Another well overdue film, this one nine years ago. Walter Matthau, then early fifties, plays the grandfather who isn't wanted at home, and ends up looking after a young pregnant girl. It's totally unsentimental. The old man faces rejection with stoicism until people come round to his way of thinking. Love the rambling conversations he has which end up with people not listening to him, and the way he deals with his 'sexual abuse' charge.
Ralph Winters noticed news of the film in the trades, phoned Lemmon and asked if he had anyone editing it. "Yes - you, " was the reply. He was Oscar nominated, he thinks maybe partly because of the way he cut the three sequences together of the birth in the washroom.
As director Jack tried to give the actors as much latitude as possible. Obviously with Matthau, there was no communication problem whatsoever. If Lemmon had an idea, Matthau would grasp it immediately. Matthau apparently came on to the set with "You're not going to tell me how to act, are you?" Jack said "He did what he wanted to do, and it was his best performance." He was Oscar nominated but the film had mixed reviews and didn't do well enough for Lemmon to want to try it again.
With Deborah Winters, Charles Aidman, Felicia Farr as the unsympathetic wife. Photographed by Richard Kline. Q thought Marvin Hamlisch's music was really familiar and I asked if it sounded like Martin Hamlisch's other scores.
Producer Richard Carter had been trying to get it off the ground for a while, originally with Spencer Tracy. Eventually Felicia mentioned it to Matthau's wife Carol and that's how Walter ended up in it. John Paxton wrote it from Katharine Topkins' novel.
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