Life with Father (1947)
In 1880s New York, a bristling, cost-conscious Wall Street broker rules his brownstone and red-headed family by bluster, until his wife discovers he was never baptized as a child. Her genteel campaign to get him christened plays out alongside a visiting cousin's romance and the household's daily uproar.
Life with Father brought the long-running Lindsay-and-Crouse Broadway hit, itself drawn from Clarence Day’s memoirs, to the screen with William Powell as the irascible patriarch and a young Elizabeth Taylor as the cousin’s love interest. A clerical slip left the copyright unrenewed, and the film has been in the public domain since 1975.
Background
Life with Father was directed by Michael Curtiz for Warner Bros. and adapted from the long-running Broadway play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, which was itself drawn from Clarence Day’s memoirs of his New York childhood. William Powell plays the irascible patriarch and Irene Dunne his wife. Elizabeth Taylor plays the cousin’s love interest in one of her early major roles, and Edmund Gwenn and ZaSu Pitts appear in supporting parts. The film was shot in Technicolor and set in 1880s New York.
What to watch for
The comedy is built on the father’s bluster and the household’s daily uproar, with Powell’s broker running the family through loud pronouncements. Watch for the central plot, in which the wife discovers that he was never baptized as a child and launches a polite campaign to have him christened. The period setting is rendered in rich Technicolor, and the family’s routines give the film its warmth beneath its satire of Victorian authority. Taylor’s early screen presence is also worth noticing in the romance subplot. It is also a well-known example of the Broadway-to-screen adaptations of the late 1940s.
