O Prefeito se Diverte

Over all the many times I've seen this film, it never once occurred to me that it might actually be historically accurate. Nor did it occur to me that it would matter much either way. This is the perfect glossy 1950s Hollywood 'biopic'... a totally charming film, yet with more emotional depth and dramatic substance than most that were cranked out in this politically-delicate period.

For starters, there's a totally charming performance by Bob Hope. This was the perfect part for him: the chance to seriously play a character who was never quite serious. Hope makes the good times effervescent, and the sad times not quite so sad. He makes the central love affair between a man and a city seem completely believable. (Where in real life, obviously things could never be so simple.)

But the real star of this film is the City of New York itself. Not the 'real' city... the fabulous city of myth, as only Hollywood can spin that myth. Resonant with names that are familiar even to people who've never been within thousands of miles of New York, and evocative of a history that even New Yorkers probably recall only vaguely. Just as The Untouchables etched out a stark black-and-white portrait of 1920s Gangland Chicago, Beau James paints a fond, Technicolor memory of 1920s New York.

It's true that Bob Hope's performance, while perfect for the film, was perhaps not Oscar-worthy. (The question would be moot if the Academy had the brains to give out occasional Oscars for the great art of Comedy!) But no matter... Beau James is a well-polished gem of a movie for more reasons than just Hope. Yes, it's corny, and commercial, and formulaic... but in the best way. It romanticizes something that really deserves it.

I wish I was watching it right now...

A recent biography of Hope on Channel 13 mentioned that his perennial joke at the Oscars about not getting the Oscar) was actually based on the truth. After 1944, when his close friend and partner Bing Crosby won the Oscar for GOING MY WAY, Hope was bothered by his inability to get nominated. One of his writers explained the problem: Hope could not read a straight speech in a script without fearing he was losing his audience. He had to always have a good one liner to leave 'em laughing. Unfortunately, this type of script doctoring prevented him from giving the type of performance that would have merited an Oscar.

Yet in the middle years of the 1950s Hope came close to achieving a balance of comic and dramatic possibilities. In three films (two biographies and one comedy) he played central figures with actual problems. They were THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS, THAT CERTAIN FEELING, and BEAU JAMES. All three films are his best films. THAT CERTAIN FEELING deals with a man with major psychological problems competing with a superior,successful man (George Sanders) for the woman they love (Eva Marie Saint). THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS gives a history Eddie Foy Sr.'s marriage to an Italian lady, and their children, and how (when his wife died) his sister-in-law tried to have the children taken from him. And BEAU JAMES (based on a biased, but well written biography by Gene Fowler)is about the Mayor of New York City from 1926 - 1932, James J. Walker.

Walker was a very popular mayor in the 1920s, re-elected by a majority (over Fiorello LaGuardia) of half a million votes (a considerable achievement then). But his administration was corrupt, and he was abandoning his wife for his girlfriend, Broadway actress Betty Compton. Judge Samuel Seabury tore the Walker administration apart in a series of hearings from 1930 to 1932. They culminated with Governor Franklin Roosevelt holding hearings involving Walker in Albany that showed he accepted "gifts" from people doing business in the city. Walker could not really explain away this behavior and he resigned. The handling of the scandal by Roosevelt assisted him in getting the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 1932.

Hope does very well as Walker. He does have a serious role where his flippant jokes match the character. He also shows the right degree of serious behavior, panicked when Betty is spirited away by Paul Douglas and Tammany Hall, or when he tells off the citizens of New York at Yankee Stadium for electing him. But the gaps in the script - the unwillingness to show the uglier side of the corruption - prevent one from taking it too seriously. Hope deserves recognition for his performance here, but he didn't merit (nor receive) an Oscar nomination for BEAU JAMES.

This is a celluloid version of Gene Fowler's valentine to his old chum Jimmy. It tries to make a case that Walker did not realize his taking the bribes/gifts was wrong. Walker knew it was wrong, but he never admitted it - he had been brought up in a city run by the Hall, and he was doing business there exactly as every boodling Mayor of New York had done since the 19th Century. Walker (a good Catholic, presumably) also knew that he was committing adultery when he took up with Ms Compton. Later, after he left City Hall, he divorced his wife (playedwell by a coldly calculating Alexis Smith here) and married Betty. Interestingly that marriage eventually failed, although Jimmy and Betty did adopt a girl. Compton died in 1941. Jimmy in 1947.

Historians generally rank Walker among the worst Mayors of New York, and in the major cities of the U.S., in the twentieth century. However, recent scholarship has suggested that Walker was maligned. Nobody suggests that the corruption was not there, but it was to the interest of FDR and Judge Seabury (who had unrealistic political hopes of his own) to go after the Hall and Jimmy. Interestingly enough, Walker's old adversary Fiorello LaGuardia was more forgiving and pragmatic than FDR was. Walker went to Europe for a number of years with Betty (where did he have the money for this move - the film ignores this matter). When he returned (a Federal tax investigation decided there was nothing to go after), LaGuardia appointed Walker to be labor mediator in the garment industry. He did that job well. Also, some recent scholars seem to support what Darren McGavin's character says in the film. McGavin tells Hope that although he works only four hours a day he does more work each day than the last four mayors did working full days. The reason is that he's bright. There is evidence that he was remarkably adept at thinking out quick, to the point solutions on his feet.

As a Democrat, Walker had the constant problem of working under Republican federal administrations in Washington (Presidents Coolidge and Hoover). In his first term, Cunard and other oceanic lines announced plans for building bigger and faster steamships. This meant their current piers would be too short for them. Walker contacted the Department of Commerce (under Hoover during Coolidge's administration) for permission to extend the piers into the Hudson River. The problem was that this would interfere with transportation in interstate commerce on the Hudson (longer piers mean less room for boats sailing on the river). Coolidge and Hoover said no. When told this, Walker immediately asked if there was any problem of blasting into the granite bedrock of the island of Manhattan to extend the piers into the island. His engineers said it could be done. There was no further problem about the extension of piers. If Walker could think that clearly on such a problem he probably could do his job half-well. But his moral lapses can't be easily dismissed, as this film tries to do.

Bob Hope turned in a great performance as N.Y. Mayor James Walker in this 1957 film.

While the film did not delve into the exact intricacies of the corruption of the Walker Administration, we do have Judge Seabury heading the investigation prompted by Gov. Roosevelt, who wanted that nomination in 1932 and would use Walker's alleged corruption to get it.

Remember the song- the little tin box? That best describes what was going on when Walker, a really decent not-too bright guy, let corrupt officials run the show at City Hall.

Adored by the people at first,(Will You Remember Me in December is sung with zest), he can't accept the booing he encounters at a baseball game, once the corruption details start coming out.

Adding fuel to the fire is Walker's abandonment of his wife for actress Betty Compton, played by Vera Miles. Walker eventually resigned and went with Compton to Mexico.

After seeing "Beau James" I was left wondering..."why would they want to make a movie out of THIS??". After all, Mayor Jimmy Walker was far from being honest or virtuous. And yet, oddly, the film is trying to say that he was KINDA these things.

The film is a Hollywoodization of the career of Jimmy Walker (Bob Hope) once he became mayor of New York City. Mostly, it shows him worried about his wardrobe, taking bribes and being a man adored by New Yorkers. But, the object lesson appears to be "He wasn't nearly as dishonest as he could have been!". Huh?

For me, by the time the movie ended I was left with a strange sense of confusion. Why was Walker worthy of a biopic? And, why should I care about his love life? And, was Bob Hope playing Walker...or Bob Hope?

Based on the charmingly cleaned up biography of a minor but colorful figure in New York history, sometime songwriter/Mayor James J. ("Gentleman Jimmy") Walker, this unjustly neglected Paramount film was a healthy success in its day but has not (as of this writing) been made available on DVD despite an outstanding cast and ties to truly remarkable figures in entertainment and history. One of Bob Hope's warmest, most thoughtful performances, it should be rescued from the occasional "fool screen" broadcast and made available in a good VistaVision release reflecting the original.

The no less fictionalized musical biography of Walker's successor as Mayor of New York, Fiorello H. LaGuardia (the sadly unfilmed FIORELLO), won a Pulitzer Prize and tied with THE SOUND OF MUSIC for the Tony as Best Musical of 1959, but Fowler's biography of Walker with Hope in the lead (looking nothing like Walker, but beautifully capturing Fowler's idea of Walker's character) was as good as it got for Gentleman Jimmy - the less well cast 1969 musical (JIMMY, inflicted on Broadway by movie mogul Jack L. Warner) suggested by the same book but with far less skilled hands writing (BEAU JAMES' director, Melville Shavelson was one of the writers) died a painful death in just over two months (October 23, 1969-January 3, 1970, at the Winter Garden Theatre after a tryout at Philadelphia's Forrest Theatre; a long out-of-print Broadway Cast Album of the enjoyable but uneven score on RCA LSO 1162 is all that survives.) In the movie, the glamorous Alexis Smith (Tony Award, Best Actress in a Musical for 1971's FOLLIES) furthered her reputation as Hollywood ice princess as Walker's unappreciated but sympathetic wife, Allie, and had to work hard to allow audiences to believe that Bob Hope's finely layered but (on screen anyway) naive Walker would leave *her* for Vera Miles higher billed chorus girl, Betty Compton.

The film does make New York at the end of the "Roaring Twenties" almost a co-equal character in the piece, and appearances of several real life characters from the era (Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny and others) add to the impression beautifully - as does the deft narration from Fowler's book appropriately read by Walter Winchell.

It isn't great history or even great Hollywood, but it is a very warm, enjoyable film well worth a look - and a great example of how "bad" casting (Hope's lack of *physical* resemblance to Walker) can be brilliant if it gets the *psychology* right. When they tried to musicalize the idea a decade later, the production was probably dead the moment they cast the skinny impressionist/actor Frank Gorshin (who actually did bear a passing resemblance to Walker) in the Hope role. All the qualities Gene Fowler infused in his book (to MAKE the reader and later, viewer of the movie, feel "warm and forgiving all day long") disappeared. The movie understood this - and you will.