What could possibly be sweeter or extra healthful than the story of a person who’s greatest buddies 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 mild, 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 severe doubts about his psychological well being—they usually 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 just 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 buddies,” recounts household pal Decide 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 will strike completely 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 exhibits real curiosity within the life of each single particular person 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 dwelling for dinner.
The individuals Elwood encounters, understandably, are typically shocked when he introduces them to an enormous rabbit they’ll’t see. But when they stick round lengthy sufficient moderately than flee, one thing begins to forged a spell over them. You might make a case that it’s Harvey himself; the movie enables you to get away with that interpretation. Nevertheless it’s extra possible Elwood’s light attraction and kindness that win them over. He’s like Mr. Rogers for adults, if Mr. Rogers preferred to hang around in bars with a giant white invisible rabbit.
“I wrestled with actuality for 35 years, physician, and I’m glad to state I lastly received out over it,” he explains to the physician and nurse who’re making an attempt to institutionalize him at his sister’s behest. Such traces trace at one thing that took me some time to note: a kind of knowingness that retains gleaming via Elwood’s otherworldly demeanor. You possibly can see it once more when Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake) asks him some inquiries to try 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 greatest pal.
Elwood is aware of what’s occurring right here. He could also be residing in his personal actuality more often than not, however on this case no less than, he is aware of what the physician is making an attempt to get out of him. You possibly can’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 buddies and his sister, Elwood acknowledges his extra standard previous, in his personal indirect trend. “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 have to be’—she all the time known as me Elwood—’On this world, Elwood, you have to be oh, so good, or oh, so nice.” Nicely, for years I used to be good. I like to recommend nice. You could quote me.” This too means that Elwood’s position is much less the deluded harmless and extra a person who has made a deliberate option to dwell 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 an element. He actually does see his white rabbit. Every thing 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 glad to care.
Christiana Peterson describes the holy idiot as “somebody who dwell[s] out the religious self-discipline of behaving in a method that would carry ridicule.” Harvey isn’t what you would possibly name a Christian story; its titular supernatural creature, the “pooka” who seems as an enormous rabbit, hails from Celtic mythology. Nonetheless, Elwood’s lifestyle locations him unquestionably in that sacred custom.
Regardless of the movie’s sunny fame, the world wherein Harvey takes place is absolutely not that totally different from our personal—a world of calculation and ruthlessness. These few characters apart from Elwood who consider within the pooka’s actuality need both to eliminate it or use it for their very own ends. Elwood is content material to easily take pleasure in 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 just 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 making an attempt 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 get rid of or exploit anybody who’s totally different, generally a idiot is the very best factor one will be.
