Well, of course, it's a play, a damn funny one, written by Mary Chase. It opened for the first time in New York City on November 1, 1944, and it won a Pulitzer Prize.
It was also a movie, released in 1950 and directed by Henry Koster. The screenplay was written by Oscar Brodney and the original playwright, Mary Chase. It starred James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, Josephine Hull as Veta Louise Simmons, Peggy Dow as Miss Kelly, Charles Drake as Dr. Lyman Sanderson, Cecil Kellaway as Dr. Willie Chumley, Victoria Horne as Myrtle Mae Simmons, Jesse White as Marvin Wilson, William H. Lynn as Judge Omar Gaffney, Wallace Ford as P.J. Lofgren... and Harvey as himself.
Elwood P. Dowd is a drunkard who claims that he is best friends with a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit named Harvey. Of course, no one else believes in the existence of six-foot-tall invisible rabbits, and Dowd spends a bit of time at a sanitarium. He doesn't seem to mind much, as he is very easy to get along with and doesn't think being crazy is such a bad deal. And the longer Dowd is around, the less other people seem to care whether or not they're crazy, too...
Hull, Horne, and White all re-created their original roles in the Broadway play for this film, and Hull won an Oscar for it. You should watch it if you haven't seen it yet--good god, man, do you think that all head-trippin' cinema requires black leather, poor acting, and wire fu?
Research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) |
