The Last Hurrah (1958 film)

The Last Hurrah
U.S. movie poster
Directed byJohn Ford
Written byFrank S. Nugent
Based onThe Last Hurrah
by Edwin O'Connor
Produced byJohn Ford
StarringSpencer Tracy
Jeffrey Hunter
Dianne Foster
Pat O'Brien
Basil Rathbone
CinematographyCharles Lawton Jr.
Edited byJack Murray
Color processBlack and white
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • November 1958 (1958-11)[1]
Running time
121 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2.3 million[2]
Box office$1.1 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)[3]

The Last Hurrah is a 1958 American political satire film adaptation of the 1956 novel The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. It was directed by John Ford and stars Spencer Tracy as a veteran mayor preparing for yet another election campaign. Tracy was nominated as Best Foreign Actor by BAFTA and won the Best Actor Award from the National Board of Review, the latter which also presented Ford their award for Best Director.

The film tells the story of Frank Skeffington, a sentimental but iron-fisted Irish-American who is the powerful mayor of an unnamed New England city. As his nephew, Adam Caulfield, follows one last no-holds-barred mayoral campaign, Skeffington and his top strategist, John Gorman, use whatever means necessary to defeat a candidate backed by civic leaders such as banker Norman Cass and newspaper editor Amos Force, the mayor's dedicated foes.

  1. ^ "The Last Hurrah - Details". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
  2. ^ James Curtis, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Alfred Knopf, 2011 p741-752
  3. ^ "1959: Probable Domestic Take", Variety, 6 January 1960 p 34