The Pirate Review - Father Goose

All hail Cary Grant the slob!

Minor spoilers

For years, Hollywood leading man Cary Grant was the dictionary definition of "suave." Handsome, polished, urbane and always charming, he may well have been the man Ian Fleming had in mind when he wrote the character of James Bond. But starting in the early 1960s, Grant began looking for a role that would allow him to play against type. His wish was granted by screenwriter Peter Stone, who developed the character of Walter Eckland—a boorish, drunken lout with a perpetual five o'clock shadow. It was totally against type, and Grant loved it.

Father Goose, based on a short story by S.H. Barnett, takes place in the South Pacific in the early years of World War II. Eckland, an aimless drifter, tools around the islands in an aging yacht, occasionally siphoning off gasoline from the military when he feels like it. On one of these gas-pinching trips, however, he runs into Commander Frank Houghton of the Royal Australian Navy (Trevor Howard), a cool but shrewd character looking for a plane-spotter to station on one of the smaller islands in the area. Eckland, however, wants nothing to do with the war in general or Houghton in particular. Houghton, though, is a quick study—with, I might add, a spiffy surname—and he correctly sums up Eckland's character and motivation in one word (whiskey). When the RAN maroons him on an island with his precious whiskey bottles carefully hidden and nothing but a seven-foot dinghy for transportation, Eckland is "convinced" to start reporting enemy movements via radio.

Eventually Eckland is asked to go to nearby Bundy Island to check on another spotter, a man who hasn't been heard from in a while. In exchange for running this little errand, he arranges to get "ALL of 'em, Frank." Having secured all his hidden whiskey bottles, he heads out for Bundy only to find a wrecked hut and marked grave—the spotter was apparently killed by Japanese pilots. He is then surprised by an unlikely group: Miss Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) and her seven schoolgirls (eight if you count Gretchen). Miss Freneau, a prim French schoolmarm, and her consulate students were stranded on the island. They can't very well be left alone, so Eckland piles them all into the dinghy and takes them back to his own island, where they proceed to wreak havoc with his beach-bum existence.

The chemistry between Grant and Caron is marvelous to behold. They constantly zing at each other with the kind of barbed banter Hollywood hasn't managed to produce for at least a generation. Further, although Grant plays a crass character, he never once uses a foul word throughout the movie—all the dirty words and "gestures" Eckland might use are implied, not stated outright. It's a classy touch, something else Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to do.

Father Goose broke box office records at Radio City Music Hall when it first opened on Christmas Eve 1964. However, most audiences did not warm to the movie in first runs, unable to reconcile their image of Grant the cool sophisticate with Eckland the crusty tosspot. The original theatrical trailer deliberately reflects this confusion—scenes from the film are shown, with a male and female couple providing comment: "Don't we know him?" "He looks familiar, but..." "Oh, no... it's Cary Grant." This "negative buzz" trailer seemed to allay the fears of the moviegoing public, as Father Goose has become a much-loved classic.

It's interesting to see how certain movie taboos, once broken, tend to fade away. A year before this film, when Grant played opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade, he had the scriptwriters change many of his lines, concerned that his pursuit of the young Hepburn would make him appear to be a lecherous old man. The writers dutifully rearranged the romance so that Hepburn tenaciously pursued Grant. In 1964, Grant was 60 and Leslie Caron was 33—actually a few years younger than Audrey Hepburn—yet there seemed to be few concerns over their age difference. Part of this can be traced to the quality of the characters—the crusty Eckland is already presumed to be something of a lech, and the prim, frosty Freneau seems many years older than she actually is. These days the age of the leading man seems almost irrelevant; a 69-year-old Sean Connery can play opposite 30-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones without raising too many eyebrows. Oddly enough, however, a scene where Eckland pretends to seduce a flirtatious pre-teen girl just to get her off his case would probably draw shocked cries from the politically correct crowd if it appeared in a current movie. I guess taboos come and go.