Melvin and Howard (1980) on Netflix
Melvin Dummar drives a dairy truck and trusts to luck. On a Nevada highway he finds a disheveled stranger, Howard Hughes, who asks for a ride to Las Vegas.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb6.8/105,821 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Howard Hughes crashes his motorcycle in the Nevada desert and is left lying at the side of U.S. Highway 95. Melvin Dummar, a dairy truck driver with a spendthrift, trust-in-luck nature, stops his pickup there to relieve himself and finds the disheveled man. The stranger refuses a hospital and asks instead for a ride to Las Vegas, Nevada. On the road the two fall into stilted conversation, and Melvin coaxes his passenger into a Christmas song of his own writing; the man answers with his favorite, Bye Bye Blackbird. Melvin drops him at the Desert Inn. At home, his wife, Lynda, is tired of his futile efforts to get ahead.
Cast
- Melvin E. Dummaras Bus Depot Counterman
- Lesley Margret Burtonas Go-Go Dancer
- Wendy Lee Couchas Go-Go Dancer
- Marguerite Baierskias Go-Go Dancer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Melvin and Howard (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mary Steenburgen was worried about having to appear completely naked: her strip-joint scene called for her to rip off what she was wearing, throw it in the air and walk out naked, and the night before she thought there would be only a skeleton crew on set.
- Bo Goldman's screenplay was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of a $156 million will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes and discovered at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquarters in Salt Lake City.
- Monty Hall was going to play himself in the film, but a week before he was to shoot he read the script and dropped out, and the script had to be rewritten so his character became a fictional one.
- Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton were in talks to star in the film, but they dropped out of the project.
- Dennis Bingham's book Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre cites Melvin and Howard as the first film in the subgenre "biopic of someone undeserving," later popularized by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski with Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Auto Focus.
