Woody Allen's Harvey Wallinger

Woody Allen’s politics have always been quietly on the left -- for education, intelligence, humanity, social responsibility, culture, and against corporatism, philistinism and callousness. It’s typically implicit in Gil’s (Owen Wilson) tensions with his fiancee’s Republican parents in Midnight in Paris. Most recently, the primary target in Blue Jasmine is the unbridled selfishness of corporate America and its impunity even after the recent economic collapse. (See my blog on the film.) As enough Democrats have been complicit in failing to correct the unbalanced system, Allen is not practicing party politics here but reaffirming traditional humanist values. Even in Midnight in Paris Gil is not above trying to buy some bargain Matisses to bring back to the 21st Century market. In Canada Allen would be called a small-l liberal, a designation too dangerous to inflict on him down south. 

Allen did make one full-blown political satire, that was unfortunately shelved when he refused the commissioning PBS’s demand he remove a couple of jokes. That was “The Harvey Wallinger Story,” made in 1972 for the putative series, Men of Crisis. Allen played Wallinger as a miniature parody of Henry Kissinger.

Viewed today (at the marvelous Paley Centre for Media in NYC) the film seems a time capsule both of the social issues of that day and of Allen’s comic strategies. Even there he prefers a non-partisan stance that will satirize the pretenses and foibles of the opposition Democrats as well as the governing Republicans. As Allen injects himself -- and the lookalike credited as Richard M. Dixon -- into the period footage the film anticipates the more complex The Purple Rose of Cairo and especially Zelig.

Allen frequently plays the image against the voiceover narrative. A shot of Hubert Humphrey stumbling undercuts his description as “a man of grace and balance.” Spiro Agnew, “a great physical specimen,” flubs a tennis shot. Art Linkletter and Bob Hope exemplify the intellectuals supporting re-election candidate Richard Nixon. As Nixon makes the White House “a cultural mecca” we see a pathetic Jewish comedian making mouth noises. Inevitably, Nixon’s “gracious departure from politics” is his “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more” speech. Allen’s wider target here is the unrealistic hype and posing that attends political candidacy.  

The satire strikes presciently at some important issues. Attorney General John Mitchell is hampered only by the constitution. Nixon’s “very strategic reason” for bombing Laos was that he wasn’t happy with how it’s spelled. Nixon and Agnew are intellectuals: they can read and know almost all the numbers in sequence. So, too, “I think it’s important to put the criminal into jail before he commits the crime.” Harvey uses his power to have an ex-girlfriend (Louise Lasser) drafted and sent to Korea. 

Some comedy strikes beyond politics. In an intuitive sense of the conflicted FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover places himself on the Most Wanted list. Harvey was named after a rabbi busted for passing counterfeit matzoh. 

In the exercise of his familiar schnook persona, Allen’s Wallinger is a mock heroic version of Kissinger. He can’t understand the oath of allegiance and at the ceremony complains that his suit itches. “I have the job, right?” He graduated 96th in the Harvard law class of 95. As a supporter of the Red-scared Senator Joe McCarthy Wallinger belligerently interrogates a man who attended Boy Scouts but wasn’t a member. This incompetence suggests that Kissinger owed his position and power to some kind of special control over his friend Nixon. Louise Lasser recalls Wallinger would make Nixon laugh by tickling him. When they double dated Harvey would dance with Nixon.  

In his version of Kissinger’s “equally flamboyant private life” Wallinger distractedly follows a passing woman up the street, like a civilized Harpo. Lasser recalls her “bad first experience” with him, but a nun remembers him as “really sexy... a real freak.” Diane Keaton plays Harvey’s first wife, a cross-eyed Vassar blacksmith major, who says Harvey had to keep his legs crossed during sex. She could not persuade Nixon to shave before the Kennedy debate. She countenanced Harvey’s infidelities but left him when he had sex with a “dirty” Democrat. In a familiar Early Allen joke, “I don’t like un-American sex.” One needs to feel shame and guilt.

The film would have been a smasher at the time. Pulled from the vault it remains a very funny, spirited piece,  anticipating the mock documentary of current TV.  With the delights of all his early work, it also reminds us how far this brilliant auteur has come.