Supporting Actor Saturday: Jason Robards ('80)

Jason Robards as Howard Hughes in Melvin and Howard (1980)

Approximate time on screen: 12 minutes, 13% of runtime

It’s rare that a movie has the guts to be about a unique public personality like Howard Hughes, while delegating him to what basically amounts to a single ten-minute scene. To be able to do this successfully, the bulk of your movie has to be about something that is either just as interesting or at least believes it is. Jonathan Demme’s delightful and underrated comedy primarily concerns a man named Melvin Dummar (played by Paul le Mat), a very ordinary, kind of simple-minded guy who is just trying to live a normal life. The film follows a few years of his existence as he juggles jobs and relationships, particularly that of his wife Lynda (played to delirious perfection by Mary Steenburgen, who won an Academy Award), who he divorces, re-marries and divorces again.

In real life, an alleged will of Howard Hughes discovered at a Mormon church named Melvin as a recipient of a small fortune. The courts dismissed the will and Melvin’s claims that he met Hughes one night in the middle of the Nevada desert, gave him a ride in his truck, shared some songs, gave him some spare change and left him in Vegas. Though the world may not have believed the guy, this movie has no doubts, which is best evidenced in the casting of Jason Robards as Howard Hughes. Robards, though he’s far from a household name, was one of the great character actors of the stage and screen. One of his best gifts was making the most of very limited screentime, as seen in his three Oscar-nominated performances, including this one.

Melvin and Howard is not very interested in giving too much depth or study into the character of Hughes and it doesn’t need to, since Robards gives the man more depth than his cameo even arguably needed. His performance is somewhere between the two stereotypes other actors might have provided: a crotchety old geezer and an eccentric weirdo. When we first see him, he is riding his motorcycle in the desert, laughing his head off. When his only significant scene ends fifteen minutes later, he is bemused and thoughtful. Just by looking at his face, without the need for words or explanation, we sense the need for a will change right then and there.

What’s most interesting about Robards’ performance is how quickly it seems to come and go, and how long the movie lasts before even mentioning the character again for its big courtroom climax. Robards so convinces us of the reality of the Melvin-Hughes encounter that we, like Melvin, do not react as though it were anything extraordinary. Then, when the problems begin arising in the ending, we remember Robards’ thoughtful, grateful face and have no doubt in the truthfulness of our hero.

I am a big fan of Jason Robards in his movie roles, of which Howard Hughes is one of his finest. His good-hearted, whimsical, zany depiction of a haunted human being is the perfect set-up to a good-hearted, whimsical, zany movie that is haunted by Robards’ absence. Without him, the movie might not have so easily convinced us of its truthfulness, making his performance the film’s most essential asset. It’s one heck of a cameo.

Did Jason Robards win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor of 1980? No. Timothy Hutton did for Ordinary People.

Did he deserve to lose? Yes.