The Last Hurrah (1958)

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BACKGROUND

After years of very little contact between the two, Katherine Hepburn pleaded with Ford to give Spencer Tracy the leading role in The Last Hurrah which he reluctantly agreed to do. Having had the honor of being one of the great loves of Ford’s life thirty years prior, Hepburn was one of the few people who had the right to ask for such a monumental favor. It did not matter that she was romantically entangled with the married Tracy, whom Ford had discovered 28 years prior when they made Up The River and whose career was faltering due to his raging alcoholism and poor health. 

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Although in many ways it is an ideal role for Tracy, his fatigue and shortness of breath are evident and the tensions with Ford seems to have kept them from working together as well as they might have if the circumstances had been different. It is unquestionably interesting to experience Ford taking an approach that was new for him with a film that might be described as the opposite of a Western — The Last Hurrah is instead an Eastern. The film might be considered the first installment in what can be seen as Ford’s long goodbye. It is perhaps a bitter irony that the man who took his place at the center of Hepburn’s life would play his onscreen surrogate. 

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PLOT SUMMARY

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Mayor Frank Skeffington is an old-time Irish-American political boss running for re-election for the last time.

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