Mary Chase's whimsical tale of a man and his invisible best friend was adapted for television for the first time on CBS' DuPont Show of The Month in 1958.
"Harvey" made its way to the small screen 8 years after the original feature film based on Chase's 1944 play, starring James Stewart, had been released. Art Carney (ex-The Honeymooners) steps into Stewart's role as Elwood P. Dowd, an eccentric man about town whose best friend is an invisible, 6', 3 1/2 " rabbit named Harvey. Our ensemble also includes Marion Lorne (ex-Mister Peepers), Jack Weston, Larry Blyden, Charlotte Rae, Fred Gwynne, & Elizabeth Montgomery.
Producer David Susskind and his Talent Associates group retained the television rights, and 14 years later, mounted a shorter version for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, then on NBC. Stewart and Jesse White returned to reprise their roles from the movie, and Gwynne, six years removed from The Munsters, would reprise his role from this production as the cab driver. The 1972 version also included the husband & wife team of Martin Gabel and Arlene Francis.
Marion Lorne & Elizabeth Montgomery, as you know, would reunite on Bewitched during the first half of the series' run, with Lorne as Aunt Clara. Gwynne, as you also know, would co-star on Car 54, Where Are You?, with Charlotte Rae in a supporting role, just 3 years after the above production. Larry Blyden fronted his own sitcom, Harry's Girls, before transitioning into a game show host up until his tragic passing in 1975.
Rating: B.
4 comments:
I've got several versions of this play on DVDs; it's an evergreen in American theater.
I also have a copy of Mary Chase's stage play; it's interesting to see how various productions always try to "clean it up" to fit the time of the presentation - specifically the cabbie's speech at the end.
In the play, Mary Chase has Lofgren the cabbie say the word bastards, and this has prevailed in every stage production that I've heard of for years.
But we've always had "standards and practices", haven't we?
Harvey lives forever - that Pulitzer Prize is unarguable, and all the many revivals over the years are irrefutable evidence.
... But you can likely bet that if they bring it back again, some damn fool is going to complain about the language ...
The last adaptation in the US was in 1996 with Harry Anderson. The 1972 Hallmark Hall of Fame version was posted in two parts on YouTube, though I'd think someone would've also posted a singular video. BTW, Wikipedia listed the cabbie's name was Lifgren for some reason.
I seem to have missed pointing this out in my earlier comment:
Harvey was never a novel: it was a stage play, produced in 1944, which won that year's Pulitzer Prize in the legitimate theater.
The original Elwood P. Dowd was Frank Fay, who was probably the most hated performer of his generation: he almost resurrected his career here, but he'd made too many enemies, and the Broadway production went through a number of Dowds before James Stewart made it his own.
As I said above, I've got a copy of Mary Chase's play; the cabbie's name, then, now, and always, is E. J. Lofgren.
Then Wikipedia, predictably, misspelled it.
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