Watch The Howards of Virginia For Free

Simply Perfect

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Pedestrian Revolutionary War drama with a miscast Cary Grant as a young Virginian stirred to rebellion while falling in love with Loyalist Martha Scott. There's some interesting stuff here, as others have noted. The movie is a little more nuanced about the war and the relationship between the Americans and the Brits than the average movie of its type back then. This was probably influenced by the current world events of the time this was made, when Americans were being sold on solidarity with our British cousins. The location shooting at Colonial Williamsburg is certainly a plus. However the movie drags on way too long for such a straightforward plot. Also Grant's role doesn't really play to his strengths. The rest of the cast is decent, with Richard Carlson playing a likable Thomas Jefferson and Cedric Hardwicke being Cedric Hardwicke, which is always great to watch. A young Peter Cushing has an uncredited bit role as well. It's not a bad movie, just a little dull and overlong. Obviously Cary Grant completists will need to see it and maybe Revolutionary War buffs might like it, too.

Observations: Cary was a former English music hall entertainer. He sang and danced as part of the Pink Pierrots (French clowns) in the Katharine Hepburn movie Sylvia Scarlett (1935) (see my review about that movie).Cary hums some music in the bathtub, in The Howards of Virginia. I enjoyed that. Recorded it on DVR; will watch it again. Regarding Cary jumping all over the place, get over it. He was famous, and you were not. He was a fun dancer. Maybe he just wanted to get a little fun out of this sometimes very serious story.This movie was five years after Sylvia Scarlett. It was 1940, the year of Cary's The Philadelphia Story (again with Katharine Hepburn). If you want to see dapper Cary, see Philadelphia Story.Cary was absolutely dapper in The Howards of Virginia. When Tom Jefferson cleaned him up and put him into a proper Virginia planter's suit of clothing, Cary looked absolutely fabulous. You people my age may have thought grown-up Tom was familiar: Richard Carlson was on TV in the 1950s in the program I Led Three Lives.Previous to The Howards of Virginia, Cary Grant had made some movies with that fabulous Mae West. In the pre-code 1933 She Done Him Wrong, Cary plays a seemingly innocent leader of a neighborhood mission (ala Salvation Army). He seems so naïve to Mae West. She keeps inviting him to "visit her", and he says he is so busy. She says, "I'll tell you your fortune." Mae West said she discovered Cary Grant.Cary made a good frontiersman. He actually looked good in those buckskins. An actor has to do what the director directs. Cary even had the greasy unkempt hair to go along with the rural duds. To act against Cary's publicly-perceived suave persona in other films, this is what an actor has to do. He/she has to play against type, if the role calls for it. It rounds out an actor's portfolio.If you want to see Cary Grant in another unusual costume, see Bringing Up Baby (1938), again with, who else? Katharine Hepburn. Cary wears a negligee.10/10

CARY GRANT insisted that he would never do another costume film after THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA and it's easy to see why after viewing the film tonight on TCM. Except for a couple of well played scenes with his sons (TOM DRAKE and PHIL TAYLOR), Grant's performance is way too broad to be acceptable as part of a serious historical epic.Director Frank Lloyd never once tones down Grant's performance and lets the hyperactive Grant overact at any given moment in a role he clearly doesn't know how to play. At least we do get more restrained work from MARTHA SCOTT as Grant's aristocratic wife and SIR CEDRIC HARDWICKE as her snobbish brother who sides with the British during the Revolutionary War period.Obviously a lot of expense went into creating the right atmosphere for this story of the turmoil surrounding America's independence among the colonies, and there are times when you wish even more had been spent to produce the film in the gorgeous Technicolor of that era. But the script is a weak one, never able to maintain the sort of interest it should have had over a running time of two hours.The banal dialog that closes the film is about as jingoistic as you can get and enough to make anyone wince. The story was probably chosen because the producers hoped to make another DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK or GONE WITH THE WIND--but they failed utterly to do so.Summing up: Sad to see Grant so badly miscast and not given proper direction.

Simpler than it first appears. This movie tries to be an epic about a frontier man transformed into a civic and military leader - but it doesn't try that hard. Cary Grant doesn't look like he knows quite how to play this guy, and I don't blame him. The material isn't wonderful, although it's a nice story. The wrong elements of the plot are emphasized, and the character of Matthew Howard is less a complicated man than a simple cypher.It's not a bad movie by any means, but it looks like it's trying desperately to copy "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Gone with the Wind" at the same time. It just doesn't have the legs for either one. I give this movie a 6 for Cary's personal magnetism, even in a stifling role like this one.