FEBRUARY 22, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 3

James Stewart walks out of his house in a baggy tweed suit wearing a hat and carrying another trench coat and hat in his arms. He holds the front door a little too long and smiles up at something. Then he putters down the walkway and reaches the gate, which he appears to be holding open for someone, but who? A deliveryman comes by and hands him a letter. Elwood, played by James Stewart, accepts it thanking the man, and then as soon as the deliveryman is off Elwood tears the letter to pieces. Elwood smiles over at his invisible friend, and then they head off to a local bar called Charley’s. This is the film Harvey; it is named after the invisible character Elwood was opening the gate for. Harvey is a pooka.

First and fore most, you can’t understand the film Harvey unless you know what a pooka is. A pooka is a being from Celtic mythology. They come in animal form and befriend misfits, crackpots, and winos. They are known for their mischievous nature. Harvey is Elwood’s best friend, and no one claims to be able to see him except Elwood. Each day Harvey and Elwood go down to the bar and have a few martinis and talk to the people there. Unfortunately Veta, Elwood’s sister, played by Josephine Hull, has moved back in with her brother only to discover that he is seeing a gigantic rabbit named Harvey. She is mortified because all that she wants to do is get her daughter, Myrtle May, married off to a nice boy. Unfortunately, due to Elwood’s antics, all the suitors and their families are being scarred off. In order to remedy this situation Veta decides that Elwood needs to be committed to a sanitarium, but soon finds that there are mystical forces working in Elwood’s favor that are getting in the way of her attempts to have Elwood locked up. Of course mystical forces aren’t the only thing to blame, there is also an over zealous young psychologist who thinks that Veta is crazy and tries to have her locked up and forcibly bathed by the raunchy sanitarium goon Mr. Wilson.

Elwood’s charm is another wonderful weapon that he has. Despite his essentially crazy behavior Elwood manages to charm everyone he meets simply by being pleasant. As the story progresses the audience is given more and more evidence that Harvey is real. Veta begrudgingly admits to seeing him sometimes and Dr. Chumley, the head of the institute, sees Harvey himself. Elwood is set free by the end of the picture because Veta cannot bare the thought of her brother taking the medication necessary for him to stop seeing Harvey. Thanks to the comments of a cabby who claims that the sanitarium’s medication changes people, Veta decides that they can go on living with Harvey. They leave the sanitarium, and Harvey stays behind to spend some time with Dr. Chumley. Elwood seems a little despondent as the gates close behind him and he leaves the sanitarium, but then an invisible creature opens up the gate and comes out to join him—it’s Harvey.

Without a doubt the character of Elwood P. Dowd is one of the most humorous and likable characters I have ever come across. Elwood’s main goal in life is to be pleasant, and he achieves this goal with a deft skill that is at once admirable and amusing. Much like the character Winy the Poo, Elwood manages to get through tough situations simply by being what could only be described as hyper-literal: whatever is on his mind he’ll tell you, and if you ask him a question he will reply with a careful slow response that is honest and kind at the same time. Never is Elwood snide or cruel, he is simply pleasant and engaging without fail, and so he charms the other characters as he charms the audience. As you watch Harvey you find yourself not so much interested in having a pooka who could walk around with you, but rather wishing you could have a few drinks with Elwood.

Elwood is not complete without Harvey though. It is only when you watch James Stewart guide his invisible companion around with diligent courtesy and friendly attentiveness that you can begin to see the depths of Elwood’s good nature. Likewise, it is through Elwood that you get to know Harvey: Elwood’s body language and his repetitions of Harvey’s comments (just in case the other character didn’t happen to hear what the big white rabbit said). Harvey and Elwood are separate characters, but like Gilligan and the Skipper, a huge part of their impact on "Gilligan’s Island" is derived by their combined persona. So much of Elwood is invested in Harvey, and this can be seen at the end of the film when Elwood faces the likelihood of going off without Harvey. The fact that by the end of the picture we know that Harvey is real adds even more significance to this relationship, because we find out that Elwood is not crazy at all; he simply has a remarkable friend.

Josephine Hull’s performance as Veta plays a huge role in keeping the film entertaining, and like the rest of this film, it has withstood the test of time. In Harvey she plays the frantic, overwrought, sister of Elwood who simply wants to marry her daughter off and have a sane brother. Of course, we soon find out that Veta has also been seeing the rabbit. While her character is conniving—she is trying to have Elwood committed—she is also very likable. Thanks to Hull’s benevolent face and laugh inducing overreactions, a character that ought to be repellent becomes likable.

One of the charming things about Harvey is that all the characters are made to appear likable. Even the incompetent Dr. Chumley who runs the sanitarium is eventually revealed to be a lonely old man who simply wants to lie under a tree in Akron drinking cold beer with a quiet young pretty woman. Elwood’s perspective of the world seems to cloud the entire narrative. People, all people, become likable when they are viewed through the eyes of Elwood. It’s simply a matter of sitting down and asking questions, that’s how you get to know them and appreciate them. It is this general sensation of watching a genuine and pleasant individual baffle and confuse rational and overwrought people that makes this film so much fun to watch. You are observing an example of how being a nice guy can be a very hard thing to do in any society.

Harvey does seem to be pointing fingers at some culturally specific topics though. One of the big jokes in the film is the incompetence of the Psychiatric hospital. The young Dr. Sanderson who essentially runs the sanitarium while Dr. Chumley hides in his office, misdiagnoses Veta and has her committed while he lets Elwood go. While it is true that the pooka is real, Dr. Sanderson’s inability to see that Elwood was trying to introduce him to an invisible rabbit is at once funny and a critique of psychiatry. Harvey was a Pulitzer Prize winning play in 1944 before it was made into a movie in 1950. Around this time Psychiatry was going through a huge boom, and the theories of Freud and Jung were being debated and written about extensively. Much of Psychiatry was still unclear, and as Harvey shows us, subject to error. While the issue of the sanitarium personnel not being able to identify who was delusional and who was not is funny, it is also a critique of an intellectual field that was growing at the time and was threatening to many people. How do you know if someone is really crazy? According to the film Harvey, you can never really know.

Harvey also raises some interesting questions about the role of men in 1940-50’s society. While this was post World War II America and there were some woman in the work force, for the most part, at this time in history, men ran things. It was the man who went to work and provided for his family, and had to survive the many stresses that came along with these responsibilities. Elwood has managed to avoid all these stresses; he is single, unemployed, and simply goes to the bars every day for a few drinks. His sister and niece are the only women in his life, and he seems to be completely immune to their nervous energy. In many ways, Elwood is a model for how men could live in that time were they not restricted by the pressures of social conformity. Other male characters in the film seem to be shown as suffering from the restrictive nature of male roles at the time. For instance Dr. Chumley tells Elwood about an elaborate fantasy involving cold beer and a pretty young quiet girl, while this is a funny image, it is a fantasy about a world free of the stresses of his patriarchal post as husband and head of a sanitarium. The younger doctor, Dr. Sanderson, is completely overworked in the film. He is so overworked that he doesn’t even notice that the attractive young nurse working at the sanitarium is attracted to him. It takes Elwood’s intervention to help get Dr. Sanderson out of his office so that he could notice the beautiful nurse Miss Kelly. Both the doctors are shown to suffer in their own way because of the restrictive roles they are forced to live. In this way Harvey manages to critic the male patriarch of the 1940-50s and ask is this a good way to live?

As long as people are forced to go to work everyday and fit into social circles the movie Harvey will have an audience. It critiques responsibilities, and while part of that critique is historically specific, the idea of just going around being pleasant is one that most people can at least imagine prescribing to. Thanks to great performances and a sweet and funny script this movies continues to use humor to point out social weaknesses and asks a question that should be asked more often. How do you really know if someone is crazy?