Father Goose (1964) on Netflix
Approved19641h 58mAdventureComedyRomance
In 1942, beachcomber Walter Eckland is talked into watching for Japanese aircraft from a South Seas island. Schoolteacher Catherine Freneau and seven girls arrive on the island.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.3/1013,740 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Trailer
Plot summary
Commander Frank Houghton needs eyes on the Japanese aircraft crossing the South Pacific, so he forces American beachcomber Walter Eckland into the job. Houghton's sailors leave bottles of Scotch hidden around Matalava Island and hand over directions to one for each plane Eckland reports, and they put a hole in his cabin cruiser so he cannot sail away. When a nearby watcher is threatened, Houghton talks Eckland into taking his small dinghy to bring the man's replacement. There he finds Catherine Freneau, a French schoolteacher, and seven girls who escaped Rabaul and are stranded. He carries them back to Matalava. Houghton says the Japanese activity means the group must stay for weeks before anyone can evacuate them. Eckland will not open his hut or his supplies to them, so Freneau shows the girls how to get what they need.
Cast
- Sharyl Lockeas Jenny
- Jennifer Berringtonas Harriet
- Nicole Felsetteas Dominique
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Father Goose (1964)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Peter Stone accepted his Oscar, he said: "Thank you to Cary Grant who keeps winning these things for other people."
- Screenwriter Frank Tarloff, hired after working with producer Hal Chester on School for Scoundrels, initially turned down Father Goose, dismissing it as "a poor man's African Queen," before changing his mind; the project was originally set to be directed by fellow American blacklistee Cy Endfield as a small British picture.
- Cary Grant received the original story from a Universal executive and passed it to Peter Stone, who asked to write the screenplay; Grant then arranged for Stone to be signed under a contract calling for one picture a year for five years.
- Coastwatcher characters were common in early-1960s films and television partly because President John F. Kennedy's life had famously been saved by a coastwatcher during World War II.
- Director Ralph Nelson said he tried to avoid casting professional child actors for the film's schoolgirls, and succeeded with every one of them except Verina Greenlaw, who played Christine.
