Father Was a Fullback

It took a total four screenwriters (Aleen Leslie, Mary Loos, Casey Robinson and Richard Sale) to adapt one exceptionally thin play by Clifford Goldsmith, a comedy about a losing college football coach and his nutty family in small town America. It's nice to see Maureen O'Hara again playing mom to precocious Natalie Wood (following 1947's "Miracle on 34th Street"), but O'Hara has distressingly little to do here except dote on exasperated hubby Fred MacMurray, the coach who sidelines himself mostly on the couch. The writing and staging are so mechanical you can almost sense the pauses for preconceived laughs, but nobody except Wood and Thelma Ritter (in another of her maid roles) gets anything amusing to say. MacMurray, as usual, looks like a Bassett Hound in a top coat, and older sis Betty Lynn takes an awfully long to bloom (she writes a short story about a teenage bubble dancer, which is funny until O'Hara gives her a solemn talking-to, spoiling the laughs). Jim Backus (billed as James G. Backus) is nice to have around as a neighbor, and Richard Tyler is a handsome kid who works at the gas station (his best line: "Mustaches--do you know how hard they are to grow?!"). The laugh lines aren't deft, though they are occasionally underplayed by the cast, and this creates a droll rhythm which makes up for the lack of any big scenes. **1/2 from ****

Fred MacMurray is George Cooper--the coach of State's football team. They are having a horrible season and everyone seems to be second- guessing him...and he's worried that he'll soon be out of a job. In the midst of this, his teenage daughter, Connie (Betty Lynn*) is driving him crazy. The girl is unbelievably emotional and walks about in a Goth-like funk feeling sorry for herself. When George tries to help, he only makes things worse. The maid says he should just 'belt her one'! And, when you see how annoying (too annoying) she is, you kind of wish he'd take the maid's advice! Among the kooky antics involving the daughter are an attempt to create a fake boyfriend to pick up her spirits as well as Connie writing an article about teenage pregnancy...and her parents think she is pregnant. The antics, at times, seem straight from a second-rate sitcom--which is a shame as the rest of the film is much more enjoyable. The 'bubble dancer' portion involving Connie is kind of funny as is the aftermath.

Overall, the film is slight and enjoyable but occasionally the writing lets down the actors--with ridiculous situations and a character (Connie) who is much more of a caricature than a realistic person. Worth watching but don't rush to do so. Fred MacMurray, Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara have simply done better films.

*Betty Lynn is best known as Barney Fife's girlfriend, Thelma Lou, from "The Andy Griffith Show". Here, she is considerably younger and her part is incredibly poorly written. Poor Ms. Lynn!

George Cooper(Fred MacMurray)is the losingest coach State U has ever known. A well meaning square fresh from Elm Tree High, his team has potential but is yet to win a game in this his first season, which will make or break him. Comic relief comes in the form of his family's maid who knows to always bet against his team, and two daughters: Natalie Wood as a scruffy tomboy spouting poetic slang in which I must say is her best role, and Betty Lynn(who in real life is actually only eight years younger than Maureen O'Hara)as an angst-ridden hormonal teen with no writers block nor lack of pubescent imagination when she secretly sends in a unique offing to "True Romance" magazine. Her true calling apparently does not help matters any, except when it turns out that Joe Burch, the ploy her parents use to bring her out of her shell, turns out to be a high school football hero all the colleges have been bartering for. He had been intending to go to the leading team school, but in the end decided State U, "to be near Connie...she's the first thing I liked more than a football...." Hurrah! The team now has an official starting star for next season, and George's coaching contract will be renewed. A Happy End.

In her memoirs Maureen O'Hara was not too kind to Father Was A Fullback dismissing it off hand as a stinker. It's not all that bad, not all that great either. At the point in time she was making Father Was A Fullback she was under contract to 20th Century Fox and doing a whole lot of bread and butter films like these, shot on a dime, that made money for the studio while Darryl F. Zanuck was giving prestige films to people like Linda Darnell and Gene Tierney. Maureen so wanted to get a prestige film at that time herself.

Seen today Father Was A Fullback has Fred MacMurray as a college football coach who's had a couple of really rotten years in the job and people are getting on his case. Chief among them is the officious Rudy Vallee who is a big mucky muck in the alumni and constantly offering advice on how MacMurray should do his job. I like his performance best in the film.

Of course as it turns out MacMurray should have stuck to football because he hasn't got a clue when it comes to being a father to teenage girl Betty Lynn and adolescent Natalie Wood. Betty Lynn who if you remember was Don Knotts's girl friend Betty Lou on the Andy Griffith Show later on, is the older girl who's got a bad case of Jan Brady. The boys just ain't interested she thinks. But Robert Reed would have NEVER handled the situation the way MacMurray does.

In fact that might have been what Maureen O'Hara finds wrong with the film. She has little to do here except criticize MacMurray for his bungling attempts to brighten his daughter's life.

A young gas jockey, Richard Tyler, inadvertently provides the solution to everyone's problems in Father Was A Fullback.

Sad to say though MacMurray does look like a dunce in this film away from the gridiron. It's an amusing enough film, just hardly near the top ten for any of the cast.

Fred MacMurray's having some trouble, both at work and at home. He's a football coach to a perpetually losing team, his teenaged daughter Betty Lynn is depressed because she can't get a date, his wife Maureen O'Hara is spread pretty thin by continually doing damage control, his boss Rudy Vallee keeps pressures him, and his maid Thelma Ritter actually bets against him on game day! His youngest daughter Natalie Wood tries to help her sister by making up a fake suitor, but the lie quickly gets out of hand when Betty wants to meet him. That part of the movie is by far the cutest and funniest, as everyone pitches in to try and help Betty and her imaginary boyfriend-but you'll have to watch the movie to find out the hilarity!

Father Was a Fullback reminded me of a cross between Kiss and Tell, in which a teenaged Shirley Temple makes mischief when her hormones start kicking in, and The Impossible Years, in which Professor David Niven has trouble with his two teenaged daughters when they start dating. If you liked either of those classic comedies, you'll probably like Fred MacMurray's take on it. It's not my favorite old comedy-I adore The Impossible Years- but it was entertaining, and it was very cute to see Maureen O'Hara as Natalie Wood's mom once again.