Harry and Tonto

Harry and Tonto is a 1974 road movie written by Paul Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld and directed by Mazursky. It features Art Carney as Harry in an Oscar-winning performance. Tonto is his pet cat. Plot Harry Coombes (Art Carney) is an elderly widower and retired teacher who is evicted from his Upper West Side apartment in New York City because his building is going to be razed to build a parking lot. He initially stays with his eldest son Burt's family in the suburbs, but eventually chooses to travel cross-country with his pet cat Tonto. Initially planning to fly to Chicago, Harry has a problem with airport security checking his cat carrier. He instead boards a long-distance bus. He gets off in the countryside, annoying the driver, so Tonto can urinate, and is left there. He buys a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air from a used car salesman, although his driver's license is expired. During his episodic journey, he befriends a Bible-quoting hitchhiker (Michael Butler) and underage runaway Ginger (Melanie Mayron), with whom he visits an old sweetheart (Geraldine Fitzgerald) in a retirement home; she only half-remembers him. He visits his daughter (Ellen Burstyn), a bookstore owner in Chicago, with whom he shares a prickly but mutually admiring relationship. Harry's shy grandson (who was supposed to take him back to New York) and Ginger end up going off to a commune in Colorado together in Harry's car, with his blessing, so he and Tonto are on their own again. Continuing west, Harry accepts a ride with a health-food salesman (Arthur Hunnicutt), makes the acquaintance of an attractive hooker (Barbara Rhoades) on his way to Las Vegas, and spends a night in jail with a friendly Native American (Chief Dan George). He eventually arrives in Los Angeles, where he stays with his youngest son Eddie (Larry Hagman), a financially strapped real-estate salesman, before finding a place of his own with Tonto.