Harry and Tonto (1974)

Life is confusing. We're just trying to get on with it.

Multi-hyphenate Paul Mazursky had already tasted both sweet success and bitter failure with his first two outings as writer-director: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a chaste adultery comedy with a swinging denouement, made him a millionaire; Alex in Wonderland (1970), a self-conscious satire about sophomore slumps, was almost universally shrugged off when it wasn’t loathed.¹ Mazursky came back with the sorta-kinda update of Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, Blume in Love (1973), which was a modest commercial success and opened studio ears to one of Mazursky’s least commercial ideas: a road movie about an old man and his cat. The genesis of the idea was nothing less than a mild midlife crisis: “When I became forty, I began seriously to think about the fact that I would one day be seventy,” said Mazursky. “When you’re twenty, you’ll never be seventy, but at forty, you’re halfway there. What the movie was probably about was loneliness, and loneliness is the same at any age.”

Alan Ladd Jr was new in post as VP of Creative Affairs at Fox when he agreed to finance the movie, which had already spent six months collecting rejections. He had only two conditions: that the movie be made cheaply and that Mazursky secured a name for the lead. The budget was no issue for the director – it was less than half than that of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, but that had four stars. The name proved more difficult. Mazursky approached James Cagney and Cary Grant, both of whom were retired and intended to stay that way.² James Stewart was apparently interested, but Mazursky wasn’t keen – his persona would have overwhelmed the part. Danny Kaye, for whom Mazursky had written on his self-titled show, also turned down the role, feeling that he was too young for the part (he was in his sixties) and that the script needed more “old codger” jokes.

Luckily, Mazursky had someone else in mind, a former sitcom actor who had alternated television appearances – most notably in the lovely Christmas episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Night of the Meek”³ – with appearances on the stage including dramatic turns in Morton Wishengrad’s The Rope Dancers and Brian Friel’s Lovers. For many audience members, Art Carney was Ed Norton in The Honeymooners; for Mazursky, there was a gifted dramatic actor waiting for his feature lead. Carney also wasn’t interested – he was only in his late fifties, he was a self-confessed (though largely functional) alcoholic, and he hated cats – but Mazursky was adamant. He had his Harry.

Like most road movies, Harry and Tonto is light on plot. Harry Coombes (Carney) is a septuagenarian retired English professor living quietly in New York with his leash-trained ginger pal Tonto (Tonto),⁴ who spends his days walking the cat through Washington Square and his evenings with his nose in a book. When his apartment block is slated for demolition, Harry is the last hold-out, removed from the building by force, chair and all. After a stay with his eldest son Burt (Phil Bruns) and his family proves uncomfortable for all, Harry sets out to find a new home with one of his other children, but each proves less accommodating than the last – in Chicago, Shirley (Ellen Burstyn) is too prickly and independent for Harry’s tastes, and Los Angeles-based Eddie (Larry Hagman) needs a roommate and loan more than he needs his father. Along the way, Harry encounters travel troubles – usually due to Tonto – and a variety of eccentrics, before he finally appears to settle in Santa Monica.

Part of Harry’s problem is his independence and his utter refusal to jettison that independence for the sake of comfort. He likens himself to King Lear, but it’s a vague comparison: his tragedy (if that’s what it is) is not that of filial ingratitude, nor does he suffer from Lear’s excessive pride or unravelling wits. His biggest strength is his Greatest Generation resilience, apparently happy to ditch two modes of transport because Tonto isn’t happy on them, ditching a second-hand car when his grandson and the fifteen-year-old runaway he’s picked up want to head out to a commune, and he spends most of the final act hitchhiking his way to California.

Just as Harry refuses to become a stereotypical old man, the movie resists becoming what you expect it (or even want it) to be. For a drama, it isn’t particularly moving, especially considering an obvious inspiration was that other Leo McCarey classic Make Way for Tomorrow (1937); even the deaths of Harry’s pal and (spoiler alert) Tonto are handled with a distinct lack of emotion. For a road movie, it’s peculiarly static, and Harry’s journey is less a series of destinations than it is a handful of vignettes that don’t hang together either tonally or narratively. And for a comedy, it isn’t particularly funny. This is by design. Mazursky’s films are always gentle to their characters: “I’m always writing about real people in specific situations. The humour in my films comes out of those real situations.” Richard Corliss once called him “closer to an indulgent Horace than to a bitter Juvenal,” and while this feels right, it can make for a woolly watch.

This isn’t to say that gentle comedy can’t work – Bill Forsyth based his early career on it⁵ – but “real people” in “real situations” requires a level of verisimilitude that Mazursky’s airless script lacks. While the director had improvisation chops, he wasn’t keen on using it in his movies: “Actors can get hooked on a lot of things that seem like fun at the time but have nothing to do with what I wrote. I want to respect myself as a writer.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, unless that writer is overly fond of one-note eccentrics, which is unfortunately the case with Harry and Tonto. It’s difficult for an audience to mourn the passing of Jacob when all he’s done is call people “capitalist bastards,” just as it’s difficult to care about the gullible cabbie who thinks Harry is a cat salesman, a vitamin salesman who also says he used to be a cat salesman (if a joke’s worth doing once …), a happy and horny hooker who gives Harry a freebie, or the dodgy racial stereotype of the medicine man (otherwise wonderfully played by Chief Dan George) who helps cure Harry’s bursitis in their shared jail cell.

At first glance, you might mistake these types for an intentional cross-section of ‘70s Americana, giving us a broader picture of a country in deep turmoil, but unlike, say, the hippies and hicks that litter Easy Rider (1969), there is no point to be made: they’re simply a collection of oddballs designed to provide mild comic moments. And to be fair, not all of them are unsuccessful: Harry’s silent grandson is charming mostly due to Josh Mostel’s guileless performance;⁶ Sally Marr as the Santa Monica Cat Lady is a lot of fun and a much-needed burst of energy in the film’s final, flagging moments;⁷ and I would be remiss in not paying tribute to Louis Guss as Dominic, a fellow bus passenger who is living the Warren Zevon maxim of enjoying every sandwich:

Otherwise, genuinely dramatic moments are few and far between. There is a nice, poignant moment between Harry and old flame Jessie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who is clearly in the grips of dementia, and there is a certain unspoken dignity in Harry’s visit to Shirley, with the realisation that father and daughter are too similar in temperament to be anything other than aggravating to each other. Overall, the movie seems to promote survival and resilience above all else; that there is an inherent worth in persisting to be yourself in a world that doesn’t value it. But this message is so vague and so mired in irrelevant events that it becomes almost pointless – it’s also a message that had been bellowed only a few years prior with the godawful Harold and Maude.⁸

If you haven’t noticed already, I have a low tolerance for 1970’s quirk. Had Mazursky’s comic tendencies been sharper (or more Juvenal), he might have been able to actually say something about the indignities of growing old gracefully in a country where everyone’s off their nut. Or had he leaned into the sentiment – as Make Way for Tomorrow⁹ does with devastating ruthlessness – perhaps this battle-scarred old curmudgeon would have actually felt something. As it stands, even the death of Tonto – an almost guaranteed tearjerker for this particular audience member – is little more than a few lines of Harry Lauder and a “See ya, kiddo.” That I was more upset by Carney’s handling of the cat (usually grabbed under the – I don’t know what they are – armpits?) than the cat’s death is a sure sign that whatever Mazursky intended wasn’t successful.¹⁰

I am however painfully aware that I’m likely to be in the minority on this one. For whatever reason, Harry and Tonto still has a devoted fanbase today. At the time, it was undoubtedly seen as an optimistic corrective to more challenging fare in cinemas, and many critics jumped on the chance to champion Harry and Tonto as a heartwarming film. And cinemagoers in need of a little light relief jumped at the chance to pad the box office – as a result, Harry and Tonto was a commercial success, racking up some $4.6m in rentals against the $980k budget.

Today, Harry and Tonto is probably best known for the Best Actor Oscar going to Art Carney against stiff competition, the second year in a row that saw an established and well-loved performer beating the new blood. While Carney’s performance is solid, it’s difficult to imagine that it’s somehow better or more complex than Nicholson in Chinatown,¹¹ Pacino in The Godfather Part II, or Hoffman in Lenny. His performance isn’t even as showy or conflicted as Jack Lemmon’s (in Save the Tiger) the previous year, but as much as I dislike Harry and Tonto, I can’t fully get behind the “Carney didn’t deserve it” narrative: he could have made Harry Coombes unbearably cute, but Carney’s performance is nuanced enough to be lauded. It isn’t my favourite of his, but it certainly isn’t the worst Best Actor decision ever made,¹² even if Harry and Tonto the film is a bit of a woolly irrelevance.

---

Next Up: “His whole life was a million-to-one shot.”

1. Roger Ebert is a notable exception to this. He was largely a champion of Mazursky’s work, awarding his coveted four stars to five of Mazursky’s films: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Alex in Wonderland, Harry and Tonto, An Unmarried Woman, and Down and Out in Beverly Hills. I am in no position to disagree with the late Mr Ebert, suffice to say Mazursky never quite clicked with me.

2. Apparently Laurence Olivier was also approached. Given his poor health at the time, not to mention the inordinate stress of being ousted from the National Theatre, I don’t blame him for not doing it, but it’s an intriguing what if …

3. Serling in pure sentimental mode, with Carney as an alcoholic store Santa becoming the real thing. One to add to the Christmas viewing list if you haven’t already seen it.

4. Apparently there were back-up cats, but Tonto should take the lion’s share (ahahaha) of the praise for feline performance, and padded away with a PATSY for best animal performer, joining such luminaries as Ben the rat (two rats, winning for Willard and Ben respectively), Flipper, Gentle Ben, and Orangey the cat (Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

5. Another one to add to your Christmas viewing list is Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy (1984), a typically idiosyncratic look at local celebrity inspired loosely by Glasgow’s ice cream wars. And yes, we might get round to doing That Sinking Feeling and Gregory’s Girl at some point.

6. In case you were wondering, yes: Josh is Zero’s son.

7. And I know you weren’t wondering this, but yes: Sally Marr was Lenny Bruce’s mother and was a comedian in her own right. According to Mazursky, when asked about Hoffman’s performance in Lenny, she replied: “Oh, Lenny was a much bigger junkie than that!”

8. We will not be covering Harold and Maude, because I hate that film with every fibre of my being and it is the only Ruth Gordon performance that makes me want to murder someone.

9. Have I mentioned Make Way for Tomorrow enough? Brace yourself if you haven’t seen it; it utterly deserves its reputation as one of the great tearjerkers.

10. Look, I’m a cat guy. And it irks me when cats are grabbed and thrown around like poor old Tonto. Also, Tonto is eleven when he dies (apparently of natural causes, but given the amount of shit he’s fed and his lack of energy, I diagnose kidney failure) which Harry says is the equivalent of seventy-seven, which it isn’t (it’s closer to sixty). Maybe cats didn’t live as long back then. Maybe they all fucking smoked or something. I don’t know.

11. Nicholson responded to the news of his fourth loss with typical irony: “Maybe next year I’ll be the sentimental favourite.” And he was (kinda), winning for McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

12. So many spring to mind: Cliff Robertson in Charly, Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful, Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hour, Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody … I’m sure you have your own favourites.