MovieChat Forums > Flipper (1964) Discussion > Was Porter Ricks really Sandy + Bud's d...

Was Porter Ricks really Sandy + Bud's dad?

posted 15 years ago by fugazzi49
21 replies | jump to latest

Brian Kelly played Porter Ricks perfectly, with just the right mix of fatherly sterness and warmth. On top of that who wouldn't want a dad who could jump fully clothed into the ocean and beat up and capture the bad guys? Could Ward Cleaver do that? Hardly! But I don't think they could have found a man who looked less like his kids on the show. He's so black-haired, dark and swarthy, and his kids are light blond Sandy and redhead, freckled Bud. I love the show and feel that Kelly really was great in this part, but the lack of physical similarity was noticed by me even as a mid teen watching the original shows. Did anybody else feel this way?

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] Pipchick 10 years ago

I know someone who has red hair and freckles. Their father has dark hair and their mom has natural blonde hair, so lack of similarity is possible.

[–] 10 years ago

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[–] magolding 9 years ago

Members of the same family usually have a family resemblance, so when two members of a family look a lot different many people consider it a lot stranger than it actually is.

For an example of family members who look like members of different races see number nine on this list:

http://listverse.com/2010/01/21/10-stories-of-bizarre-births/

My two younger brothers had blonde hair when they were children but it got somewhat darker when they were older, so perhaps Sandy and Bud were not really blonde haired but really genetically "future medium brown haired".

Exposure to sunlight tends to sometimes make hair lighter, I think. In the case of my brothers I remember a faint greenish tinge to their hair after a summer at the sea shore!
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[–] m-de-werd 7 years ago

To tell the truth I have never thought much about the looks of the "father" and the sons, but I wasn't even a teenager when I watched Flipper. However red hairy sons can have dark fathers. My first boyfried had red hair, whereas his father was dark-haired and his mother blond. As a matter of fact he was nearly a copy of his mother's brother who had died very young. Although his father was not so hot as Brian Kelly, he was quite attractive too.

When I look back, what bothers me more is that Brian Kelly was a litte bit too young to be the real dad of Luke Halpin, who is only 16 years younger. Of course I know it is TV and entertainment, but does it have to be so unrealistic? On the other I have to admit that one of the best things of the show was the ultrahot dad-son-pairing of Luke Halpin and Brian Kelly!