18: Aloysius
Aloysius is an unusual name. According to the US Social Security Administration’s baby planning website at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/, my first name, Jackson, has varied in popularity over the last 120 years, reaching a low point in 1969 as the 831st most popular name and has steadily climbed since, reaching a peak at the 16th most popular in 2013. Hudsucker’s female lead, Amelia, reached a low point in popularity in 1968 at the 489th most popular girl’s name but has also bounced back and is currently at its highest as the 8th most popular baby name of 2019. Hudsucker’s villain, Sidney was a highly popular name at the turn of the 20th century, hovering at around the 100th most popular name in the 1905 – 1915 range in which Sidney Mussburger was born, but has fallen off very gradually ever since, dropping off the top 1000 most popular children’s name after 2013 when it was the 948th. Aloysius, while unquestionably a name that people have used (unlike something like, “Starfighter” or “Hat”*, which unquestionably could be someone’s name if someone had the will to do it, but has not yet been regularly adopted), has never been terribly popular in the US, reaching its height in 1909 as the 371st most popular name, and dropping off quickly until it disappeared off the top 1000 most popular names list after 1940, never to return. It is unlikely you know an Aloysius in your life, and if you do, they are likely very old. Why then, was I in no way surprised to find that the door letterer in The Hudsucker Proxy is named Aloysius.
Aloysius is played by character actor Harry Bugin, who made most of his career as an advertising actor with a handful of small film roles. He appears in two other Coens films. In Barton Fink, he plays Pete, the elevator operator of the dilapidated Hotel Earle, where he is the polar opposite of Buzz, Hudsucker’s elevator operator. Pete is defeated and lifeless. When Fink enters the Earle’s elevator Pete does not even seem to acknowledge him or even know that Fink exists until he wheezes Fink’s floor back at him and closes the gate of the elevator. He exists in Barton Fink as a symbol of how much the Earle is falling apart as a catatonic employee.
In The Big Lebowski, he is little more than a prop, playing television writer Arthur Digby Sellers, who when he is encountered by Walter & The Dude is completely unresponsive, potentially catatonic, and in an iron lung. In both instances Bugin appears to have been brought in by the Coens because he as a human best represents decay and closeness to death**.
In Hudsucker, Bugin as Aloysius the door letterer has no lines. He appears onscreen in four scenes. For the first three he’s more of a prop than a character, simply existing ominously, but nonetheless he is integral to the film’s action. His first appearance is as Norville steps off the elevator to deliver his blue letter. Aloysius is crouched by Waring Hudsucker’s office door while his body is conceivably still warm, scraping his name off the door. Aloysius’s head is shaved, emphasizing the shape of Bugin’s skull. Between this, his slight frame, and sunken eyes & cheeks, he appears positively skeletal. He appears in his introduction as a kind of banal angel of death, there not so much to escort Waring Hudsucker to the next life but to as a kind of bureaucrat to remove his mortal trappings as president of the company. The next time he appears mirrors this, as he paints Norville’s name on the door of the office of the president, and is quietly annoyed at Norville as he enters the office. He could be quietly annoyed at the presence of Norville himself, or at the entire idea of life going on after death. He clearly has something out for Norville as in his third appearance he has uncovered evidence that proves that Norville’s secretary Amy Smith is in fact investigative journalist Amy Archer. It’s never clear as to whether or not Mussburger has put Aloysius up to this or if Aloysius did so under his own volition, but regardless he is acting for an unknown reason to bring Norville low.
The Deus Ex Machina of the film’s climax is especially curious. The whys and hows of time being stopped and Waring Hudsucker delivering a message from heaven merits its own discussion, but the fact that Aloysius is one of four characters still capable of movement after Old Moses stops time suggests that there is more to him than merely being a sign painter. Of the four people who can move after time is stopped, one of them is Norville, upon whose benefit time is stopped, one is the angelic ghost of Waring Hudsucker and therefore someone who can exist outside the boundaries of mortal time, Old Moses himself who is apparently able to stop time, clearly marking him as someone with supernatural powers, and Aloysius. Why precisely two members of Hudsucker Industries’ maintenance staff have these supernatural powers is never explicitly stated, and for that matter few film critics seem to care. A search of the internet and my books on the subject reveals no explanation nor attempt to explain it. Moses is simply a supernatural force for good and Aloysius is a supernatural force of evil.
What’s fascinating about the time stopping scene though is that Aloysius was not a part of it originally. In Hudsucker’s shooting script, the scene plays out as Norville falling from the ledge as an unnamed “someone” closes the window. As he falls Moses stops time with the line “Strictly speaking, I'm never supposed to do this but... have you got a better idea?”***, at which point Moses disappears from the script until his narration at the denouement. The angelic Hudsucker delivers his moment of redemption to Norville, and Moses (presumably, from offscreen with no dialogue) resumes time for him to tumble to safety and find his redemption. This means that during production of the film, a decision was made to introduce a fistfight between Moses and Aloysius. Moses, between his biblical name and apparent control over time and overall benevolence appears to be if not a benevolent God, at least an agent of a benevolent God. This would make Aloysius a devil or demonic element. Having Moses stop time and that was the end of it was simply too easy. To distract the audience from the sudden introduction of supernatural powers into the film, someone had to push back, to say to the audience “oh come on, you can’t just stop time, it’s not fair!” Moses needs an adversary, someone to accuse him of acting outside the scope of the narrative and sock him in the jaw for trying. Conveniently enough, the ancient Hebrew word for “accuser” or “adversary” is “satan”. Having read CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, I can attest that Aloysius would be a good name for a demon. The name is unusual, but it fits.
* or for that matter, Norville
** In addition, in the shooting script for Barton Fink the relationship between Pete and death is made more explicit in that he is the first character seen being murdered by John Goodman’s Karl “Madman” Mundt
*** Seeing writers write themselves into a corner with no way to satisfyingly resolve a scene and creating an improbable way out is common enough in fiction, but rarely is it accompanied with a taunt for the audience to think of something better.