The Howards of Virginia (1940)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m not yet completely done with Cary Grant’s filmography, but in The Howards of Virginia I’m seeing a good candidate for the title of the least interesting of his starring roles. Taking us back to revolutionary days, it features a ponytailed Grant as a farmer who gets embroiled in the War of Independence, and must deal with how it affects his family. It is both weird and appropriate to see mid-Atlantic Grant so clearly embodying the American founding myth, but his witty contemporary urbane persona is clearly not a good fit for the backwoodsman/farmer/revolutionary that the role calls for. The result feels like a misuse of Grant — he’s not bad in the role, but it’s not using his gifts to their fullest extent, and the film is wasting an actor who’s not the best for his role. To be fair, this is not a terrible film — it’s earnest in the way Americans get misty-eyed in talking about 1776 (hence me seeing on a fourth of July), but narratively sound and executed with the studio’s era customary attention to sets and costumes. I can think of much worse movies, but if you’re scrutinizing The Howards of Virginia primarily as an entry in Grant filmography, it’s squarely in the lowest tier.