{"id":20892,"date":"2024-12-10T07:01:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=20892"},"modified":"2024-12-10T07:05:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T12:05:02","slug":"my-father-and-me-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/creative-nonfiction\/my-father-and-me-too\/","title":{"rendered":"My Father and Me Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

My father sexually harassed Mamie Van Doren. He did so in Guns Girls and Gangsters<\/em>, a crime movie released in January 1959, the month Alaska became a state, the year Mattel launched the Barbie doll. I was a sixth-grader.<\/p>\n

In the scene where they first meet, Mamie Van Doren has returned to her dressing room after a Las Vegas nightclub performance only to find my father, Gerald Mohr, an ex-con just out of San Quentin, waiting with a message from her husband, who\u2019s still in prison and from whom she wants a divorce. My father slaps her face. Her husband\u2019s way of saying no.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you through?\u201d Mamie asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d says my father. \u201cI have a message for you too.\u201d He places his hands on Mamie\u2019s bare shoulders.<\/p>\n

Mamie pulls away, crosses the room, and sits at her vanity. My father follows her and, from behind, puts his hands back on Mamie\u2019s shoulders. He starts rubbing them. \u201cNo wonder Mike can\u2019t get you out of his mind. That picture he has of you in his cell doesn\u2019t even come close.\u201d Two minutes later, my father forces her to kiss him. All this without creasing his suit or disturbing his one-point pocket square.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived almost two decades beyond fifty-four, my father\u2019s age when he died, but each time I see him on the screen, I realize he\u2019s more suave than I\u2019ll ever be. One producer compared him to Humphrey Bogart. Growing up, I sat with my father through several of his B movies, my gaze shifting between the man next to me and his forty-foot image on the screen. The script writers fed him wonderful come-on lines. To his costar on a spaceship in The Angry Red Planet:<\/em> \u201cYou\u2019re the first scientist I\u2019ve known with lovely, long red hair.\u201d To his leading lady during Invasion USA<\/em>: \u201cThe last time I met a girl like you, they bombed Pearl Harbor.\u201d Always spoken in silky baritone, a voice I still miss since his death half a century ago. My dad seemed to be having fun up there on the screen while, a yard away, his real face froze in thought as he watched himself, treating his scenes as teachable moments, pondering, I\u2019m sure now, how to improve his craft. He probably didn\u2019t notice this fusion of reality and fantasy, so typical of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Despite seeing my father on screens large and small, I learned next to nothing about women. I guess I was still too young. The first\u2014okay, the first through tenth\u2014times I called a girl, all I could get out were questions like, \u201cHow\u2019d you do on the science test?\u201d I stumbled through these conversations, remembering not a word from my father\u2019s shows, let alone the throwaway charm that made him catnip to women.<\/p>\n

My father never suggested I imitate him, but many cultural cues did. Three years after Guns Girls and Gangsters<\/em> came out, singer Joanie Sommers released \u201cJohnny Get Angry.\u201d Whenever KFWB played that bouncy song, I put down my homework. Something caught my attention, a combination of Ms. Sommers\u2019 voice\u2014\u201cthe voice of the sixties\u201d one pundit labeled it, a California accent, which is to say she had no accent at all\u2014and then the lyrics. Joanie Sommers wanted \u201ca brave man\u2026a caveman.\u201d Hearing those words alarmed me, shook my confidence. Did I have to act like a Neanderthal to land a girlfriend? Apparently, Joanie Sommers thought so, but I couldn\u2019t even emulate a Cro-Magnon. I was unable to fathom why this singer would urge her boyfriend to get mad at her, let alone give her \u201cthe biggest lecture\u201d she ever had. How could that prove he \u201ccare[d], really care[d]\u201d? I tried to imagine castigating Jill, a girl in my ninth-grade English class whom I was too scared to ask to go steady, but the reverie ended with her laughing at me and skipping away. Joanie Sommers wanted her boyfriend to let her know he was \u201cthe boss.\u201d I kowtowed for nothing more than a smile.<\/p>\n

My father and I never saw Guns Girls and Gangsters<\/em> together, and now we can\u2019t, because he\u2019s gone. I didn\u2019t watch the film until 2018, but as I did, I felt as though I was staring at an artifact from an age when women wore bullet bras and studios advertised Mamie Van Doren as \u201cevery inch a teasing, taunting, \u2018come-on\u2019 blonde\u2026 And she made every inch pay off.\u201d Some of the traditional roles between men and woman are, thankfully, no longer in play, a welcome relief. I didn\u2019t have to become a caveman to persuade my wife to marry me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Late in 2018, my hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, ran a column by one of its former television reporters to the effect that as society adjusts \u201cin the wake of #MeToo, there will be cultural casualties.\u201d Among them, movies, songs, and books. \u201cIt is the price we pay for a better world,\u201d the author wrote in diction suggestive of Soviet commissars.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure its writer would find Guns Girls and Gangsters<\/em> repulsive, and that\u2019s fine. She doesn\u2019t have to watch it. But does \u201ccancel culture\u201d include my father as well as his film? I don\u2019t approve of the way my father\u2019s characters treated women, but scenes like his with Mamie Van Doren contain more than memories. They\u2019re part of an era that, like all eras, had, as Jean Stein, author of West of Eden<\/em>, said, \u201cits own personality\u2026 its own set of circumstances. And you can\u2019t have a historical perspective if you look back at the past with the values of the contemporary era.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a Saturday afternoon, late in 1962, with my father reminiscing about romantic scenes he\u2019d played over the years. He was giving me a perfect opportunity to learn how to court Jill, but, embarrassed, I asked for the opposite. \u201cDad, what do you say if you don\u2019t want to act romantic with a girl?\u201d<\/p>\n

My father crossed to the other side of the room. He looked at me, and as he did so, I could swear his mouth and eyes expanded into giant ovals. He flailed his arms. If he had a tail, he would have wagged it. \u201cOh!\u201d he said in a tremulous voice. \u201cDarling!\u201d Then he minced toward me.<\/p>\n

After laughing, I swallowed hard and said, \u201cNow how do you act romantic?\u201d<\/p>\n

The telephone rang. My father ignored it. He fixed me with a steady gaze. He walked toward me. Slowly. He took my hand. Never had he held it more gently. He tilted his head. All without a word. If I could have duplicated his urbane style with Jill, I\u2019m sure she\u2019d have donned my identification bracelet. But I was too shy, afraid she\u2019d laugh if I tried. I never tried. I didn\u2019t think about it then, but my father\u2019s lesson didn\u2019t include any trace of caveman behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father got his comeuppance, once. He told me about it over brunch at the Carolina Pines, a coffee shop with Googie architecture\u2014a wavy roof\u2014at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. Lighting a Virginia Round cigarette, he mentioned a picture (he didn\u2019t name it) in which the script had called for his leading lady (he didn\u2019t say who) to slap him in the face. The instant she did, she gasped and said, \u201cOh, Gerry!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCut,\u201d yelled the director. She\u2019d ruined the scene.<\/p>\n

Take two. She said it again. \u201cOh, Gerry!\u201d<\/p>\n

The director hollered, \u201cCut.\u201d<\/p>\n

As my father related this incident, I touched my cheek with my hand.<\/p>\n

After the third \u201cOh, Gerry!\u201d my father took his leading lady aside. \u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d he said. His cheek had turned red. \u201cI know you don\u2019t want to slap me, but dammit, quit saying you\u2019re sorry. Play the goddamned scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrint,\u201d the director called after the fourth take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father sexually harassed Mamie Van Doren. He did so in a scene from Guns Girls and Gangsters, a crime movie released in January 1959, the month Alaska became a state, the year Mattel launched the Barbie doll. I was a sixth-grader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[3815,3816],"class_list":["post-20892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-https-www-facebook-com-anthonyjmohr","tag-https-www-instagram-com-p-ctwl41hlefh","writer-anthony-j-mohr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20892"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21378,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions\/21378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}