I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Good concept, poorly executed.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

***SPOILERS**** The world of changing politics is confronted by the four time elect mayor of an unmanned New England state, that's also unmanned, city the honorable Frank Skeffington played by a snow white as a sheet looking Spencer Tracey who's a bit to old, looking as if he's in his late 80's, for the job at hand. At first Skeffington has to deal with a very unfriendly press who supports his young ands untested opponent upright family man & war hero Kevin McCluskey, Charles Fitzsimmons, who seems to have no chance of winning. The editor of one of the state's major papers Amos Force, John Carradine, has had it in for Skeffington since his mother was caught stealing two overripe bananas and an apple from the Force household some 60 years ago when she was working for .25 an hour as a maid there. It's when Skeffington age that really starts to show, in him living in the past not the present, as at first his poll numbers start to fall and the public soon realize that his health is a major issue in the long and grueling campaign. Skeffington also oversteps his bounds by taking on the political powers of the state & city using blackmail tactics, in getting low income housing built, against the big real estate interests represented by Norman Cass Sr, Basil Rathbone,that later comes back to haunt him.***SPOILERS*** As election night shows Skeffington attempt at a fifth term as mayor goes up in flames despite the polls by then showing him well ahead in double digits. The shock of his delete leaves both Skeffington and his supports for the first time in the campaign completely speechless! Putting aside his defeat to the unknown Kevin McCluskey Steffington after getting a long rest then plans to run for governor of the state despite his friends as well as doctors pleading against it! As fate would have it Skeffington never made it out of his sick bed and peacefully, off camera, passed away before he could put his future plans into motion. It was a good try on Skeffington's part to get himself elected for an un-precedented fifth time as mayor but his gas tank as well as heart came up empty in the end. It was also the new technology, T.V in particular, that did the old guy in by him not quite knowing how to handle it correctly.P.S The movie is a lot like two years later in real life in 1960 with Richard Nixon screwing up his live on T.V debate for president with John F. Kennedy by refusing to ware make-up and not looking presidential like not getting a real close shave, looking like a bum under the T.V lights, and wearing a dull gray not colorful suite in order for him to show the T.V viewers that he's up for the job.

When I saw "political boss" described of Tracy's character in THE LAST HURRAH, I really wasn't sure where director John Ford was going with this. The two words together had me literally leaving it as my own "last hurrah" of the numerous films I've recorded and watched during Spencer Tracy's turn as October 2012's TCM Star of the Month. My queue is quite full, but proportionately I've seen few duds this last month, so I gave it a shot vs. deleting it. I'm so glad I went with my faith in Tracy's choice as an actor! He rarely went wrong. My awe of him has increased tenfold in the last 5 weeks. He was a rare great, and this rare film didn't disappoint.Also, this underrated gem is one of those movies that benefits greatly from the still intact Hays Code in the late 1950's. That opinion is due to the subtle mysteries and implied allegations mixed in with the tense relationships and amusing political tactics that keep us intrigued and entertained throughout. Too much information from either side would leave us with a completely different film as often happens in modern day films. I loved the winding way the story unfolded and left me guessing as to how it could possibly play out.As it turns out, Ford, in his unique Ford way, knew exactly what he was doing. He made a film about intriguing characters...plain and simple. This is no soap opera and there were no big Indian battles set in this quaint 1950's New England Town. However, this film had all of the entertaining qualities of Ford's character driven westerns with all of the complexities that arise off the battlefield, too. It literally was one "last hurrah" as some of the fine supporting cast retired or died within a few years. What a great way to go out on a fine film led by Spencer Tracy and directed by John Ford! I'm glad these two greats matched up, along with the stellar character actor cast, to make what was one of Tracy's greatest films of his last decade and of his career. Many think those films were made with Stanley Kramer, but I actually prefer this one to those last major statement films which Tracy made with Stanley Kramer. There's nothing like infusing interesting characters with high drama and light comedy. Not to diminish the importance of the Kramer films. It's just what I prefer as a viewer. Make time to see this film if you have a fondness for any of the cast and crew or want to see a great political drama. It will be 2 hours you'll be glad you invested.

Spencer Tracy is of course superb but that is not what this review is about. Unfortunately, the truth is only hinted at in this movie but it nevertheless shows some of the impossible struggle that goodness has to fight in a capitalist system and probably any other power-system. In comparison, the Swiss system of Direct Democracy is far less manageable by power and far more penetrable for goodness.Capitalism and goodness are simply each others opposites and the result is always a compromise in which goodness always looses the more capitalism is allowed to win. The evil rich man's heaven and the good rich man's way to poverty, that's capitalism. You could also say that it is theft that is coming and theft that is going and theft that stays the same in the hands of Rothschild's, Rockefeller's and the like.This film is about that impossible balance in trying to create something good in what is bad. The film offers no solution to that problem and that is its strength, since there is no solution and only an endless struggle as long as capitalism or any other power-system is allowed to exist.

Why is this film not great? All the elements for a masterpiece are in place: the stock company, Frank Nugent manning the screenplay, the Irish milieu and the most Fordian line ever - "there's only one way to describe the candidate, and that is that he was victorious in defeat". So Wha'happen? This is a mediocre film that should nonetheless be analyzed shot by shot. The last hurrah is Ford's, not Skeffington's and I wish I was enough of a theorist to go into every detail of how that becomes obvious over the course of the film. I once heard that the film critic Serge Daney said something to the effect that every film is a documentary of its own creation, and that is so true here. The sight of John Carradine alone evokes a whole world and life: the seven films of Ford's he participated in in the thirties; the fact that he hadn't been seen in one in almost 20 years. His scenes are a meditation on the ineffable quality known as "stardom": for all his sepulchral presence, he can't hold a screen the way Spencer Tracy can, and their moments together are a battle between the magnificent character actor who has never and will never rise above that status (except when he's with Edgar G. Ulmer, naturally) and the star. Ford understands all of this - all of this and more. What is being mourned - and, make no mistake, it's being mourned way before Skeffington's actual death - in this film? Is it the death of a man or of a way of life? The way Skeffington ritually changes the flowers under his dead wife's portrait daily tells us that these people are already in mourning for themselves. The wake scene for the nondescript ne'er - do - well seems disproportionally long, but as the film progresses, you understand that it functions as a foreshadowing of the film's central ritual. All this is great. But making all the sons into buffoons is a cheap, knee-jerk statement on the generation which is replacing these dinosaurs, and it is impossible to get a sense of how McCluskey's manipulation of the media (this, of course, represents "the modern world") leads to his victory, given the fact that the one time we see him on TV he seems like a totally unlovable clown. Was Ford going for Nixon's Checkers speech here? Nixon's nervousness and uncomfortableness read to many as a form of "truth", and his "we're not giving up that dog no matter what anyone says" read as a particularly bumbling form of honesty. Ford should have at least shown us that. This way, the deck is so stacked that it's impossible to care. Andrew Sarris was right: Sturges (director of The Great McGinty) shoulda taken this one.