories in the American colonies, a 'guest appearance' by young Tom Jefferson (Richard Carlson), familial conflict and a chance for Cary to strut his action stuff once more, as he had so effectively in Gunga Din just a year before this was made. Sad to say, I was actually embarrassed several times for Mr. Grant while watching this one. It wasn't just the stiff dialogue and unfocused story, (one minute a love story, another an adventure tale, another a father-son generation gap, then back to Virginia class conflicts in the 18th century), from the distinguished hand of playwright Sidney Buchman, (who lent his talent to some very successful, colloquial dialogue in movies as diverse as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Awful Truth). I suspect that without the same budget or talent behind the camera, the filmmakers were trying to crank out a Gone With the Wind, revolutionary war style.
Cary Grant gives all the energy he can muster to this part without any sense of fun or the usual underlying edginess that Mr. Grant can bring to the most mundanely written of material. I also wonder, since this film's production came smack in the middle of one of Grant's busiest working periods during his career, if he might've just been getting a little burnt out after such a hectic creative period at the end of the '30s?
My favorite bad scene in this movie is (perhaps mercifully) largely silent, when Grant returns home after a long period in the thick of battle. As he walks through his town, he seems to be unrecognized and unwelcome, and poor Grant is encouraged to mug shamelessly, glowering at one and all from behind a 4 day growth of beard in a scruffy coat. I half expected Joan Fontaine from Suspicion to pop out of the crowd and call out "Who's the monkey face now, Cary?"
Apparently not a success at the time of its release, as Robert Osborne mentioned after the film. Osborne said that Cary Grant swore off all costume pictures after this one, but sorry, Bob, just check out a little number called The Pride and The Passion (1957). Our man Cary appears in that epic in Napoleonic breeches and a ponytail. Looks good too, especially when photographed next to a youngster named Sophia Loren in that movie. Oh, I just remembered one more "costume pic" that did work for Mr. Grant: I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Cedric Hardwicke seemed to be the only actor whose scenery chewing allowed him to rise above the flat, old-fashioned feel of the movie, though Martha Scott, as his well-born, only slightly starchy sister gave it all she could as Grant's loving wife who's somewhat estranged from her rather rustic hubby and his politics, as well as concerned over his limitations as a father.
Btw, other than the pre-revolutionary war movie from John Ford, Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), why do you think there seem to have been so few successful films about this period in American history?
Did you enjoy this movie much more than I did?