Son of Father's Day

There’s no way, no way that you came from my loins! Soon as I get home, first thing I’m gonna do is punch yo’ mama in the mouth!"
Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) to son Junior Justice (Mike Henry), "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977)

"The apple does not usually fall far from the tree." So goes a medieval German adage. In our moviehouse backyard, these apples look as if they were tossed over the neighbor’s fence, two blocks over. The gist here is that we would be hard pressed to detect, at least in a passing glance, a shadow of the father falling across the face of our assembled cast.

In his early, square-shouldered adulthood, Creighton Tull Chaney labored to avoid the profession of his famous father, silent film’s "Man of a Thousand Faces," Lon Chaney (below right), star of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "The Unholy Three" and "The Phantom of the Opera." Dad, in fact, did what he could do to discourage his son from a life in show business. The elder Chaney never, as depicted in the 1957 whitewash of a screen biography (starring James Cagney), in a moment of unabashed sentimentalism on his deathbed, etch his well-used makeup kit with the moniker "Lon Chaney Jr."

Creighton, who worked variously as a meat-cutter, metal worker and farm laborer, went to business school and started a successful career in a Los Angeles appliance company. It was only after his father’s death in 1930 that he began appearing in movies, and he started using the name Lon Chaney Jr. in 1935.

In his later years, Chaney Jr., overweight from years of heavy drinking and smoking, ultimately succumbed to heart disease and throat cancer in 1973, age 67. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about his family to be titled A Century of Chaneys, which his grandson, Ron Chaney, intended on completing.

Keenan Wynn (above), one of Hollywood’s most recognizable character actors, distinguished by his bushy mustache and booming voice, exhibited his expressive talents in a number of movies, notably "Point Blank," "The Great Race," "Nashville" and "Once Upon a Time in the West." His most memorable role was in director Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic farce "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), as Col. "Bat" Guano (below), immortalized in his ominous warning to Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers): "…You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company!"




Keenan became an actor because of encouragement from his father, Ed Wynn (below). Ed was a top comedic act in vaudeville in the early 1910s and a star of the Ziegfeld Follies beginning in 1914. Known for ridiculous costumes and for family-oriented shows, he was billed as "The Perfect Fool."




In the late 1950s, it was son Keenan who encouraged Ed to start a new career as a dramatic actor. Father and son acted alongside each other in the 1956 Playhouse 90 live telecast of Rod Serling’s play "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (below), starring Jack Palance as a has-been boxer.





Ed appeared on Serling’s "The Twilight Zone" series twice, most notably in "One for the Angels," an episode Serling, a fan of the elder Wynn’s, had written especially for him.

For the rest of his life, Ed Wynn smoothly shuttled between comic and dramatic roles, from earning an Oscar nomination for his role as Albert Dussell in "The Diary of Anne Frank" (1959) to laughing on the ceiling as Uncle Albert in Walt Disney’s "Mary Poppins" (1964). The Disney studio became somewhat of a second home for the aging Wynn, who, besides providing the unforgettable voice for the Mad Hatter in "Alice in Wonderland," performed onscreen in "Babes in Toyland" and "That Darn Cat!"




Talk of Disney and "The Twilight Zone" brings us to the next dissimilar family affair. Brian Keith (above) starred in the 1961 Disney comedy "The Parent Trap," featuring Hayley Mills in a dual role as identical twins. His straight-faced presence as a police chief grounded the otherwise zany parody about Cold War hysteria, "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" (1966), but it was the small screen that predominantly showcased his slow-burn appeal, from "The Westerner" (created by Sam Peckinpah) and "Family Affair" to "Centennial" and "Hardcastle and McCormick."













Brian’s father was Robert Keith (right), a familiar character actor who appeared in numerous films, mostly in the 1950s. In 1953’s "The Wild One" (below), he portrayed the small-town sheriff who also happens to be the father of the girl desired by the rebellious Marlon Brando. Keith had a memorable role as the vindictive patriarch of a dysfunctional, avaricious family in "The Masks," an hour-long episode of "The Twilight Zone."



Keith’s second wife, Helena Shipman, was Brian Keith’s mother. (Robert Keith’s third wife, actress Peg Entwistle, infamously committed suicide when she jumped from the "H" in the then "Hollywoodland" sign in 1932.)

Three times married himself, Brian Keith, in his later years, suffered from emphysema and depression. On June 24, 1997, two months following the suicide of his daughter, Daisy, Keith took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Actor and well known environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. (below left) garnered six Emmy nominations portraying intern Dr. Victor Ehrlich on the groundbreaking 1980s TV series "St. Elsewhere." Nowadays, viewers recognize him as a greedy cable executive in commercials for DirecTV.













The senior Ed Begley (above right), whose career as a busy character actor included roles as Juror #10 in director Sidney Lumet’s "12 Angry Men" (1957), a self-righteous circuit preacher in the James Stewart, Henry Fonda western "Firecreek" (1968) and the relentless lynch mob leader in the Clint Eastwood western "Hang ‘Em High" (1968), won a deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as cutthroat politician-evangelist "Boss" Finley in director Richard Brooks’ 1962 version of Tennessee Williams’ play "Sweet Bird of Youth," starring Paul Newman.


Stacy Keach might best be known for his starring role in the 1980s-‘90s TV series "Mike Hammer" (above), based on author Mickey Spillane’s hardboiled private eye. His eclectic motion picture résumé includes quirky performances as a carnival showman with a portable electric chair in "The Traveling Executioner" (1970); the tubercular Doc Holliday in the 1971 revisionist western "Doc"; a punch-drunk fighter in director John Huston’s "Fat City" (1972), costarring Jeff Bridges; an albino gunfighter called Original Bad Bob in Huston’s "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972); a nightmare-plagued psychiatrist in charge of shell-shocked Vietnam veterans in 1980’s "The Ninth Configuration" (written and directed by The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty); and outlaw Frank James (with real-life brother James Keach as Jesse James) in director Walter Hill’s 1980 western "The Long Riders."















His father, Stacy Keach Sr. (above right), enjoyed an acting career that spanned six decades, from the 1930s to the ‘90s, racking up more than 70 film and television appearances. Among his most recognizable roles were Carlson, the gadget master on the second season of "Get Smart," and as the real-life Clarence Birdseye, the founder of modern frozen food, in a popular series of television commercials. (In the 1991 made-for-television movie "Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis," featuring Stacy Keach as real-life World War II Rear Admiral Charles McVay, Keach Sr. portrayed his father.)

The elder Keach passed away at the age of 88 in 2003. In his eulogy for his father, Stacy recalled when he and his brother, James, were growing up, "both Mom and Dad were reluctant to encourage either of their two sons to join the business because of the insecurities and heartaches which all of us who choose such a life must find a way to survive. Dad certainly found the way, but he wanted his two sons to become either lawyers or doctors…something where we wouldn’t have to worry about where our next job was coming. How many times, how many times in my career have I said, ‘You know, maybe Dad was right.’"

Stacy noted, "No man ever loved his family more…nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be surrounded by those he loved. He taught me the importance of standing up for what you believe in, and that there is no greater priority in life than the love of your family and friends…and that is not just his legacy for me, but for all of us."