The Howards of Virginia (1940)

Beautiful, moving film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Observations: Cary was a former English music hall entertainer. He sang and danced as part of the Pink Pierrots (French clowns) in the Katharine Hepburn movie Sylvia Scarlett (1935) (see my review about that movie).Cary hums some music in the bathtub, in The Howards of Virginia. I enjoyed that. Recorded it on DVR; will watch it again. Regarding Cary jumping all over the place, get over it. He was famous, and you were not. He was a fun dancer. Maybe he just wanted to get a little fun out of this sometimes very serious story.This movie was five years after Sylvia Scarlett. It was 1940, the year of Cary's The Philadelphia Story (again with Katharine Hepburn). If you want to see dapper Cary, see Philadelphia Story.Cary was absolutely dapper in The Howards of Virginia. When Tom Jefferson cleaned him up and put him into a proper Virginia planter's suit of clothing, Cary looked absolutely fabulous. You people my age may have thought grown-up Tom was familiar: Richard Carlson was on TV in the 1950s in the program I Led Three Lives.Previous to The Howards of Virginia, Cary Grant had made some movies with that fabulous Mae West. In the pre-code 1933 She Done Him Wrong, Cary plays a seemingly innocent leader of a neighborhood mission (ala Salvation Army). He seems so naïve to Mae West. She keeps inviting him to "visit her", and he says he is so busy. She says, "I'll tell you your fortune." Mae West said she discovered Cary Grant.Cary made a good frontiersman. He actually looked good in those buckskins. An actor has to do what the director directs. Cary even had the greasy unkempt hair to go along with the rural duds. To act against Cary's publicly-perceived suave persona in other films, this is what an actor has to do. He/she has to play against type, if the role calls for it. It rounds out an actor's portfolio.If you want to see Cary Grant in another unusual costume, see Bringing Up Baby (1938), again with, who else? Katharine Hepburn. Cary wears a negligee.10/10

Sad that so many Cary Grant fans had their bubbles burst. It certainly was strange to see him play such a character, but did anyone have any problems with the actors who played the other backwoodsmen? Grant could not have played his dapper persona while being from the Shenandoah Valley, especially in scenes with those crude and embarrassing frontiersmen and women. They must have been extras. I doubt if that kind of acting is taught at UCLA or Princeton. One reviewer was critical of the director because the irony of Matthew Howard turning into a kind of Fleetwood Peyton was not portrayed. But from early on in the movie, Tom Jefferson and Matt Howard thought it would be grand to develop the 1,000 acres in the Shenandoah Valley into a PLANTATION. That was the American Dream, to achieve success through hard work. Then it meant that the most successful planter had slaves and went to Congress. But Matt Howard didn't want to run at first, and when pressed said he would go if only to improve the roads and bridges and repeal the Stamp Act. He had no thoughts of aristocratic power unlike Fleetwood.Anyone see John Wayne in The Searchers? Early in the film he wanted to murder his niece Natalie Wood because she was kidnapped and lived with the Redskins. He too was playing a character from an earlier time when there were other mores.Talk about provincialism! It's thriving even today.Collectivism versus individualism is being played out today on these movie reviews. Am I being too critical to suggest that those who are most critical of this move are doing so on political rather than on artistic grounds?July 4, 2009I watched the film again this year on TV. It's becoming an Independence Day (don't call it the 4th of July) classic, something like Jimmy Stewart's the 25th of December classic, "It's a Wonderful Life."I can't answer all the other reviewers individually here. Basically, I suspect that the "Cary Grant as Matt Howard" detractors are either in love with the suave Cary Grant or are against the political principles of Matt Howard. His performance in the beginning as a backwoodsman was energetic and realistic. He pulled no punches. The depiction of his friends as toothless and illiterate, and his love and respect for them was outstanding. His speechifying at the conclusion, espousing the distinctly American virtues of freedom, self-reliance and industriousness, sounded heartfelt. I don't know what Cary Grant felt later about the film, but the film is essential now both as a political debate and a period piece. Read the reviews at the Cary Grant web site: some of them written when the film came out in 1940 when we were allied with England in WW II. Think about today's political climate, what with tea-partyers (the original Boston Tea party was referred to in the movie) and the current debate on levels of taxation and government controls (the Stamp Act was also a plot element in the movie). Also, in case there's some doubt, Cary Grant wasn't always perfectly elegant. Early in his career he played a heavy. "In a string of films he had supporting parts, including the heavy who nearly destroys Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus 1932) and Mae West's foil in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel (1933)." Later in his career, after he had established his elegant style, he played in a couple less-than-exemplary roles, costarring with Jayne Mansfield in 1957 in "Kiss Them for Me" and playing a heartless swindler and a Cockney in 1943 in "Mr Lucky." I don't see why he can't play against type in this patriotic film. Maybe he was still trying to establish his bona fides as an actor, or he could have believed in the principles of Matt Howard. In support of the second theory, Cary Grant became an American citizen on June 26th, 1942. Might not he actually believed the lines he was reading because that is what they were teaching our naturalized citizens in those days?July 4, 2010

Never realized that Cary Grant appeared in a film which concerned the American Revolution or that he even was willing to give his talents to this type of film. I later found out that Cary Grant did not like this role he was playing in the film and made it a point to never appear in such a film. Many people felt that Cary Grant was not suited for his role in this film and felt he should have turned down this role. There are great supporting actors in this film which are Martha Scott, (Jane Peyton Howard) and Cary Grant, ( Matt Howard) and also Cedric Hardwicke,(Fleetwood Peyton). This film deals with the Boston Tea Party which means that the British were enacting a tax on the people of Boston and the people of Boston were very rebellious against such legislation and made the statement, "No Representation with out Taxitation." You must agree this is not really a Cary Grant film, he was placed in a film which he should never had appear in.

This premiered yesterday on TCM. In his intro, Robert Osborne said this was one of Cary Grant's least-known films. Ten minutes in, you know why. Matthew was 9 or 10 when he loses his father. A title card then moves us forward 12 years, meaning Matthew should be 21 or 22, but is played by the 36 year old Grant! It doesn't help that Matthew is an a-hole! He rejects his first son because he is crippled. So instead of naming the kid after his dead father, Matthew sticks it to him by naming him after the hated Fleetwood! The irony that Matthew becomes the very kind of man he despises Fleetwood for being - landowner (and slave owner), politician, member of the upper-crust - is completely lost on Z-Grade director Frank Lloyd.As if he knew he was horribly miscast, Grant tears through this like he's on crack! Martha Scott struggles mightily. Only the great Cedric Hardwicke emerges from this unscathed. Fleetwood is a snob, but one with an innate sense of civility who tries to walk a fine line between love of his King and love of his adopted home. He makes you feel Fleetwood's bitterness as his world crumbles around him, betrayed, through no real fault of his own, by the very people he thought of as his own.Did anyone pick up on that Roger was gay? Fleetwood gives Jane the family's necklace because he knows Roger will never marry! And Tom-Cat Jefferson was SO effeminate, I was waiting for him to hook up with Roger! Boy Howdy!