In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in. We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.
Last night I watched a terrific little film called “Sometimes Always Never” (Amazon Prime). Here’s the trailer:
It features a Scrabble-playing grandfather (played by the amazing Bill Nighy) and it got me wondering about portrayals of grandparents in film, TV, literature and art generally.
So, in this week’s Medium Cool, let’s talk about grandparents of note in any of these art forms. The judges will also accept anecdotes about your grandparents and how they took you to movies, or bought you books, or whatever is relevant.
Baud
Grandpa Simpson has entered the chat.
prostratedragon
Since I remember “Larry” Fishburne from Apocalypse Now (and am maybe 10 years older than he is), it was strange to see him playing grandfather on Black-ish.
ETA: 9 years
BGinCHI
@Baud: It’s how I’ve always pictured you.
piratedan
“who’s that little old man?”
he’s Paul’s grandfather, he’s very clean.
Almost Retired
The unforgettable Cloris Leachman as Maw Maw on the otherwise forgettable tv show “Raising Hope.” I’m pretty sure JD Vance based some of the characters in his fictitious Hillbilly book on her.
Scout211
Peter Faulk as the grandfather in Princess Bride has to be everybody’s favorite grandparent, especially for those of us who remember being sick as a child and in need of comfort.
eclare
Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment comes to mind. Not happy about being a grandmother.
mali muso
@Scout211: Was JUST coming here to say exactly that.
BGinCHI
@Scout211: Yes, I was thinking of him!
eclare
@Scout211: Very true!
prostratedragon
Grandma and Grandpa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. The actors who played them were born in 1863 and 1869, respectively. I often take note of the 19th century people whom we know today from media, as a way of understanding how compressed our time is. They’re the two oldest I’ve noticed so far.
Scout211
@Scout211: oops! Peter Falk, not Faulk.
Origuy
This is a stretch but it’s about culture. There was a discussion a while back about virtual tours. I was at the Vatican in July and couldn’t possibly squeeze in all the Vatican Museums. The website lists 26. However, many of them have virtual tours. I made it to the Pio-Clementino, the Egyptian, and of course the Sistine Chapel. I’m sure there are depictions of a few grandparents somewhere.
https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei.html
Yutsano
My 102 year old grandfather just passed away two months ago. It happened while I was at work. I still have the voice message on my phone. I don’t know if I’ll ever delete it.
EDIT: changed the timeline. But time is being weird right now.
Wakeshift
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
prostratedragon
@Yutsano: Born in 1920? So was my father, who died going on 11 years ago; 91’s a pretty good run I guess. All my natural grandparents had died when I was born, I just knew one stepgrandmother, but did know two great-grandparents, and missed a third by not much. I did have several grandparent surrogates growing up. It’s a definite role.
Mai Naem mobile
Grandpa Edwin Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine played by Alan Arkin. Not sure if I’ve seen a movie with a heroin addict grandparent who’s also a big cheerleader of the grandkid.
Another Scott
@Mai Naem mobile: That was a great movie.
Another memorable character:
Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies – I don’t think anyone since has played such a tiny, strong (in some ways), frenetic character on TV since (but there’s lots of TV that I’ve missed).
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@piratedan: I love him.
OzarkHillbilly
My elder Sis has very clear memories of me and my maternal grandfather playing Gin. Not that woossie Gin Rummy, but Gin, a man’s game. Both our faces set, concentrating on the cards, striving to win. I remember never getting a break. If I won it was because I won, not because he let me. It was serious business, and more often than not, I did not. But when I did? It was my triumph.
dnfree
My grandmother was born in 1894 and died in 1993. She was a devout Christian, Methodist, who believed “Further along, we’ll understand why”, in the words of the old hymn. She loved Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” and gave it to all her grandchildren for our high school graduations. I have carried on the tradition with our grandchildren.
We named our eldest daughter after her, and my grandmother gave her namesake a calligraphy of a verse of “On Self-Knowledge” for graduation:
Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Rachel Bakes
Glynis Johns in While You We’re Sleeping. Definitely Faulk in Princess Bride.
OzarkHillbilly
@Yutsano: I still have my parents phone number on my phone. I can’t delete it.
BGinCHI
@Mai Naem mobile: Oh yes, great call.
One of my favorite characters in a movie full of great ones.
MomSense
@eclare:
The acting in that movie was incredible.
BGinCHI
I always wished I’d had the grandparents on The Waltons.
Always loved Will Geer and Ellen Corby as actors, too.
BGinCHI
@Mai Naem mobile:
My first response to this got eaten…..
It’s a great call, as he’s a terrific character in a film that’s full of them. I love that movie. Great screenplay, too.
UncleEbeneezer
Was just re-watching Donnie Darko for Halloween movie vibes and of course, Grandma Death is a significant character in that excellent film.
BGinCHI
Also, a quick note on the film mentioned above (“Sometimes Always Never”). It can’t some head-scratching mixed reviews (at Ebert’s site, for ex.) that I thought were, to say the least, ungenerous and off-base.
It’s a delightful little film and I wish there were more like it.
billcinsd
A favorite Grandparent is Death in the Discworld series
delphinium
Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft in Home for the Holidays (although the grandkids don’t have huge roles).
Uncle Cosmo
Don’t do grandparents. Father’s father died before he was 4, mother’s father died before I was 2. Mother’s mother died when I was 13, father’s mother stuck around til found dead in bed the morning of one of her grandson’s wedding; saw each at most for a couple of days alternating summers, neither spoke more than 5 words of English. I try to tell my niece and (surviving) nephew how lucky they are to have known all their grandparents as intelligent and communicative, and I will tell my grandniece and grandnephew the same when they’re old enough.
(NB just returned from 15 days in Prague, mostly spent incommunicado in electronics hell, brand new laptop a brick that could not be recharged but anyway wouldn’t let me sign on without a Microsoft PIN I forgot years ago, new cell phone had to be unlocked from the US at $20 in connection cost, barely enough Net access to print boarding passes for flight home. Long 10+ hour layovers in Iceland in both directions. Second worst trip of my many transatlantic adventures – only one worse in ’85 when my wallet and passport were stolen in Sicily and my camera, with 30+ photos of the Sicilian relatives I didn’t know existed, stolen at a sidewalk trattoria in Rome. Blah.)
Suzanne
The blue fairy (Merryweather?) from Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” always reminded me of my grandmother.
delphinium
Also, animated movie The Triplets of Belleville, where grandmother searches for her kidnapped grandson with the aid of 3 elderly woman who were a once renowned jazz singing group.
kalakal
Lionel Jeffries in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a lot of fun.
For a different take on Grandparents Maggie Smith in Keeping Mum and Marlon Brando was of course a loving family man in The Godfather
eclare
@delphinium: That is a great movie! I saw it in the theater when it came out, so my memory is iffy, but I remember being very entertained.
Leto
Estelle Getty as Sophia on Golden Girls, and Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abby. I always found it funny that Estelle played Bea Arthurs mom, when Bea was a year older than her. Both were amazing in their respective roles.
Mousebumples
Yes to Peter Falk/Princess Bride. 💕
Also, I always thought of Alfred in the Christian Bale Batmans as being kinda grandfatherly. Michael Caine is great in that role.
Thinking back to my childhood, Ghostwriter on PBS was a favorite. Jamal was raised by Grandma Jenkins after his parents passed away.
Mai Naem mobile
@BGinCHI: its one of my favorite movies. Just so well done. I’d never thought of it before but there really aren’t that many movies with grandparent characters. I guess that kind of illustrates the ageism that’s present in Hollywood.
C Stars
We watched another British film, What We Did on Our Holiday, a few months back with the kids. The kids loved it, and Billy Connolly played a very memorable grandfather.
kalakal
Fulton Mackay played a wonderful grandfatherly figure to the whole village in Local Hero ( which I once heard described as everyone’s second favourite film)
PaulB
Alas, I never really knew either set of my own grandparents, as we traveled a lot and I only saw them half a dozen times or so before they passed on.
Wilford Brimley was, to me, the quintessential grandfather. I also loved June Whitfield in Absolutely Fabulous. She’s tied with Dame Maggie Smith (as Dowager Countess Violet Crawley) for the best one-liners.
Kayla Rudbek
Tonight I was missing my grandma’s pie crusts. The frozen stuff is not nearly as good; my Austrian great-grandma who worked in the Emperor’s kitchen as a pastry cook is probably shaking her head on the other side. And I think that I still need to play around with the cranberry raisin pie recipe some more; it might have had a bit too much salt in the filling by accident, and I tried substituting orange juice for water, adding some ginger, and orange peel along with the lemon peel. Maybe adding vanilla extract and allspice next time.
PaulB
For a terrifying grandmother, I submit Livia Soprano, played by Nancy Marchand.
Nelle
I am the youngest grandchild of a man born in 1864, in what is now Ukraine. He died seven years before I was born. I know a fair amount about him because he wrote a lot and edited a newspaper in then Russia. One, My Flight from Russia, is translated into English and is available via Amazon. I don’t know who republished it. It shares some of the prejudices of the time, but also speaks to the challenges of living there during the Civil War and the aftermath.
My grandmother, his wife, was born in 1874. She was a penniless widow who never spoke English (only Russian and German). While she could get in a car, she rotated between the homes of her sons and daughters. During the years that she came to our small house (built by my father) in Kansas, she and I shared a bedroom, while my sisters slept in the basement. Without language in common, she filled me with her love., which still, 66 years later, gives me comfort. She had an immensely hard life, but with me, it was all kindness. After she had a stroke, she stayed in Winnipeg with an aunt who cared for her, while the others sent what money they could. She died while I was in elementary school.
BGinCHI
@delphinium:
Oh my yes. I haven’t seen that in WAY too long.
Torrey
@PaulB: Speaking of people named Livia who are terrifying grandmothers, there’s Livia, played by Sian Phillips in I, Claudius. (I was going to say “just plain Livia,” but there was nothing plain–or just–about that Livia.)
NotMax
A few who don’t believe have yet been mentioned.
Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist.
Granny Tucker (Beulah Bondi) in The Southerner.
Ulee (Peter Fonda) in Ulee’s Gold.
Grandpa (Al Lewis) in The Munsters.
Murray Burns (Jason Robards Jr.) in A Thousand Clowns.
Sarah Mills (Mildred Natwick) in The House Without a Christmas Tree.
Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) in Little Big Man.
Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore) in You Can’t Take It with You.
@prostratedragon
So far as credited actors in talking pictures go, I believe May Robson takes the prize for earliest birth date: 1858.
NotMax
@Torrey
“Don’t eat the figs.”
BQuimby
My great grandmother was IT. Divorced and widowed. Chevy Belair w/curb ticklers until her license was taken; then was a demon on a bicycle. Took up painting,secretly confessed to me she knew she was not a good artist, but delighted in giving paintings as gifts so people hand to hang them. Put a tablespoon of coffee in my milk to make me feel grown up. Really did not GAF what her daughter and granddaughter (my wretched mother) thought, but loved me, spent time w/me, sent me $5 bills in my bday cards, and, at the end, admitted she was the black sheep-no regrets and I was like her and I should get away, never look back. When she died, I snuck to the cemetery where her ashes were to be buried by her husband’s grave (radical for her Catholic background to insist on cremation) and I blanketed the area with loads of every color of rose petals I could find. Made the rounds of florists and got loads of old roses, spent the entire night peeling them until I had a gigantic bag full. The grass was wet, so the petals stuck and it was a riotous, happy, beautiful scene (I was not allowed/nor did I want to be at the service). I miss her, 40 years on now.
prostratedragon
@PaulB: My, yes, not to mention the one in I, Claudius like whom she was named.
Argiope
@BQuimby: Thank you—what an evocative paragraph about an extraordinary person, and what a way to honor her with all those roses!
cope
There are too many memories of time spent with my paternal grandfather hunting woodchucks, fishing, shooting rats at the dump, building a proper treehouse (he was a carpenter), watching TV (“The Silent Service” comes to mind) when I woke up in the middle of the night and such to numerate.
I will, however, mention the times he took me to The Moose Lodge. After lifting me up to rub the moose’s nose, we’d sit at the bar which I loved. He’d pour a drop of his whiskey into my Coke and tell me not to tell my grandmother where we had gone. There was often shuffleboard or the puck bowling game as well.
All this was in the ‘50s before I was 10 years old. It has inspired me to try to give my own grandkids equally vibrant memories minus the booze and gun play.
Betsy
@dnfree: That’s wonderful.
My Granny would give her grandchilluns a quarter if they memorized a poem; two quarters for a long poem.
Any poem we chose. Sometimes we chose poems from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” sometimes Wordsworth, or Victorian poets, or others.
We adored Granny and of course we all ended up loving poetry.
Sometimes the lines come back into my mind at moments, and I remember her and her love. It’s comforting now that so many of the people I love are gone.
prostratedragon
<a href="#comment-8649284"@NotMax: Wow. Familiar name, but didn’t know she went back that far.
SiubhanDuinne
Alas, I’m pretty sure this thread is moribund, if not actually deceased, pushing up daisies, a late thread, an ex-thread, a thread no more, etc., but I would please like to nominate the Grandfather in Peter and the Wolf as a memorable cultural grandparent. Prokofiev portrayed him, musically, with this bassoon theme.
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: Good call. Haven’t listened to Peter and the Wolf for ages, I shall have to remedy that
ETA and now you’ve just set an earworm off in my head :-)
SiubhanDuinne
@kalakal:
There are worse earworms! I adore P&tW. Once had the pleasure of narrating it in performance. It is such fun music!
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne: It is isn’t it? It was one of the staples of our music classes at school and I’ve loved it ever since.
The others if I remember correctly were Mussorgskys’ Night on Bald Mountain, Brittain’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and Smetna’s Die MMoldau. I’m particularly fond of the Smetna
Warren Senders
When my paternal grandfather came to this country in 1903 he wound up in Cambridge, MA. Speaking no English, he went to the Cambridge public school and (aged 22) enrolled in kindergarten.
He graduated from kindergarten at the end of that day, and from 1st grade the next day.
By the end of the year he finished high school, speaking fluent (albeit Russian-accented) English.
I’ve always loved that story. That’s what a school system should do.
SiubhanDuinne
https://youtu.be/w6jlhLUgER0
@kalakal:
Yes! The Smetana is wonderful! The Moldau is by far the best-known movement, but if you want a real treat, listen to the entire cycle Ma Vlast — it is a terrific piece of music!
SiubhanDuinne
@kalakal:
Really, that entire curriculum is brilliantly conceived and executed! Kudos to whomever was in charge of your music curriculum. Love every one of those pieces to death. How great for you to be exposed to them all at such an early age!
HeartlandLiberal
My wife and I just the other day were reminiscing about the time my grandfather on my mother’s side cooked us squirrel. It did it kinda taste like chicken.
Jado
@Scout211:
“Yes, you’re very smart, Shut up.”
Miss Bianca
I was way early to the thread last night, and didn’t comment then, and now I’m way late, so no one will see this, but the first image that popped into my head for “grandparents in art” was from Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague (and its sequel, Stormy: Misty’s Foal). The young protagonists, Paul and Maureen Beebe, are being raised by their grandparents. We never find out what, exactly, happened to Paul and Maureen’s parents, but Grandpa and Grandma Beebe (Grandpa particularly) are such great characters that it never occurred to me to wonder about it.
jamey
Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.
Gravie
Since you asked: I’d like to offer a tribute to both my grandfathers, long gone but never forgotten.
My Dad’s dad was an easygoing, amiable man who adored me, his only grandchild. I adored him back. He died when I was 5, before my sisters and cousins came along. He’d take me out walking in his and Nana’s rural lakeside neighborhood every evening when I visited, his dog Tippy at our side, and he’d serenade us both by singing “Roaming in the Gloaming.” He often allowed me to sit on the back of the sofa behind him, and rubberband his hair into a bunch of little ponytails. He would also frequently sit down with me at my tiny table and chairs in the yard and take imaginary tea.
My Mom’s dad, Angus, was a different kind of fellow — taciturn and often irascible, but a great lover of all his grandkids. He wore a starched white long-sleeved shirt at all times, except when walking on the beach. He used to cheat at Scrabble to let me win, fixed me 7-Up floats on command, and called me “little bit.” He would not countenance any cruelty to children, and once angrily confronted a man who was abusing his son on a train platform. Grandaddy threatened to throw the guy on the tracks if he didn’t knock it off.
I was a lucky girl to have these two men in my life.
BillD
There is a special relationship I think between a person like me, who only knew one grandparent, and that grandparent who only had one grandchild. Rose was a flinty small town Missouri woman who raised two children on her own after her husband died in the 1918 flu epidemic. She couldn’t stand her in-laws who wanted to take her children, including my mother, away from her. When I came along many years later she doted on me. She was a big St. Louis Cardinals fan and when I got out of the Army in September 1968, my father, who was with the Post-Dispatch, got us two tickets to the first game of the World Series against Detroit. We watched Bob Gibson strike out (I think) 19 Tigers that afternoon and it remains one of my fondest memories. Now I’m a grandfather of three, from my two daughters. I hope they retain some fond memories of me, but I can’t top the ’68 Cards. (Even tho they lost the series.)
The Fat Kate Middleton
Just finished watching “S.A.N,” with my granddaughter. Such a lovely, lovely movie – and granddaughter liked it as well.