Daddy (Movie) Complex

Author’s Note:  This past Thursday, June 13, there was a glitch in my automated email delivery system.  My new post, “Quite A Gal,” went live on the site right on time but none of the customary emails notifying you went out.  I had to resort to self-help.  So at 5:15 a.m. I frantically emailed you the notice myself.  But if any of you haven’t read the last post about my fabulous friend Babs yet, may I suggest you do so?  Thanks.  And sorry about that.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled program.

I’m blessed to have a remarkable father.  At almost ninety-four he is very much alive- thanks to the miracle of dialysis.  But not kicking- thanks to the ravages of dialysis.  But even though my brother Kenny and I are lucky to still have him in three D, there are some sensational celluloid fathers in moviedom that I’d like to salute on this Father’s Day.

Gregory Peck’s Academy Award-wining performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird probably sets the benchmark as “Movie Father Of The Year.” His warm, all-knowing portrayal of a compassionate, just, loving, handsome tower of paternity is a marvelous role- and role model.

But I want to highlight a few other cinema dads.  Starting with William Powell’s redheaded autocrat of the breakfast table in the wonderful Life with Father.

Based on Clarence Day’s award-winning and record-setting play- it ran forever on Broadway- Powell has a bravura turn as a strict, aristocratic banker who is perpetually flummoxed by his sweet wife (winningly portrayed by Irene Dunne), eternally-patient Irish servants and a bevy of wayward redheaded sons.  No matter how hard this patriarch tries to lay down the law in his New York town house, his household somehow always vetoes it.

It’s a big departure for the suave, urbane Mr. Powell.  Forever enshrined in the filmgoer’s Hall of Fame as the elegant Nick Charles of The Thin Man, this had to be quite a change of pace to play this strict-but-loving pater familias.  But what a role.  And it turns out that Powell is the perfect choice to play a rigid, hidebound, very conventional member of Edith Wharton’s old-line Knickerbocker set.  (His Academy Award nom for Best Actor proved his peers thought so, too.)

Nothing very extreme happens in this gentle by-gone world.  A contretemps over a china pug dog, an incident of patent medicine mistakenly peddled by young John Day to his friends and neighbors and inducing an illness in his mother, the purchase of a new suit for young Clarence, a quiet furor over a would-be baptism, these are the light-hearted events that concern the very genteel Day family.

But in Indiana in 1862, Gary Cooper has his hands full as the Quaker tree farmer, Jess Birdwell,  caught up in the real tragedies of the Civil War in the wonderful and heartwarming (a cliché but it’s the only word for it) movie Friendly Persuasion.  Another major contender of mine for Movie Father Of All Time.

Gary Cooper is simply perfect.

He, too, is hen-pecked by his minister of a wife, Eliza- also acted to a fine turn by Dorothy McGuire. Whether it’s buying an organ or horse-racing on prim, go-to-meeting- Sunday,  his sweet solutions to these religious strictures soon give way to a real crisis of conscience as the impending, and finally invading, Southern enemy challenges his deeply-held moral convictions.

Coop was the right guy for this role.  His exquisite, craggy face shows all the torment as he faces hard ethical choices with dignity, strength and courage.

A masterful performance.  One worth watching this Father’s Day- or any day- with your kids.

Now for all us Baby Boomer girls, there was simply nothing like Brian Keith’s cardigan-sweatered, rich rancher of a father in the 1961 version of The Parent Trap.  His breezy portrayal of a Cali Casual dad just killed me when I was a preteen and I never outgrew it.

I loved everything about his really neat life.  He had a housekeeper and a German Shepherd- Andromeda- and keen horses.  Back when I was eleven I wanted to live on that gorgeous hunk of Santa Barbara property.  (As a matter of fact, I still do.)

Okay, so he had a witch of a girlfriend.  But she was easily gotten rid of by his two adorable twin daughters. (And don’t try to tell me that they were both played by Hayley Mills.  I just know that Susan and Sharon were two completely different actresses.)

I do like the Lindsay Lohan version.  (Although in that one, I’m all about the dreamy London townhouse.)  But Dennis Quaid is not my idea of anyone’s father.  Bad boy boyfriend.  But not dear old dad.  I did hear him say that he took the role in the remake because it was his then-wife Meg Ryan’s favorite movie and she had asked him to do it.

Still, you probably can’t go wrong watching either version with your offspring.  Unless you’re divorced with young ones yourself.  If your divorce was anything like mine, it’s probably not too smart to give your kids any ideas about reconciliations.

On a completely up-to-date note, moving half the world away, Netflix has recently added a riot of a Father’s Day movie about a close-knit modern family.  It’s called The Castle.  (Not to be confused with “Castle,” the television program.  My son did this when I told him to watch it and he could not figure out why I was so enthusiastic about anything on network tv.)

It’s about this hard-scrabble, blue collar Australian dad, played to a hilarious understated turn by Michael Caton.  An actor, who I must confess, was completely unknown to me.  He seems to have done all his work mainly on Aussie television, mate.

But that didn’t stop me from roaring over this sly farce of a movie.  The premise is simple. The government wants to buy his Melbourne house- his “castle”- because they are expanding the airport.  He doesn’t want to move.

Not exactly high concept.  But this movie is a scream as he rallies a ragtag bunch of friends, downtrodden neighbors and his dim, but ever-lovin’ family to protest his forced eviction.  (And there’s an early Eric Bana sighting as a bonus for the ladies.)

Darryl Kerrigan is one hell of a bloke and The Castle is a great Father’s Day treat- after you’ve played golf, or watched some sporting event or mowed your lawn or enjoyed a ball game or barbecued or whatever you guys plan to do on your big day today.

So from me- and all the other mothers out there- make it a good one.

We couldn’t have done it without you.

And see you later, Dad.  We’ll be there around six.

You’ll always be Cary Grant to me.