"Melvin and Howard"

Melvin and Howard (1980) - In April of 1976, I was working for Hughes Aircraft when we received word that Howard Hughes was dead. There was a tribute over the loudspeaker. Those who had worked there during the days that Howard himself showed up at the factory started remembering, and told some fascinating stories. Howard would show up in jeans and a dirty shirt with an entourage of three piece suits behind him. They would talk to the "clip board people" also known as middle managers, while Howard would talk to the rank and file workers. Evidently, Howard would listen attentively to the workers, and was known to have replaced managers that he got complaints about.

During one such visit, he bummed a dime from someone I knew for a cup of coffee (Hughes never carried money with him), then talked him out of one of his two meat loaf sandwiches, sat down next to him, and they had lunch together. Several weeks later, he received a handwritten thank you letter from Hughes with a dime taped to it. He didn't think to save it. Hughes parlayed a small company left to him by his father called Hughes Tool Company into his enormous wealth and empire with the help of a group of talented and loyal people. He promised them a job for life, and these people were known as untouchables.

There was still one of them at the facility I worked for, who chose to work second shift, and had offices in a double wide inside the facility. To avoid his salary depleting anyone's budget, they would transfer administrative responsibility for him from department to department. An eager young manager in one such department looked at his staff, decided this man was not producing anything for him, and handed him a layoff notice on Friday. When the manager got home, his wife was in the driveway waving madly. It seems the president of Summa Corporation, the non-profit that managed Hughes Aircraft and Hughes Tool, was holding to speak with him. The message was simple. "I want to acquaint you with a fact of life at Hughes Aircraft. If we suffer massive setbacks, and there are two people left in Space Systems, you and this gentleman, kindly lay yourself off."

One night at the Culver City facility, a man in paint splattered trousers and a sweat shirt and sneakers tried to walk into the facility, and wouldn't stop to show a badge until the security guard pointed a gun at him. The guard called his sergeant, saying that some jerk claiming to be Howard Hughes had tried to break into the plant with no ID, and he was holding him at gunpoint. The sergeant asked him how the man was dressed. When he heard the answer, knowing that Hughes often came to the facility and raced cars on his private airstrip, then toured the plant, and always dressed that way, he rushed over to rescue Hughes from the young guard.

Shortly after Hughes death, a so called "Morman will" surfaced, awarding much of his fortune to 16 people, including a simple milk man named Melvin Dummar. Melvin told a story that he picked up a ragged old man nearly unconscious near the side of the road, drove him to Vegas, and loaned him a quarter. The man claimed to be Howard Hughes. This film is Melvin's story, or at least his side of it, and starts with the road incident. Melvin was working a factory job at the time, and lived in a trailer with his wife, played brilliantly by Mary Steenburgen, and his daughter. The next morning, his motorcycle is repossessed, and his wife leaves him. The nudity, breasts and buns, come from Steenburgen, when he serves her divorce papers at a strip club, where we also see some anonymous strippers. When she finds herself very pregnant, they remarry. She wins big in a TV game show, and they buy a house, possibly finally getting their piece of the American dream, but he brings home a Cadillac convertible and boat, and Steenburgen leaves for good.

He marries a Morman woman who works in the milk plant where he is now working, and they move to Utah to run a filling station/tire store. This is where he received the Morman will. This will, of course, was a serious setback for Summa Corporation, and had direct bearing on important defense plants. You conspiracy theory fans make of that what you will. The will was thrown out of Clark County Superior Court in June 1978. No court recognized will was ever found.

This Jonathan Demme film was highly acclaimed, and elevated the factual story of the Morman will to something more, by showing people who live on the cusp of the American dream, never quite reaching it. Steenburgen received an Oscar for this performance as supporting actress, and the film also won Best Writing. Jason Robards, who played Hughes, was nominated. Steenburgen received a host of other awards for her performance. The real Melvin Dummar played a small role in the film. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the critics were 100% positive. I found it a little slow, but then I knew the story well before I ever saw the film, and, other than the Hughes incident, Melvin lived a rather depressing and ordinary life. IMDB readers have this at 7.1 of 10. I have no opinion as to weather or not the Morman will was genuine, but, as you can see from the anecdotes at the beginning of this review, it was rather "Hughes-like." This film is clearly a B-, elevating what is essentially a biopic about a boring person into something more.

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