The Golden Age Of….The American Family-Suburban Branch-Jimmy
Stewart’s “Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation” (1962)- A Film Review
DVD Review
By Laura Perkins
Mr. Hobbs Takes A Holiday, starring Jimmy Stewart, Maureen
O’Hara, Fabian, 1962
My old friend and fellow writer here Sandy Salmon (and film
critic formerly with the American Film
Gazette but we aren’t supposed to say anything but the designated term writer
since we cover all beats so just writer) always told me that the best kind of
movie to review for him anyway was one which put the spotlight on some aspect
of American life at a certain nodal point in our history. Basically a “slice of
life” story told as much, or more about society, or as here in the film under
review Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation a certain segment of that society at the
time as any academic book or paper.
Within the plotline of this quasi-comic look at suburban
America circa the late 1950 and early 1960s Sandy’s comment is spot on even if it’s
a very glossy take on the mores of white middle class families in the “golden
age” of American prosperity. It is almost a clinically pure example of the inward
facing look of that segment during the heart of the Cold War red scare although
you would hardly know it from the total lack of outside world reality intervention.
I came up on the farm, a hard scrabble working truck farm outside of Albany in
Dutch country upstate New York around the time of setting of this film and would
have been the youngest daughter in this household, Katey, near contemporary. My
world never came close to looking like that including all the alleged teen
anagst and alienation traumas she faced. Didn’t have time for that kind of thing.
The plot is almost irrelevant here since it is pretty slim
but the sociology is something to behold. An older white suburban couple, married,
father Roger Hobbs, Jimmy Stewarts’ role, a successful banker, wife, Peggy, of
Peg of my heart fame, played by Maureen O’Hara, successful housewife, one troubled
boy teen, one very troubled girl teen, and no known dogs at home, along with
two older married with children daughters also housewives with husbands who
appear to be good providers for the next cookie cutter generation of one
provider families already heading toward extinction to be replaced by two working
parents also with no known dogs. Perfect sociological cohort of upwardly mobile
America in a day when that dream had some realistic possibilities of
achievement.
That was the sociology part the other part is the jack of
all trades Mr. Fix it dad part. That much put upon Roger Hobbs who followed a
long line of such dads from his own role in It’s
a Wonderful Life to television’s Ward Cleaver, Fred McMurray, and Ozzie
Nelson you get the picture. No child welfare department, no school counselors,
no police intervention, no priest, nada. Just Pops, aka here Bumpah to
grandchild. Old Hobbs takes the vacation from hell (in the future Chevy Chase would
take up those same cudgels) and turns it into a one man’s family triumph. Young
son alienated take him sailing. Young daughter ditto alienated and boy hungry
no problem. Send a guy around (the guy turns out to be singer Fabian heartthrob to young white suburban boy
hungry white girls in the interest of transparency me too but here whose beard
seems to make him cradle robbing). Daughter’s husband out of work get him work.
Cook getting uppity no problem woo her back. Machinery out of whack-give the
guy a wrench. An A number one Dad. Yeah, count this one if you really must see it
as strictly a slice of life from a time which seems like a million years ago.
Before rampart divorce, single parenthood, two worker households, and the like.
Even the family station wagon has bitten the dust.
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