What may very well be sweeter or extra healthful than the story of a person who’s finest mates with a 6-foot-3 1/2-inch rabbit? Henry Koster’s movie Harvey, primarily based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, turns 75 this month, and for these 75 years, it’s been fondly remembered by audiences as a delicate, whimsical story of neighborliness, anchored by Jimmy Stewart’s quietly pretty efficiency. However very like one other well-known December launch in Stewart’s profession, there’s extra to Harvey than followers have a tendency to recollect.
Stewart stars as Elwood P. Dowd, whose placid small-town life is enriched by the fixed presence of the unseen rabbit Harvey. His delusion appears innocent sufficient—and at sure moments, not even that delusional. However a bunch of supporting characters who’re fairly quirky in their very own proper, led by the splendidly daffy Josphine Hull as Elwood’s older sister Veta, have critical doubts about his psychological well being—and so they intend to do one thing about it.
Regardless of the misunderstandings he faces, Elwood makes life higher wherever he goes, just by savoring the expertise of fixed companionship and reaching out to share it with these prepared to simply accept it.
Elwood, as his sister and neighbors ruefully recall, was as soon as one thing of a giant shot in that tiny city. “Elwood had every part: brains, character, and mates,” recounts household pal Choose Gaffney (William H. Lynn). Now he does little however make the rounds of the city bars all day, accompanied by the invisible companion he cheerfully introduces to one and all.
We by no means really see Elwood get drunk—it might strike fully the mistaken tone—but it surely can’t be denied that he’s keen on a tipple. However greater than that, he’s fond of individuals. He reveals real curiosity within the life of each single individual he meets—mail carriers, cab drivers, fellow barflies, you identify it—listens patiently to their issues, and invariably invitations them both out for drinks or to his house for dinner.
The folks Elwood encounters, understandably, are usually bowled over when he introduces them to a large rabbit they will’t see. But when they stick round lengthy sufficient relatively than flee, one thing begins to forged a spell over them. You may make a case that it’s Harvey himself; the movie allows you to get away with that interpretation. But it surely’s extra possible Elwood’s mild attraction and kindness that win them over. He’s like Mr. Rogers for adults, if Mr. Rogers appreciated to hang around in bars with a giant white invisible rabbit.
“I wrestled with actuality for 35 years, physician, and I’m completely happy to state I lastly gained out over it,” he explains to the physician and nurse who’re attempting to institutionalize him at his sister’s behest. Such strains trace at one thing that took me some time to note: a kind of knowingness that retains gleaming by Elwood’s otherworldly demeanor. You’ll be able to see it once more when Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake) asks him some inquiries to attempt to work out when and the way and why Elwood began seeing Harvey.
“Dowd, what was your father’s identify?”
Elwood takes a beat, trying down and away, earlier than he lifts his face again to the physician and states, fairly emphatically, “John. John Stuyvesant.” After which he smiles sweetly. The identical factor occurs once more, the expressions and actions much more comically exaggerated, when the physician pushes to know the identify of Elwood’s childhood finest pal.
Elwood is aware of what’s occurring right here. He could also be dwelling in his personal actuality more often than not, however on this case at the very least, he is aware of what the physician is attempting to get out of him. You’ll be able to’t persuade me in any other case. And that throws one thing of a brand new mild on this seemingly easy character and story.
Like his mates and his sister, Elwood acknowledges his extra standard previous, in his personal indirect vogue. “Years in the past,” he explains to a different physician (the phrases enhanced by that inimitable Jimmy Stewart drawl), “my mom used to say to me, she’d say, ‘On this world, Elwood, you should be’—she all the time known as me Elwood—’On this world, Elwood, you should be oh, so good, or oh, so nice.” Effectively, for years I used to be good. I like to recommend nice. Chances are you’ll quote me.” This too means that Elwood’s function is much less the deluded harmless and extra a person who has made a deliberate option to stay in a method that appears incomprehensible, although interesting, to others. You would possibly go as far as to name him a holy idiot.
Don’t get me mistaken: Elwood isn’t performing a component. He actually does see his white rabbit. All the pieces in his characterization and within the movie itself makes that clear. However he has chosen to embrace this unusual friendship, and with it a life that earns him reactions starting from indulgent to confused to horrified. He meets all of it with a good-natured smile, whether or not he’s being humored, shouted at, and even yanked from room to room in a psychological establishment, as a result of he’s simply too completely happy to care.
Christiana Peterson describes the holy idiot as “somebody who stay[s] out the religious self-discipline of behaving in a method that might carry ridicule.” Harvey shouldn’t be what you would possibly name a Christian story; its titular supernatural creature, the “pooka” who seems as a large rabbit, hails from Celtic mythology. Nonetheless, Elwood’s lifestyle locations him unquestionably in that sacred custom.
Regardless of the movie’s sunny status, the world by which Harvey takes place is basically not that totally different from our personal—a world of calculation and ruthlessness. These few characters moreover Elwood who imagine within the pooka’s actuality need both to eliminate it or use it for their very own ends. Elwood is content material to easily get pleasure from it, making no requests or calls for in any respect. Regardless of the misunderstandings he faces, Elwood makes life higher wherever he goes, just by savoring the expertise of fixed companionship and reaching out to share it with these prepared to simply accept it. All these years later, it’s an instance of holy contentment that also rings true.
“Harvey wouldn’t do something for you,” Veta moans to her brother whereas attempting to get him to surrender the rabbit for good. “He’s making a idiot of you. Elwood, don’t be a idiot!” However that’s precisely the place she’s mistaken. In a world that so typically seeks both to remove or exploit anybody who’s totally different, generally a idiot is the very best factor one might be.
