The Last Hurrah

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, which also presented Ford the 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. Plot The titles roll as an election campaign for a Frank Skeffington unfolds. In "a New England city", Skeffington, a former governor, is running for a fifth term as mayor. He rose from poverty in an Irish ghetto and is skilled at using the power of his office and an enormous political machine of ward heelers to receive support from his Irish Catholic base and other demographics. Rumors of graft and abuse of power are widespread, however, and the Protestant bishop Gardner, newspaper publisher Amos Force, banker Norman Cass, and other members of the city's traditional elite whom the Irish Catholics replaced oppose Skeffington; so do the Catholic cardinal Martin Burke, Skeffington's childhood friend, and other Catholics. Skeffington's opponents support the candidacy of Kevin McCluskey, a young Catholic lawyer and war veteran with no political experience.