(1958) The Last Hurrah Movie Trailer The Last Hurrah is a 1958 film adaptation of the novel The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. It was directed by John Ford and starred 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 American 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. Like the novel, the film was based in part on the career of former Boston mayor James Michael Curley. Curley opposed the film's prod! uction, but not because of the negative dramatization; rather, he believed that The Last Hurrah might prevent Hollywood from making a biographical film of his life. Cast Spencer Tracy as Mayor Frank Skeffington Jeffrey Hunter as Adam Caulfield Dianne Foster as Maeve Caulfield Pat O'Brien as John Gorman Basil Rathbone as Norman Cass, Sr. Donald Crisp as Cardinal Martin Burke James Gleason as "Cuke" Gillen Edward Brophy as "Ditto" Boland John Carradine as Amos Force Willis Bouchey as Roger Sugrue Basil
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