MovieChat Forums > Miracle on 34th Street (1947) Discussion > Susie's father

Susie's father

posted 9 years ago by joannabaroncelli
5 replies | jump to latest

Susie remarks that she had never known her father because her parents were divorced when she was a baby. That doesn't mean he couldn't be a part of her life and have visitation rights. I can't believe any father would just walk away from his newborn daughter and never see her again just because the marriage didn't work out. As bitter as Doris was towards her ex I can't see that she would deny him a role in Susie's life. Perhaps Susie's father died later, that would be the only explanation of his absense of any presence in her life. Of course Susie grew to love Mr. Gayley who would become her stepfather but still the movie paints a picture of a father who would just walk away and not want to even know his daughter, I find that hard to believe.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] astockton_uk 8 years ago

If Susie was eight years old in 1947, then she was born around 1939. World War II began in September 1939, although the United States didn't join the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Possibly Mr. Walker foresaw that the United States would be sucked into the war, and when it happened, he'd be drafted. He might have decided he married too young, before he'd sowed all his wild oats, and didn't want to be tied down by a wife and baby when he might be dead in a few years.

[–] PillowRock 9 years ago

Perhaps Susie's father died later, that would be the only explanation of his absense of any presence in her life.

No, it's not the *only* explanation.

It's possible that you're applying more modern perceptions air travel and long distance phone calls to characters in the 1940s. If work (or family obligations after the divorce) had forced them to opposite sides of the country, then losing all contact isn't that farfetched. The travel to visit would be prohibitive. Cross-country phone calls were an exceptionally rare luxury if you weren't "rich". Even when I was kid in the 1960s, long distance phone calls were still expensive enough, relative to the time, that my Mom only talked to her Mom & siblings a few times a year (that was Michigan to eastern Pennsylvania).

I can see Doris deciding that if the father's contact was only going to be a few cards / letters and maybe one or two phone calls per year, then she would rather a clean break.

As another (somewhat later) point of reference, note that the difficulties of being on opposite coasts of the US was the justification for splitting up the twins in the original version of The Parent Trap. By the time the 1990s remake came along, they had to increase that separation to different continents (8 time zones apart instead of 3) in order to have *any* plausibility for the same concept.

[–] liscarkat (16530) 4 years ago

"I can't believe any father would just walk away from his newborn daughter and never see her again just because the marriage didn't work out. As bitter as Doris was towards her ex I can't see that she would deny him a role in Susie's life."

It happens every day, and did then, too.

[–] GirlNamedSue (232) 4 years ago

You have to consider the era. Back then, people just didn't get divorced like we do today. A divorce was a major scandal and a major failure for a young woman who "couldn't keep her husband happy" or a man who married a "tramp". Women stayed with abusive cheating husbands to save face.

In the context of post war America, a divorced woman like Doris who was educated, cultured, a career woman, and a good mother was assumed to be the "good" person in the divorce. In 1947, most if not all movie viewers assumed the divorced dad was an alcoholic wife beating bum with a gambling addiction.