While the Royal Australian Navy evacuates Salamaua in February 1942 ahead of a Japanese invasion, Commander Frank Houghton coerces an old friend, a lovable curmudgeon alcoholic American beachcomber Walter Eckland, into becoming a coast watcher for the Allies. Houghton escorts Eckland to deserted Matalava Island to watch for Japanese airplanes. To ensure Eckland stays put, Houghton sees to it that his own ship "accidentally" knocks a hole in Eckland's launch while departing, so his only boat is a utility dinghy. To motivate Eckland, Houghton has his crew hide bottles of whisky around the island, rewarding each aircraft sighting with directions to one of the bottles. Houghton finds a replacement watcher, but Eckland has to retrieve him from nearby Bundy Island by dinghy. He unexpectedly finds eight civilians stranded there: Frenchwoman Catherine Freneau and seven young schoolgirls under her care. She informs him that the man he came for was killed in an air raid. Eckland reluctantly takes the party back to Matalava with him, but there is no safe way for them to be evacuated. The fastidious Freneau clashes repeatedly with the slovenly, uncouth Eckland; they call each other "Miss Goody Two Shoes" and "a rude, foul-mouthed, drunken, filthy beast". In the end, though, he adjusts to her and the girls. She learns that Eckland had been a history professor before he chose a freer way of life in the South Pacific. Afterwards, Ecklund cares for Freneau after they mistakenly believe she has been bitten by a deadly snake. With nothing else to do, he gives her whisky; she gets drunk and speaks freely. Now in love, the couple arrange to be married by a military chaplain over the radio, but strafing by a Japanese airplane interrupts the ceremony. Since they have been detected, Houghton sends an American submarine to pick them up, but an enemy patrol boat shows up first. Leaving Catherine and the schoolgirls in his dinghy, Eckland takes his now-repaired launch out to lure the Japanese vessel beyond the surrounding reef so the submarine can torpedo it. The Japanese sink his boat, but the submarine sinks the patrol boat, and Eckland survives to be rescued.
Cast
Cary Grant as Walter Christopher Eckland
Leslie Caron as Catherine Louise Marie Ernestine Freneau
Father Goose was filmed on location in Jamaica. When Grant was asked by a Universal Pictures executive to read the short story, he liked it well enough to pass it along to Peter Stone, who told him he wanted to write the screenplay. Grant then arranged for him to be signed to Father Goose; Stone's contract called for a picture a year for five years. Director Ralph Nelson stated he tried to avoid professional child actors; with one exception, he succeeded. The Japanese patrol vessel at the end of the film was portrayed by a former U.S. Coast Guard wood hull 83-foot WPB patrol boat.
Reception
Father Goose grossed $12,500,000 at the domestic box office, earning $6 million in US theatrical rentals. Time Out Film Guide panned the film, complaining, "It's a shame that Grant... should have logged this sentimental claptrap as his penultimate film" and "Grant frequently looks as if he really didn't want to be there, wading lost in a sludge of turgid drama and pallid comedy." Film4 agreed, stating "the story all too slowly descends into sentimental sludge." In its contemporary review, Variety found more to like: "Cary Grant comes up with an about-face change of character.... plays an unshaven bum addicted to tippling and tattered attire, a long way from the suave figure he usually projects but affording him opportunity for nutty characterization. Leslie Caron and Trevor Howard are valuable assists to plottage...." Bosley Crowther, The New York Times critic, considered it "a cheerfully fanciful fable" and "some harmless entertainment". Of the title character, he wrote, "It is not a very deep character or a very real one, but it is fun."
