Father of the Bride (1950)

My Review

Spencer Tracy plays the father of Elizabeth Taylor as he shares with the audience the problems, frustrations, and joys of organizing and paying for her wedding in “Father of the Bride.” Director Vincente Minnelli (“The Pirate” 1948) gave us an absorbing old-fashioned family story from a top-rate screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. It was adapted from the 1948 novel of the same name by Edward Streeter.

The supporting cast from MGM’s large stable of talented performers include Joan Bennett, Don Taylor, Billie Burke, Leo G. Carroll, Maroni Olsen, Melville Cooper, Taylor Holmes, Frank Orth, and Rusty Tamblyn as Liz Taylor’s kid brother Tommy Banks. The watchable “Father of the Bride” was the seventh highest grossing film of 1950 for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

It received three Academy Award nods for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor (Tracy). “Father of the Bride” was primarily filmed at MGM Studios in Culver City, with some exterior shots done in Pasadena, San Marino, and Beverly Hills, California. A sequel was released the next year called “Father’s Little Dividend” with the same cast. Two remakes of the same name were produced years later, in 1991 (with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton) and in 2022 (starring Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan). Sequels to the 1991 “Father of the Bride” were released in 1995 and 2020 with basically the same core cast members.