The Magnificent Yankee (1950)
Oliver Wendell Holmes was old when he was appointed to the Supreme Court; thirty years later, he was still old.
(For a quick primer on what this blog is, click here. Short answer: I’m chronologically watching every movie that received a nomination for Best Actor, starting in 1950, and writing a trivia-based recap about it.)
The Magnificent Yankee is about Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., starting with his confirmation to the Court in 1902 and ending soon after his retirement three decades later. Holmes is a fascinating jurist and this movie could have hit on many trivia-worthy topics, such as his opinions on trust-busting and freedom of speech. Instead, the movie focuses primarily on themes of family and aging. Unlike a trivia question about Oliver Wendell Holmes, the question of why those themes were railroaded into a movie about a Supreme Court justice is one I just won’t be able to answer.
Rating: 4/10, has a real “made-for-TV movie” feel to it
Cast and Crew
Holmes is played by Louis Calhern, whose name has been dropped exactly once on Jeopardy (“Louis Calhern spoke the famous line ‘Et tu Brute!’ in the 1953 film version of this tragedy”). Still, his career spans 35 years of Hollywood, so let’s take a peek at some of his career highlights.
He was in the Marx Brothers’1 screwball comedy Duck Soup2 (1933), about the fictional country of Freedonia. It’s the last movie for Zeppo Marx, who afterwards went on to be an agent. Margaret Dumont, considered the “fifth Marx brother” and their “straight [wo]man,” co-stars.
Calhern was in the 1938 Best Picture winner The Life of Emile Zola, which explores Zola’s friendship with Paul Cezanne and his involvement in the Dreyfus affair.
In 1950, along with playing Holmes, he played Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun and a sugar daddy to Marilyn Monroe in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. Big year for Calhern!
His final film appearance was 1956’s High Society, a musical remake of the 1940 film The Philadelphia Story that swapped in Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra for the original’s Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, and Cary Grant.
We won’t see Calhern again in this column as a lead actor, though he’ll show up in a future film as a titular character who bites it about halfway through. (Spoiler: it’s the movie in which he says “Et tu, Brute.”)
John Sturges, director of The Magnificent Yankee, has never been asked about or mentioned on Jeopardy and only gets a passing mention in my copy of “Movie History: A Survey.” That’s despite directing two movies that remain in the cultural conversation: The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). He also did Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), for which he was nominated for Best Director and which will be discussed in this blog soon. He’s not even the most trivia-connected director named Sturges, as Preston Sturges (no relation) shows up in these Jeopardy questions (answers in the footnote below):
Director Preston Sturges' mother gave her the fatal scarf that broke her neck
In this 1941 Preston Sturges film, a director sets out to research poverty with only a dime in his pocket
Combining a holiday & a month, it's the title of a Preston Sturges film3
Look, I thought the cramped direction of The Magnificent Yankee did the movie no favors, but check out this scene from The Magnificent Seven and, well, you figure this Sturges can do a little directin’. Even if we mostly talk about trivia here, you’ll be best served to remember that the world is always wider and deeper than we pretend when declaring what it is that you [finger quotes] “need to know.”
The trivia
The characters in this movie are historical figures and many of them are ensconced in the trivia canon. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is remembered as “the Great Dissenter” who gave the “clear and present danger” restraint on free speech. He was a Brevet4 Colonel in the Civil War and was the oldest to ever serve on the Court (he retired at 90). One of his clerks was Alger Hiss, who was later accused of spying for the USSR and was convicted of perjury in the case that helped launch Richard Nixon’s career.
Holmes’ father, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., is not in the movie but is often mentioned in trivia as the Boston poet who wrote “Old Ironsides” and “The Chambered Nautilus.” “Old Ironsides,” about the USS Constitution, helped the frigate avoid being decommissioned.5 Daddy Holmes also founded and named the Atlantic Monthly.
Louis Brandeis, who served on the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939 and was played in the movie by Eduard Franz, is another important jurist. He’s often clued as the first Jewish Supreme Court justice,6 the namesake of a private university in Massachusetts, and as the author of “Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.” That book, which looks great, has the famous quote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." Brandeis also made it to the Final Four in SCOTUSblog’s SCOTUSbracketology, taking out Holmes along the way before falling to 3-seed Earl Warren.
Owen Wister, who narrates The Magnificent Yankee for reasons never made clear, is the author of the 1902 novel “The Virginian", which is considered the first true fictional [sic] western and which paved the way for Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. It’s set in Wyoming and has the line, “when you call me that, smile.” Philip Ober, who plays Wister in the film, was married to Vivien Vance, the longtime comedic foil of Lucille Ball and portrayer of Ethel on I Love Lucy.
Henry Adams, great-grandson of John Quincy Adams, is also a character in the movie, spending thirty years complaining that the country is going to the dogs. His posthumously published autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams,” was named the best English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century by Modern Library. Not sure that choice holds up.
Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo, natch.
“Duck soup” is apparently a phrase meaning “something easy to do.” Since learning that, I’ve tried to work it into casual conversation. Results have been mixed.
The woman who died by scarf is dancer Isadora Duncan, the movie about a filmmaker investigating poverty is Sullivan's Travels, and the month-and-holiday flick is Christmas in July.
Brevet colonel, if you’re curious, means that he was given the title “colonel” for gallantry but that he didn’t have the pay or responsibility that come with that rank. Brevetting was declared obsolete in 1922.
The Constitution is now the oldest commissioned ship in the world still afloat. Note that, despite its "Ironsides” nickname, it's actually made of wood; the first actual ironclads came about in the mid-1800s, long after the 1797 launching of the Constitution.
There have been eight Jewish Supreme justices. In order of their confirmation, they are Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Felix Frankfurter, Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan. The Demographics of the U.S. Supreme Court Wikipedia page is a surprisingly fun read.