Cool Hand Luke was released late in 1967 as part of a revolutionary year for the outsider, iconoclastic, non-conforming rebellious antihero. Two years earlier this Hollywood archetype had appeared in the essentially harmless form of disgusted screenwriter Murray Burns in A Thousand Clowns. Darkness descended upon the nonconforming American a year later in Lord Love a Duck when Allan “Mollymauk” Musgrave tried to use a bulldozer as an instrument of destruction. Between the middle of August and Christmas of 1967, the American antihero became a firmly established Hollywood “type” with the release of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate bookending Cool Hand Luke.
Over the course of the three years which took Hollywood audiences from Murray Burns to Benjamin Braddock, the Hollywood non-conforming antihero really came into its own. Of course, the non-heroic figure that threatens the very foundation of society by refusing to conform to authority can be traced back through the Clift-Brando-Dean triumvirate of the 1950’s all through to Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. With precious few exceptions, however—Clift in From Here to Eternity and King Kong atop the Empire State Building—the antihero threat was rarely eliminated by annihilation. Even Benjamin Braddock survives his brush with authority to make it to the bus to nowhere with the bride of another man on his arm. But for how long?
While Clyde Barrow is a 1967 antihero who dies in a sensually violent climax, he does so alongside his lady love and after spending the previous two hours robbing banks, tying up cops and shooting at people. What is Luke’s crime? Lopping off the heads off one of the iconic machines of authoritarianism in America: the parking meter. While a lot of people might want to rob a bank, most would feel at least a little remorse that they might be stealing the life savings of some people. But parking meters? What kind of crime is that that is deserves punishment on a chain gang? For a big segment of its original theatrical audience, that crime was very comparable to the crime of smoking pot or burning your draft card to avoid fighting in a senseless and purposeless war. Ultimately, of course, Luke sacrifices his very life in the spirit of preserving his rebellion. While Murray Burns sells out and goes back to a writing job he does not respect and while there is much to suggest that Benjamin and Elaine may wind up exactly like their own parents, Luke dives into his anti-authoritarian non-conformism heart and soul. He sacrifices his life to stay true. In doing so, “Cool Hand” Luke sets the stage for the all the Hollywood antiheroes to come even if it would take at least another decade or so for Hollywood itself to finally accept the archetype.
