1980’s Melvin and Howard is based on a true story. There are a couple of things I need to make clear from the beginning. First, there needs to be some clarification that it is based on a true story and not based on hard facts. Second, I am going to delve a bit into the ambiguous nature of that story, and include some backstory concerning it which is not addressed in the film.
In 1967, Melvin E. Dummar aspired for little more than to be milkman of the month at the diary near the little Nevada town where he lives. In one wide shot, we get to see what appears to be the entire town, and it looks like a good wind could send it rolling away like a tumbleweed.
One night, he stops at the side of the road to take a leak when he sees an old man unconscious nearby. Dummar rouses the man and gets him into his pickup truck. The elderly man looks like nothing but a drifter, and an especially hard-living one at that. And yet he claims he is Howard Hughes, as played by Jason Robards.
Dummar doesn’t believe it, yet he humors the man’s numerous bizarre demands. The self-proclaimed Hughes refuses to be taken to a hospital. In fact, he demands Dummar drive non-stop to Vegas.
I thought this road trip was going to be the entire picture, or at least the bulk of it. We actually see very little of the journey, though I was very amused by what we do see. My favorite bit is where Dummar nags Robards until he sings along with him. It’s a Christmas song Dummar has written, and it is no surprise how bad it is. The side-eye Robards gives him speaks volumes. Still, he joins in eventually.
Arriving in Vegas, Robards has him stop the truck at a seemingly arbitrary spot behind a building. For somebody claiming to be one of the wealthiest men in the world at that time, it takes some chutzpah for “Hughes” to ask Dummar for money. Dummar gives him less than a dollar in change—all the money he has on him. When the truck pulls away, Robards mischievously hurls away the coins.
This is the last we will hear of that bizarre encounter until shortly before the end of the picture, when a man stops by the gas station Dummar now owns, and leaves behind an envelope containing what professes to be the will of Howard Hughes. According to the document, the recently deceased man left 1/16th of his estate to Dummar.
Hughes was notoriously eccentric; however, even by his standards, this development seems suspicious. Even more bizarre, the document was discovered in the inner-office mail of the headquarters of The Church of the Latter Day Saints. Needless to say, the will ends up contested in one court after another. In the end, Dummar won’t receive a penny from the Hughes estate.
While it may appear I have given away the ending of the picture, the real-life aspects that frame the bulk of the movie are really just window dressing. The meat of the film is the small lives of the ordinary people we see in odd, almost inconsequential moments as captured by director Jonathan Demme. It may seem odd the director of Silence of the Lambs would direct an entirely character-driven piece like this, but it is keeping with early films of his like Something Wild.
Paul Le Mat plays Dummar and Mary Steenberger his first wife. Both are fantastic even if they, like everybody else here, is a caricature. But it is obvious Demme cares for these people and so we do, too. There is a natural rapport between everybody in this movie. Even if the characters are exaggerated, these feel like real people somehow.
So, while it may look like I gave away the most important parts of Melvin and Howard, I haven’t spoiled anything about the best things here—a million small moments that make watching this a wonderful experience.
Dir: Jonathan Demme
Starring Paul Le Mat, Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards
Watched on Twilight Time blu-ray