Jimmy Stewart’s classic comedyHarveymade its debut in theaters 70 years ago this week. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the movie follows Elwood P. Dowd, a man whose best friend is a six-and-a-half-foot tall invisible rabbit. Elwood’s family, tired of being social outcasts because of his curious friendship, try to have him committed, with comically disastrous results.Harvey’s ultimate message of acceptance is an unexpectedly progressive view of mental health for a film written in the 1940s, and despite some archaic grossness, it still resonates in 2020.
The scope of the story is pretty small – Elwood is a trust fund guy who doesn’t have to work and spends his days walking from bar to bar and introducing people to Harvey. His older sister Veta (Josephine Hull), completely embarrassed by his continuing behavior, tries to have him committed to a mental hospital, only to have the doctor commit her instead after she admits to occasionally seeing the rabbit herself. (It’s pretty disturbing how much power the doctors have in this scenario, but more on that in a bit.) The mistake gets cleared up and the hospital’s staff goes looking for Elwood, who is just happily getting smashed in his favorite bar with Harvey. The staff, along with Veta and her daughter Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne), take Elwood back to the hospital to give him an injection that will “cure” him of Harvey. However, Veta decides against it at the last minute, realizing she’d rather have her brother be the gentle, pleasant man he is than force him to take medication that will completely change his personality just to make him “normal.” Elwood, charmingly agreeable with whatever everyone else wants him to do, happily follows Veta and Myrtle Mae home with Harvey in tow.
Harveyis a familiar story about acceptance; watching it again, I kept thinking of the 2007 filmLars and the Real Girl, about a sweet but lonely man (Ryan Gosling) who develops a genuine relationship with a sex doll named Bianca. Rather than ostracize him, the entire town supports him and treats his “girlfriend” like a real person.Harveydoesn’t begin in the same place – it takes place in a world much more markedly conservative, starting with the assumption that Elwood is a man who needs to be “fixed” because he hangs out with a giant rabbit nobody else can see or hear. But both stories arrive at the same conclusion – that neither Elwood nor Lars are dangerous or pitiable or even in need of “correction.” They simply perceive the world in a slightly different manner than most people, and to try and “cure” them of that would be a cruel invasion of their personalities.
The idea of “curing” mental illness has become an extremely controversial issue in recent years. As a person who has been diagnosed with and treated for mental health issues in the past, I can say with all of the authority that experience grants me that I have no idea what the correct answer is for anyone suffering from mental illness. Most disorders require some amount of treatment (be it therapy or medication or a mixture of both) to help you manage them and allow you to live a more or less “normal” life, but mental health isn’t a monolith. Every person is different and should be treated on a case-by-case basis (for instance, I react terribly to just about every SSRI and SNRI ever created, but that doesn’t mean I think nobody should ever take medication). I bring this up to point out thatHarveyseems to understand this, at least to a certain degree. Elwood’s friendship with Harvey isn’t really negatively affecting his life, and while delusions like Harvey could absolutely be a sign of a serious emotional or neurological disorder, the ultimate “solution” presented by the doctors in the film is to keep Elwood so heavily medicated that he doesn’t embarrass his sister and his niece. It’s not much different from a lobotomy, which was still considered a viable “cure” when the movie was made. Elwood is a kind, wonderful man who just happens to spend most of his time in the company of a giant invisible rabbit. Why should anyone want to change him? Veta comes to this realization at the end, deciding that she’d rather not risk dimming the bright, warm light of her brother’s personality for the sake of making him more “socially acceptable.”
In another similarity withLars and the Real Girl, inHarveywe learn that Elwood was extremely close to his mother, and that Harvey appeared just after she passed away. (Lars, meanwhile, lived with an overbearing father who blamed Lars for his mother’s death, and began seeing Bianca after his father died.)Harveyundermines the idea of Elwood’s trauma somewhat by teasing us with moments that seem to confirm Harvey’s reality – objects and doors are manipulated by an unseen presence, and the aloof Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway) goes on a drinking binge with Harvey and becomes convinced the rabbit is real. We’re also briefly told that Harvey is actually a Celtic spirit called a pooka, which is later apparently confirmed when the hospital’s literal blackjack-wielding henchman Wilson (Jesse White) looks up a definition of the word in a dictionary that begins to change into a greeting from Harvey as he reads it.
I assume that seemingly answering Harvey’s reality was an effort to make the film’s themes slightly more palatable for audiences (again, this was released in 1950, and mental illness was still an extremely taboo subject), but much like the stuffed tiger Hobbes in the comic stripCalvin & Hobbes, the question of Harvey’s reality isn’t the point. Harvey is real because Elwood believes he is real. And Harvey is helping him navigate an emotionally difficult period in his life, and while I wish Elwood wouldn’t drink so much, he’s not a danger to himself or to anyone around him. Indeed, all of the regulars at Elwood’s local bar behave much like the townsfolk ofLars and the Real Girl, happily greeting both Elwood and Harvey every time they pop in for a few rounds. The urgency of “curing” Elwood is solely for the benefit of making certain people in Elwood’s orbit – primarily Veta and Myrtle Mae – slightly less uncomfortable. With support and understanding, he’ll work through the trauma that created Harvey in his own time. Or maybe he won’t, but honestly, how bad would that be?
As I stated up top, there’s some extremely dated garbage inHarvey, albeit much less than I would’ve expected to see in a 70-year-old film about mental illness. Primarily, the sanitorium, Chumley’s Rest, is a fucking nightmare. Chiefly run by the chauvinist dickweed Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake), the hospital operates like a Keystone Cops outfit, only with a diminished focus on endearing zaniness in favor of general incompetence. Dr. Sanderson has carte blanche to detain both Elwood and Veta, the latter of which he decides to commit after a single two-minute conversation. I have no idea how accurate this is to the time period, but that’s flat-out terrifying. Dr. Sanderson also verbally abuses and demeans the hospital’s nurse, Miss Kelly (Peggy Dow), and while that’s unfortunately pretty standard behavior for films of this time, it’s still extremely uncomfortable to watch as the movie effectively excuses his actions. And the hospital’s orderly Wilson behaves like a mafia goon, oafishly lurching through a film that treats him like a comedic sidekick when in practice he’s just a repellent thug. He bodily snatches Veta from her car and carries her up into the hospital in one scene, and while this is treated as farce, let me assure you that being confined to a hospital against your will is an absolutely terrifying experience I wouldn’t wish on anybody. Anyway, he ends up with the eye-rollingly desperate Myrtle Mae at the end, because why not?
Despite those admittedly few flaws,Harveyremains as sweet and positive a story about acceptance and dealing with mental illness as I remembered it being (although when I watched this movie as a kid, I was really just doing my best to picture the giant rabbit most of the time). My feelings about the movie are somewhat complicated, but I’ve done my best to articulate them, and I truly hope I didn’t give any offense as I realize this is a very personal topic for a lot of people. I thinkHarveydoes an excellent job of reminding us that support and understanding are much more vital than the pursuit of a supposed “cure,” and that even in aFrank Capra-esque painting of high society in the 1950s, there’s no such thing as “normal.”
