Harvey (1950)

directed by Henry Koster

Liam Griffin

I don’t remember the first time I watched Harvey, but I don’t remember a lot of things these days. I know it was after I busted my head open on a basketball court, after my traumatic brain injury.

My dad will insist he introduced me to Harvey, and that would make sense. It’s a film from 1950 starring Jimmy Stewart as a Yale graduate turned town drunk whose best friend is a 6-foot-tall invisible rabbit, a pooka.

My dad introduced my siblings and I to plenty of old films; it's a source of pride for him. We would watch the Marx Brothers and Universal monsters and my dad’s favorite westerns, even if we were apprehensive about watching something without color.

But I know I found Harvey on my own. I had to. This film, about what it means to be a person in this world and what we owe to each other, was something I had to find on my own as I entered adulthood, feeling scared and alone.

Harvey was a massive success on Broadway and was adapted into a film in 1950. The plot is light, to say the least. In one of his best roles, Jimmy Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd. Dowd spends his days at the local bars and embarrassing his well-to-do sister and niece who are ashamed of him.

Elwood used to have potential. He used to be smart. His family is forcing him to get professional help. Now that’s something I could relate to.

We don’t really think about memory much until it starts to fail us. After I suffered a severe concussion, I was put into a medical study. In between reading tests, doctors asked me to remember the details surrounding the most traumatic day of my life.

I remember that it was Monday, December 12, 2011. I remember that I was 13 years old. I remember that I had popcorn chicken for lunch. I remember that my friends and I were excited for the upcoming winter break.

After I plummeted skull-first onto the hardwood floor of my middle school’s basketball court, I remember trying to get up. I couldn’t. My body wouldn't move for me.

An ambulance came to the middle school as horrified eighth graders watched and whispered. Medics loaded me onto a stretcher and took me to the nearest hospital. The school wiped up the blood quickly, but the dent stuck around for a few more years.

I was a smart kid in middle school. For better or worse, it was part of my identity. My head injury took that away. I was still smart. I could still ace a standardized test, but it wasn’t the same. Things didn’t come to me as quickly anymore. I’d spend minutes trying to find the right words in a conversation, and I lost control of my emotions more than I ever did before. There were days I couldn’t force myself to do the things I needed to do.  Even if I was smart, I didn’t feel that way anymore. I spent the next five years, like many teenagers, searching for an identity.

Then I found Harvey.

Near the climax of the film, kind-hearted Elwood P. Dowd is at risk of being institutionalized. His sister Veta, a socialite played by Josephine Hull, is tired of Elwood. She doesn’t understand why he is the way that he is. While talking to the head of the sanitarium, Stewart delivers a line that will never leave me:

“Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say ‘In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart...I recommend pleasant.”

For years, I was smart. But after my head injury, I wasn't as pleasant as I used to be. People don't understand that, either. They may sympathize, but they don't understand. And nothing I said or did could make them understand, and I lashed out. And then I would hate myself for lashing out.

But Harvey showed me something I never considered: earnestness. I didn't have to outwit anyone to prove myself; I had nothing to prove. People won't remember the things you say or the arguments you win, but they'll remember the way you make them feel.

It would be easy for a movie like Harvey to trade in irony. Its premise is, at its surface, ridiculous. But everyone involved in the production approaches the work with candor and empathy. Production photos included on the DVD show cast members having lunch and conversations with an empty chair, labeled with Harvey's name.

Throughout the film, shots are constructed with Harvey, an invisible rabbit, in mind. The camera often leaves empty space at the side of the frame, space for Harvey. As Elwood, Stewart chews scenery with an invisible rabbit in mind. When faced with decisions, the 6-foot-4-inch Stewart looks up and defers to Harvey.

The special effects are sparse but effective. When the filmmakers decide to show a door opening on its own or a swing swaying with an invisible person, it's as potent for the audience as it is for the characters.

Everyone involved with the production seemed to understand the power of Harvey's screenplay. The script, adapted from Mary Chase’s 1944 play, is as sharp as they come. In an age of mid-century conformity, Chase’s dialogue slices at the seams of a superficially polite society.

Near the end of the film, a doctor notes that a simple serum could rid Elwood of his leporine friend. A taxi driver, who frequently takes patients to and from the sanitorium, laments that people are never as kind after they’re “treated.”

“After this he'll be a perfectly normal human being," the cab driver tells Veta. “And you know what stinkers they are!”

In a script filled with warmth, joy, and optimism, Chase plumbed dark thoughts for comedy. The cynicism of Harvey's characters is played for laughs, as the audience understands how ridiculous and shallow they sound. Early in the film, Veta is explaining why Elwood’s mother left him the bulk of their fortune:

“I suppose it was because she died in his arms. People are sentimental about things like that.”

Chase wrote the original Pulitzer-winning playbook for Harvey in 1944, during some of the darkest periods of World War II. Despite the timeframe and occasionally brazen script, Harvey is an undeniably optimistic work. The audience is inclined not just to appreciate Elwood’s buoyant perspective—they’re likely to agree with him.

“So far, I haven't been able to think of any place I'd rather be,” Elwood says. “I always have a wonderful time—wherever I am, whomever I'm with. I'm having a fine time, right here.”

Elwood P. Dowd’s attitude is infectious. It spreads like a virus through his small town. But even if everyone doesn’t believe in Harvey, they start to believe in Elwood.

They see the kind of man he is, and how he treats other people. As they chase him around in an effort to lock him in a sanatorium, he never sours. He always has time to invite a stranger over for dinner, or play matchmaker, or pick a flower.

By the end of the film, the other characters aren’t the only ones affected by Elwood’s joie de vivre. The audience can feel it too.

I saw so much of myself in Elwood. “Look at him,” I thought. “An underachiever with so much potential who’s being pushed towards professional help.”

But unlike so many narratives of the underachiever, Elwood doesn’t change. He doesn’t need to. By the end of the film, no one is lamenting Elwood’s lost potential or what could have been. They admire him.

Despite what Elwood thinks, most people aren't impressed by Harvey. They're enamored with the man, not the rabbit. People are left in awe of a man who is Yale-educated but doesn't feel the need to prove it. Their lives are a tad brighter thanks to the man who approaches a sanitarium the way Will Smith approaches Bel Air.

When I first watched Harvey, after scraping through high school and almost failing out of college, I knew the kind of person I wanted to be. I couldn’t always be the smartest person in the room anymore, and that was okay. We can’t choose to be smart, or funny, or charming, but we can choose to be kind. All I had to do was be kind, and the rest would fall into place.

I still have bad days. But I've never felt as alone as I used to, thanks to Harvey.

Liam Griffin works full-time covering local news in northern Virginia. In his spare time, you can find him crying while watching movies. He's on Twitter @AGothamKid.