People are voting emotionally.

Masterful Movie

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I'd always avoided seeing this partly because of the title, "The Courtship of Eddy's Father." Seeing the father of some kid named Eddy being courted was not in itself an attractive subject. Then somebody told me that Shirley Jones was yummy in it and an obscure but ovviously puerile impulse forced me to sit through it.It was everything I'd feared. Yes, Shirley Jones was pretty and buoyant as always, but the rest is terribly dated. Marriage for Glenn Ford's handsome, charming, steady, wealthy widower is on the mind of all the women he meets, especially Dina Merrill, wearing a black wig to signal us that she won't win the prize. I guess, to be fair, Stella Stevens as the luscious but stupefied girl in the penny arcade isn't interested in marrying him. The movie wouldn't allow it because it would be infra dig for Ford to show an interest in anyone less wholesome than Shirley Jones.There's no reason this couldn't have been a winner. The presence of a kid, not even a cute red-headed little Ron Howard, who asks all these precocious questions, is not necessarily poison to a movie. And it was directed by Vincente Minelli, who knows how to handle this kind of material with aplomb.The Doris Day series that preceded this -- beginning with "Pillow Talk" -- were an expression of similar mores. Nice women don't put out and they all want to get married and build a home. The Day series had good gags and funny situations, good farces, even the sequels. But this? It has an element of melancholy running through it. Ford isn't a reckless bachelor. He's a sorrowful widower and there's too much revolting sentimentality attached to it, as if the script wanted us to cry instead of just laugh. Maybe most repugnant is the scene in which the kid goes into a screaming fit because the death of his goldfish reminds him of his mother's death. And the laughs just aren't good enough to compensate for this facile tear-jerking. Here's an example of a gag.Stella Steven in a tight skirt is on a date with Jerry Van Dyke. They're bowling and he can't bowl so she tells him she going to show him how to do it. She takes the ball, bends over, and instructs him to keep his hips loose. She wiggles her pert little behind innocently. "Do you see my hips?" He's gawking at them. It could have been worth a smile if Van Dyke had never taken his eyes from her face and said his lines sensibly, as if they had nothing to do with her buns. But, as in a cartoon, his eyes are bulging out and his lines are emphatic: "I DO, I DO!" I'm reminded of a scene in Frank Tashlin's "The Girl Can't Help It." Jayne Mansfield, she of the mammoth mammaries, in a low cut dress and holding two milk bottles at her chest, leans over a table and asks Tom Ewell if he thinks she's "equipped for motherhood." Ewell, with a fixed, agonized smile, never breaks his gaze, as much as he's dying to, but replies in a slow and deliberate manner that, yes -- yes, she is equipped for motherhood. THAT'S funny. Courting somebody's father is a pretty crude business when you get right down to it. It needs to be a little subversive to be really successful. Maybe all comedies do.

Glenn Ford did two films with director Vincente Minnelli, the incredibly bad sound remake of The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and this very good family film about a widower and his young son trying to get on with life after the wife and mother has passed away.The Courtship of Eddie's Father in addition to being made into a long running television series with Bill Bixby, Miyoshi Umeki, and Brandon Cruz, still holds up very well after 44 years.What makes the film is the very real chemistry between Glenn Ford and Ron Howard who was on hiatus from the Andy Griffith show to make this film. The Courtship of Eddie's Father is about two very real individuals trying to work through the hurt that's surrounding a very big hole in their lives. Ford plays the manager of a radio station and Jerry Van Dyke has a nice role as Ford's best friend and one of the disc jockeys. Roberta Sherwood has the part of the housekeeper who's trying to learn Spanish, the part that Miyoshi Umeki did for television. As you can imagine it was rewritten somewhat.There are three women interested in Ford at one time or another. Shirley Jones is the best friend of the deceased, living in the apartment across the way. Dina Merrill is the society lady that she is in real life. And Stella Stevens is the beauty queen from Montana who's got some hidden talents. One guess who Ford looks like he'll wind up with in the end. Give you a hint, it's the one Ron Howard wishes it is. After the disaster of The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, Minnelli owed Glenn Ford a good picture and he certainly delivered.

I used to love the early 1970's TV series which took its premise from this 1963 movie, so it was with some trepidation that I finally saw the original film directed by Vincente Minnelli. For such a family-oriented vehicle, his sometimes excessive film-making style shows up in subtle ways throughout the picture, and that's what primarily makes it interesting viewing now. The film starts out as an amusing domestic comedy, periodically hints toward deeper issues of grief and single parenthood, and then dives headlong into melodrama in the last half-hour. The result is pure Minnelli.The other memorable aspect is eight-year old Ron Howard, sixth-billed and then known as Ronny, who delivers the central performance of Eddie without resorting to precociousness. More than his adult co-stars, he brings all the elements of the film together on an emotional level that resonates. Written by Tom Gay, the plot focuses on Eddie's attempts to reinvigorate the love life of his recently widowed father Tom. The likely candidate appears to be the pretty, recently divorced nurse next door, Elizabeth, but Tom and she start off on the wrong foot despite the fact that Eddie adores her. Efforts get refocused on Dolly, a vacuous, curvaceous girl they meet at the arcade, but Tom redirects her to womanizing disc jockey Norman. Tom then meets socialite Rita, whose glaring lack of a maternal instinct alienates Eddie to the point of running away.All ends inevitably but not before some startling scenes like Eddie traumatized by the sight of his dead fish and Tom careening recklessly in his car to find Eddie (it looks like a similarly hair-raising scene on an Italian hillside road in Minnelli's "Two Weeks in Another Town"). In fact, the climactic argument between Tom and Elizabeth is surprisingly vitriolic for a family picture. Not the most charismatic of actors, Glenn Ford is solid as Tom, while a non-singing Shirley Jones plays Elizabeth with dexterity. The other performances are a bit more on the pat side - Stella Stevens lovably dim as Dolly, Jerry Van Dyke his recognizably unctuous self as Norman and Dina Merrill all slithery glamour as Rita. There are no extras with the 2004 DVD.

I saw most of this film again for the first time in years the other day.I then purchased the DVD to catch the ending..and was glad i did. being a fan of Glenn Ford and Shirley Jones as well as "Ronny" Howard i couldn't pass this one up. Glenn Ford's Eddie's Father isn't the same laid back Eddie's Father that Bill Bixby was in the TV series that was based on this movie.His is a bit quirkier and introspective and maybe not as funny and warm but still worth getting to know. The matchmaking that goes on is strictly sixties through and through a formula we have seen time and time again but the hint of Eddie's Father having himself a time while he is out "courting" is as subtle as a man in a chicken suit in church. Ron Howard is as good as ever and although Brandon Cruz who was Eddie in the TV series was a bit warmer Ron Howard's Eddie is a more honest to god kid most of the time,with all the faults that come with being an 8 yr old boy The women in the film..all beautiful all talented all out for Eddie"s father are as you would expect in an early sixties film kind of cardboard cutouts but good on the eyes