Melvin and Howard

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Movie
German title Melvin and Howard
Original title Melvin and Howard
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1980
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jonathan Demme
script Bo Goldman
production Kind lentils
Don Phillips
music Bruce Langhorne
camera Tak Fujimoto
cut Craig McKay
occupation

Melvin and Howard is a 1980 film directed by the American director Jonathan Demme . The tragicomedy , which is based on a true story, was produced by the film studio Universal Pictures .

action

The USA, in the 1970s: In the Nevada desert , near the small town of Tonopah , the family man Melvin Dummar meets a neglected elderly gentleman lying on the desert floor during a short stop on his way home from the night shift. Melvin offers the man, who has apparently injured his left shoulder, to take him to the nearest doctor or to drop him off with the community nurse in the next village. The stranger does not want to accept the friendly offer, but finally demands to be driven to Las Vegas . Melvin, who works in a magnesium factory in Gabbs , lets himself be persuaded. On the drive to Las Vegas, the supposed bum Melvin reveals that he is Howard Hughes . Melvin doesn't believe him, however. The journey ends at the back entrance of a hotel, where, before saying goodbye, Melvin gives the run-down man the last of his change and advises him to take better care of himself.

Melvin does not return to his home, a trailer park in Gasp, until early in the morning, where he lives with his daughter Darcy and his wife Lynda. Lynda is awakened a little later when the family's motorcycle and pick-up are seized. She has decided to learn the consequences of the ruinous marriage to Melvin. On the same day she leaves the sleeping Melvin with her lover and their daughter. But their new luck only lasts for a short time; there is an argument between the lovers in Reno and finally they break up. Lynda doesn't want to go back to Melvin, but gives her homesick daughter a bus ticket back home.

Melvin can't get over the loss of his wife and looks for her in Reno. There he meets her in a night club where she works as a nude dancer. Melvin freaks out and provokes a brawl that eventually leads to Lynda losing her job. When she was soon working as a scantily clad barmaid in another entertainment establishment, she was visited again by Melvin, who brought her the official notice in which he was granted custody of Darcy. Lynda angrily pours beer over him and loses her job again as a result of this incident.

A few months later, Melvin receives a call from Anaheim , California , where the newly divorced requests to see Darcy again. The simple-minded Lynda, who is pregnant again, lets Melvin persuade her to come back to Las Vegas and marry her husband a second time. Melvin soon went to work as a milkman at Rockwood Dairy in Glendale , where he had good prospects of becoming Employee of the Month and winning a TV. In the meantime, to the delight of the family, Lynda gives birth to her second child, a son: Fallon.

After the family is again burdened with debts and the car is seized, Melvin decides to register his attractive wife as a candidate for the Easy Street show . Dressed provocatively, Lynda appears there with a tap dance. To Melvin's great surprise, Lynda wins a couch set and a piano and the surprise prize of $ 10,000. With the money won, the dummars buy a house worth $ 44,000. In his euphoria, Melvin buys a boat and an expensive Cadillac, purchases the family cannot afford. Once again the family has accumulated a mountain of debt. There is finally a break between Lynda and Melvin, who calls her husband a "loser" and leaves the house with Darcy.

Melvin gets involved in a relationship with his work colleague Bonnie, who is also divorced and has two children from his first marriage. She plans a profitable station in Willard at Salt Lake in Utah to take over. Melvin embarks on the adventure, which however also turns out to be a financial fiasco.

At the same time, the media reported the death of US billionaire Howard Hughes and Melvin remembers meeting the old man in the desert who posed as Hughes. A short time later, a well-dressed businessman visits the Dummars gas station near Salt Lake City and leaves Melvin a letter on his desk. Melvin suspects that the envelope may contain Howard Hughes' will, but still delivers the letter unopened to the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. In fact, it turns out that, out of gratitude, the deceased declares Melvin one of the sixteen heirs to the vast fortune. The huge media hype that followed in the US frightened the heir to $ 156 million, and Melvin was confronted with allegations that describe him as a con man. There is a judicial hearing in Las Vegas. Although the written opinion fails to convict the will as a forgery, the Mormon judge believes Melvin is telling the truth and threatens him with indictment and possible jail time in Nevada State Prison. The so-called "Mormon Testament" is actually rejected by the court in September 1978.

History of origin

Jonathan Demme's film is based on a true story loosely processed into a film script by screenwriter Bo Goldman . The gas station owner Melvin Dummar from Willard insisted that at eleven o'clock in December 1967 he had lost the public-shy multibillionaire Howard Hughes in his car on a lonely road in the Nevada desert. Dummar, then 23 years old, had picked up Hughes on US Highway 95 over 150 miles north of Las Vegas, near the small town of Lida Junction , according to media reports . Dummar, who was employed as a miner at the Basic Magnesium Corp. Mine in Gabbs, Nevada, was on his way to Los Angeles, where he wanted to see his wife Lynda, who was leaving him for another man would have. According to Dummar, Hughes was unshaven and filthy; he looked disheveled, but refused any medical care and asked his rescuer to drive him to Las Vegas. Dummar dropped the man at the back entrance of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas early the next morning and lent him 25 cents. At this point, Hughes is said to have revealed Dummar regarding his true identity as well.

After Hughes' death in April 1976 at the age of 70, a handwritten will was discovered in the headquarters of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City awarding a certain "Melvin DuMar" one-sixteenth of a fortune valued at over two billion US dollars . Dummar, who expected a $ 156 million inheritance, said a well-dressed man left Howard Hughes' handwritten will sealed in an envelope on his gas station desk shortly after Hughes died. Melvin Dummar then handed over the envelope in the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, to which Hughes (also) had left a sixteenth of his fortune.

The document, which soon became popular as Mormon Will (Mormon Testament), was rejected as a forgery by a jury in Nevada in June 1978, and Dummar received nothing of Hughes' legacy. Thereupon Bo Goldman wrote his screenplay, in which he devoted himself more to the character of the dummar than to the question of the authenticity of the will. For the main role of Melvin Dummar, the actor Paul Le Mat was hired, who was seen in a supporting role in George Lucas ' American Graffiti (1973). The role of Dummar's first wife Lynda was cast with Mary Steenburgen , who had started her film career only two years earlier with the western comedy The Gallows Rope (1978) opposite Jack Nicholson . The renowned film and stage actor Jason Robards played the role of Howard Hughes . The film was shot on location in Nevada and Utah, including the cities of Gabbs, Las Vegas, Ogden and Reno. The Japanese- American cameraman Tak Fujimoto used Panaflex cameras and lenses from Panavision for the shoot .

reception

Melvin and Howard celebrated its US theatrical release on September 19, 1980. Although the tragicomedy fell short of expectations financially with gross profits of $ 4.3 million, the production received largely positive feedback from the critics calling it satirical view of the American dream. With his sixth directorial work and the previous work Flotte Sprüche auf Kanal 9 ( 1977 ), in which Paul Le Mat also played the lead role, Jonathan Demme earned a reputation as a social satirist. He was with the especially for his screwball comedies known Hollywood director Preston Sturges ( 1898 - 1959 compared). Critical voices noted that the film offered no real resolution. While forty years earlier it had been possible for the clumsy to triumph in Sturges' works, it had become unthinkable in the films and the growing pessimism of the early 1980s.

The acting ensemble also received great reviews, in particular Paul Le Mat as the eternal optimist Melvin Dummar, Mary Steenburgen in her third film role as his film wife Lynda and Jason Robards, who made a brief appearance as Howard Hughes. However, Le Mat and Steenburgen could never appear so impressive again. Today the film, the staging of which has still not lost any of its appeal over the decades, is considered a classic. Director Jonathan Demme, who served Melvin and Howard as a stepping stone in Hollywood, was later responsible for popular and critical successes such as the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and the AIDS drama Philadelphia (1993). In the Federal Republic of Germany , Melvin and Howard came into theaters a year and a half after its US theatrical release on April 2, 1982.

Reviews

  • “Robards is a cool looking, powerful Hughes. But the movie belongs to Paul Le Mat, as Dummar. ”- Chicago Sun-Times
  • “Jonathan Demme's film gently pokes fun at the gawking taste of Central America and its actors play brilliantly. Le Mat has made many films, including American Graffiti, but he's never been as good as here before or after. ”- BBC
  • "The authentic, powerful film tells the friendship of both with impressive pictures and unforgettable game." - Lexicon "Films on TV" (Rating: 2½ stars = above average)
  • “The characters are viewed in a loving, cheerful and, most importantly, unpretentious way, highlighted by Tak Fujimoto's ('Badlands', 'Philadelphia') casual, free-form photography more like a TV report. Aside from a few dark moments, the film remains lively and enthusiastic, just as its central character exemplifies Melvin's insistence that what really matters, whatever happens to the money, is that, 'Howard Hughes sang my song '. ”- Edinburgh University Film Society
  • "Mr. Le Mat plays Melvin with the mild but optimistic expectation of someone operating a slot machine. Miss Steenburgen is adorable as Lynda, just like Pamela Reed as the more patient Bonnie ... Mr. Robards is not long on the screen, looks like something out of a benign nightmare, he is the mythical figure who tied the knot Imagination. ”- New York Times

Remarks

  • The real Melvin Dummar starred in Melvin and Howard in an extra role. In the film he can be seen for a few seconds behind the counter of a diner in a bus station, where Mary Steenburgen and film daughter Elizabeth Cheshire ask for a bread knife.
  • One of the extras in the wedding scene is called Jonathan Demme. The naming is allegedly in no way related to the film's director of the same name.
  • At the beginning of the film, Melvin tells Howard Hughes that he wrote a song called Santa Claus' Hot Sled (originally: Santa's Souped Up Sleigh) . He sent the lyrics with a sum of money to the Hollywood Music Company , which underlay the lyrics of their customers with music for a fee. Although the eponymous hero doesn't notice it, the melody of his song is identical to that of the piece of music Wabash Cannonball .
  • In the spring of 2005, former FBI agent Gary Magnesen reported that he had found new evidence that Dummar was telling the truth. Magnesen reported that Hughes' closest employees remembered the billionaire walking into the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas one early morning in December 1968 and telling them that Melvin Dummar took him out in the desert. In fact, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, Howard Hughes had a reason to be in the Nevada desert - he was said to have been interested in buying some mines near the place where Dummar found him. Magnesen later processed his results into a book entitled The investigation: a former FBI agent uncovers the truth behind Howard Hughes, Melvin Dummar and the most contested will in American history .

Film music

  • Amazing Rhythm Aces: Amazing Grace Used To Be Her Favorite Song
  • Crazy Horse : Gone Dead Train
Downtown
  • Creedance Clearwater Revival: Fortunate Son
  • Daniel Dean Darst: Love can't hold a Ramblin 'man
  Southern Belles
  Hard way to go

Awards

Melvin and Howard was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1981 (official count 1980). At the award ceremony on March 31st at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles , Mary Steenburgen won best supporting actress against Eileen Brennan ( Sagittarius Benjamin ), Cathy Moriarty ( Like a Wild Bull ) and the winner of the National Board of Review Awards in this category, Eva Le Gallienne ( The strong will ), prevail. The screenplay by Bo Goldman also won an Oscar, while supporting actor Jason Robards had to admit defeat to 20-year-old up-and-coming actor Timothy Hutton ( A Normal Family ) . At the Golden Globe Awards three months earlier, Mary Steenburgen had also been honored with the award for best supporting actress. The tragicomedy was nominated for three other prizes, including in the categories of Best Comedy or Musical and Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, in which Jonathan Demmes' film against Michael Apteds Nashville Lady or actor Ray Sharkey ( Idolmaker - The dirty business of Show business ) got the short straw.

The original screenplay was also recognized by the Writers Guild of America . Jason Robards has received awards from the Boston Film Critics Association , Mary Steenburgen and others from those in Los Angeles and New York .

Oscar 1981

  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)
  • Best original script
  • nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards)

Golden Globe Award 1981

  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)

Nominations in the categories

  • Best Film - Comedy / Musical
  • Best Actor - Comedy / Musical (Paul Le Mat)
  • Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards)

Further awards

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 1981

  • Best American Film
  • Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards)
  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)
  • Best script

Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards 1981

  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1980

  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)

National Society of Film Critics Awards 1981

  • Best movie
  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)
  • Best script

New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1980

  • Best director
  • Best Supporting Actress (Mary Steenburgen)
  • Best script

Writers Guild of America 1981

  • Best Screenplay - Drama

Contents of the "Mormon Testament"

The original text of the handwritten document, known as the Mormon Will ( Mormon Testament) :

Last Will and Testament
I, Howard R. Hughes, being of sound mind and disposing mind and memory, not acting under duress, fraud or the undue influence of any person whomever, and being a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada , declare that this is to be my last will and revolt [sic] all other wills previously made by me -
After my death, my estate is to be devided [sic] as follows -
First: one-forth [sic] of all my assets to go to Hughes Medical Institute of Miami -
Second: one-eight [sic] of assets to be devided [sic] among the University of Texas - Rice Institute of Technology of Houston - the University of Nevada - and the University of Calif .
Third: one-sixteenth to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - David O. McKay - Pre.
Forth [sic]: one-sixteenth to establish a home for orphan cildren [sic] -
Fifth: one-sixteenth of assets to go to Boy Scouts of America .
Sixth: one-sixteenth to be devided [sic] among Jean Peters of Los Angeles and Ella Rice of Houston -
Seventh: one-sixteenth of assets to William R. Loomis [sic] of Houston, Texas -
Eighth: one-sixteenth to go to Melvin DuMar [sic] of Gabbs, Nevada -
Ninth: one-sixteenth to be devided [sic] among my personal aides at the time of my death -
Tenth: one-sixteenth to be used as school scholarship fund for entire country - the spruce goose is to be given to the City of Long Beach, Calif .
The remainder of my estate is to be devided [sic] among the key men of the company's [sic] I own at the time of my death.
I appoint Noah Dietrich as the executer [sic] of this will -
Signed the 19 [sic] day of March 1968
Howard R. Hughes
Melvin Dummar, today

literature

  • Goldman, Bo: Melvin and Howard: first draft shooting screenplay. Hollywood: Script City (distributor), 1979
  • Goldman, Bo: Melvin and Howard. Hollywood: Script City, 1987
  • Magnesen, Garry: The investigation: a former FBI agent uncovers the truth behind Howard Hughes, Melvin Dummar and the most contested will in American history. Barricade Books, Fort Lee / NJ 2005, ISBN 1569802947

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz : Lexicon "Films on TV" (expanded new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , pp. 561-562.