A father remembered

Irene Dunne and William Powell in Life with Father.

Several times over the years I have watched with pleasure the 1947 film Life with Father, which stars William Powell, Irene Dunn and a very young Elizabeth Taylor. The last time I saw it was last October when I led a group discussion of the film. Afterward a participant in that discussion gave me a copy of the book by Clarence Day, on which the film was partly based. It was also partly based on another Day memoir, Life with Mother.

The book, it turns out, is quite as pleasurable as the movie. It tells the story of a successful, opinionated, loud, irritable man who, for all his attempts to dominate his family and everyone else, could be easily manipulated by his loving, somewhat scatterbrained wife and, to a lesser extent, by his sons. The memoir consists of brief chapters, each telling of related incidents in the life of Day's father. It has no plot, so the movie constructs its plot loosely from these incidents, as well as those in Life with Mother. Certainly the movie carries the spirit of the book, if not the details. There's nothing here, for example, about Mrs. Day's efforts to persuade her husband to consent to baptism, the main focus of the film's plot.

Day's best description of his father comes near the end. "Our home life was stormy but spirited," he writes. "It always had tang. When Father was unhappy, he said so. He poured out his grief with such vigor that it soon cleared the aired.

"If he had ever had any meannesses in him, he might have tried to repress them. But he was a thoroughly goodhearted and warmblooded man, and he saw no reason for hiding his feelings. They were too strong to hide anyway.”

Day describes his visits to other homes as a boy, where he witnessed very different kinds of family chemistry. Husbands and wives got angry but stayed angry. Children were shown correction, but not love. It made him realize how lucky he was. His father might yell at him, but he never withheld his affection.

The book was published in 1935, expanded from a long series of popular articles Day wrote for The New Yorker. The incidents described took place late in the 19th century in New York City when that city was thriving and growing rapidly. His father was uncomfortable with change, and that too adds to the subtle comedy in Day's book.