The Manchurian Hydrangea

The war in Korea was over. Captain—now Major—Bennett Marco had been reassigned to Army intelligence in Washington. It was, by and large, a pleasant assignment except for one thing. Night after night, the major was plagued by the same reoccurring nightmare.

(From the movie The Manchurian Candidate)

In Captain Marco's "nightmare", he and his men (including "Manchurian Candidate" Raymond Shaw) believe they are at the Spring Lake Hotel in New Jersey, listening to a Mrs. Henry Whittaker speak to a garden club on the topic "Fun With Hydrangeas". But they're not. They're on stage in an amphitheater in Manchuria, subjects of a brainwashing demonstration being conducted by their North Korean, Red Chinese and Soviet Communist captors.

I'm a big fan of this movie, and a big fan of hydrangeas, so I was tickled to see that director John Frankenheimer's DVD commentary included this bit about the hydrangea speech:

Oh, incidentally, this whole business of hydrangeas...I said to George Axelrod [who wrote the movie's screenplay], I said, Now look, George, I said, We have to have a whole speech here that's going to enable me to get this camera to go 360 degrees around this room. And...I need a lot of words. And he said, Well what do you want the speech to be about? [I said] Well, she should be talking about hydrangeas, so obviously the speech has to be about hydrangeas. He said, Dear boy, I know nothing about hydrangeas. However, you shall have your speech. And so what he did was, he got a seed catalog, and he copied the seed catalog almost word for word, and that's what we have here.

"Mrs. Henry Whittaker's" speech:

Another modern discovery, which we owe to the hydrangea, concerns the influence of air drainage upon plant climate. Many years ago, when I was traveling about the country, I noticed magnificent hydrangeas on the hills, where the air drainage was, er, perfect, and very poor specimens, or perhaps none at all in the valleys. Formerly, we used to consider sheltered valleys more favorable to plants than hilltops, but the avoidance of late spring and early autumn frosts enjoyed by sites with good air drainage, where the cold air can drain safely away to lower levels, gives the hills a decided advantage. Thus it was the hydrangeas that gave the first pointer in another modern discovery of horticultural importance. From this, it might appear that the hydrangea is a fairly simple plant, but there are more complications. The cultivation of hydrangeas was evolved from a number of varieties originally found in Japan, not all of which of course have the same characteristics. Two of them do not share the qualities of producing blue flowers in mineral-rich soils.

I've seen this movie over and over again without tiring of it. I used to think of it as being bleak, violent and creepy, but then realized that that wasn't how I was experiencing it. Bleak, violent and creepy things happen in it, but it's odd and funny, in nearly every scene. ("Oh, Raymond...What is the matter with you? You look as though your head were going to come to a point in the next thirteen seconds.") I think you miss the point if you take it at face value. It's not a "political thriller". It's not even the saddest story I ever heard (speaking of stories you can't take at face value). It's really Alice in Wonderland, Red Queen and all.

Meanwhile, even Manchurians may have some hope of growing mophead hydrangeas this year. The new new thing, of course, is Hydrangea macrophylla 'Endless Summer', hardy to zone 4 and "perpetually flowering", although I'll be waiting for the prices to come down before introducing it to my garden's "Hydrangea Row". It's a selection from Bailey Nursery in St. Paul, Minnesota, and discovered by Michael Dirr, who writes, "My goal for this particular (blue-acid/pink-alkaline) selection is to breed a new race of perpetual flowering H. macrophylla." (May I suggest as cultivar names: 'Bennett Marco', 'Eugenie', and 'Friendless, friendless Raymond'?) Exciting news: A new Michael Dirr, Hydrangeas for American Gardens, is coming out from Timber Press in June. (Dreaded news: A remake of The Manchurian Candidate is coming out sometime later this year. To be perfectly closed-minded about it, I can only say: Jonathan Demme, Meryl and Denzel, you are tremendous, but I can't believe you're going to get this one right.)