Frances McDormand: “Dont do drugs”

My mother would have preferred a mother more like Beulah Bondi in It’s a Wonderful Life.

My daughters would have preferred a mother more like Susan Sarandon in Little Women or Natasha Richardson in The Parent Trap.

Much as I love Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas and Claudia McNeil in Raisin in the Sun, I would have preferred a mother more like Frances McDormand in Almost Famous  or like Marcia Gay Harden in Whip It than the one I had and loved and was more like Debbie Reynolds in Albert Brooks’ Mother.

I’ve been reading Richard Corliss’ Mom in the Movies,  a sprightly survey of cinemamas, as though it were a catalogue of mail-order moms. Sigourney Weaver in Aliens? That would be empowering. Barbara Harris or Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday? That would raise the empathy quotient. The cinemamas that move me most are the self-sacrificing Stanwyck in Stella Dallas and Juanita Moore in Imitation of Life, both of whom illustrate the Olive Higgins Prouty Principle (she wrote Stella Dallas) that:

My mother would have preferred a mother more like Beulah Bondi in It’s a Wonderful Life.

My daughters would have preferred a mother more like Susan Sarandon in Little Women or Natasha Richardson in The Parent Trap.

Much as I love Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas and Claudia McNeil in Raisin in the Sun, I would have preferred a mother more like Frances McDormand in Almost Famous  or like Marcia Gay Harden in Whip It than the one I had and loved and was more like Debbie Reynolds in Albert Brooks’ Mother.

I’ve been reading Richard Corliss’ Mom in the Movies,  a sprightly survey of cinemamas, as though it were a catalogue of mail-order moms. Sigourney Weaver in Aliens? That would be empowering. Barbara Harris or Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday? That would raise the empathy quotient. The cinemamas that move me met are the self-sacrificing Stanwyck in Stella Dallas and Juanita Moore in Imitation of Life, both of whom illustrate the Olive Higgins Prouty Rule (Prouty wrote Stella Dallas ) that: Foster mothers are healthier, more helpful figures than biological moms.

This is also the the implicit message in To Each His Own (1946), with Olivia de Havilland as the unwed mother who ultimately gives up her son to friends of hers. Dare you to watch the end of the 1959 Imitation of Life or To Each His Own without going through an entire Kleenex box.

Which movie mom would you choose for your own? Why?