The Howards of Virginia (1940)

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

What a disappointment! I had never heard of this movie, but I love movies from the 30s-40s, enjoy watching Cary Grant, and find American Revolutionary history fascinating.I give the producer credit for shooting exteriors on location -- but Cedric Hardwicke provided the only other pleasant surprise.(An over-the-top performance should be expected from a character named Fleetwood.)Cary Grant was just horrible; as others have noted, he adopted a goofy accent and seemed to be on amphetamines; and he never should have been made to wear buckskins and a ponytail, for goodness sake. And poor, dull Martha Scott -- who could believe that she inspired such love and devotion after one meeting. Personally, I could have done without quite so much "Tom" Jefferson.The plot was simplistic; the dialog mundane. I couldn't take it for the entire two hours.

Movies about the American Revolution for some reason have never succeeded as well as those about the Civil War. My guess is that the best of them is Drums Along the Mohawk and that was about one of the more obscure theaters of that war.Like Gone With the Wind, the Howards of Virginia is taken from a rather sprawling novel. But Gone With the Wind was very faithful to the original and managed to hold interest even given its length. The Howards of Virginia is a condensed version of the novel and some of the characterization has been sacrificed in the screen translation.Nevertheless it's a good story about a fictional Matt Howard from his days as a youth hearing the news about his father's death with Braddock's army in the French and Indian War to just before the Siege at Yorktown. Of course growing up with Thomas Jefferson, it's not surprising that Howard develops the opinions he does.Cary Grant is cast against type as Matt Howard. Takes a bit of getting used to in buckskins, but I like his characterization. In point of fact if you want to see the real Cary Grant on screen look at None, But the Lone Heart, Gunga Din, or Sylvia Scarlett. That's where you see the real Archie Leach. Cary Grant was the best role Cary Grant ever played.If The Howards of Virginia were made 10 years later, Burt Lancaster would have been spot-on in terms of casting.Martha Scott is fine as the Tory girl that Cary Grant woos and wins. It's quite a culture shock for her coming to the mostly unsettled Shenandoah valley among Grant's frontier friends and neighbors, but her best scenes in the film are at that point.Of course I think both Grant and Scott are acted off the screen when Cedric Hardwicke is on. As Scott's older brother Fleetwood Payton, Hardwicke is easily the best in the film. He's a privileged Virginia aristocrat and loyalist supporter of the crown. He's an aristocratic snob to be sure, but he's also a tender and loving brother to Martha Scott. Hardwicke managed to capture all the elements in Fleetwood Payton well as well as his losing his mind as his well ordered aristocratic world tumbles down about him.Richard Carlson is very much what I picture as the young Thomas Jefferson, full of new ideas and quite the rebel against his own class. Of course Patrick Henry and George Washington make their appearances as well in colonial Virginia. My guess is that in the book a whole lot of familiar names made it there, but were not in the screenplay.This is not the American Revolution's Gone With the Wind, but taken on its own terms The Howards of Virginia is good entertainment and does capture some of the motivating spirit behind the Virginia patriots and tories.

Simpler than it first appears. This movie tries to be an epic about a frontier man transformed into a civic and military leader - but it doesn't try that hard. Cary Grant doesn't look like he knows quite how to play this guy, and I don't blame him. The material isn't wonderful, although it's a nice story. The wrong elements of the plot are emphasized, and the character of Matthew Howard is less a complicated man than a simple cypher.It's not a bad movie by any means, but it looks like it's trying desperately to copy "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Gone with the Wind" at the same time. It just doesn't have the legs for either one. I give this movie a 6 for Cary's personal magnetism, even in a stifling role like this one.