Thursday, April 19, 2007 Under the influence of father By Henrylito D. Tacio Regarding Henry
"THE best gift a father can give to his son is the gift of himself -- his time," said C. Neil Strait. "For material things mean little, if there is not someone to share them with."
I was reminded of this passage while reading an article of "the transformation of Robin Williams" by Ellen Hawkes. The award-winning actor grew up as the only son of Robert and Laurie Williams in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. His father worked as an executive with the Ford Motor Company.
His mother always praised him but his father paid no attention to some of his achievements. When his family moved to Tiburon, a small town hugging San Francisco Bay, he became interested in acting and missed his classes.
At one time, he showed his poor grades to his father, who told him bluntly, "I'm not paying all that tuition for this." Hearing his comment, Robin replied, "It's okay. I've found what I really love to do. I've decided I want to be an actor."
Robert looked at his son. He sensed a lack of discipline and practicality that might prevent his son from achieving his goals. "It's fine to have a dream," he told him, "but you'd better learn a skill, like welding, just in case."
Robin became an overnight television sensation when he did "Mork & Mindy."
But after four years, the show's popularity faded. His first two screen appearances -- "Popeye" and "The World," according to Garp, were poorly received. His marriage was on the rocks and one of his best friends -- John Belushi - died from a drug overdose.
His world was getting nowhere. So, he decided to return home, to visit his father who was also sick at that time. It was at this time that father and son had each other. They started to open up and shared their thoughts. "I don't want to lose my family or my career," Robin told his father. "I guess that's why I came home."
Robert said, "You know, when my father died, the family business went bankrupt. I was only a teenager, but I had to go to work in the coal mine to help support the family."
In the weeks that followed, Robin learned more about his father's past.
But one story that really touched him was when Robert explained why he'd retired from Ford in 1967 and moved his family to California. At that time, Robin was 16 and he never knew what really had happened.
"The automobile industry was going downhill," Robert said. "I loved what I did, but all they wanted to do was churn out as many cars as they could. The companies were losing their sense of pride in their product. I couldn't stand by and watch it happen. I had to get out."
Hawkes wrote: "To Robin, his father's message was clear: you must decide what you want your life to be. Inspired by his father's courage, he knew that he, too, had to make some risks and reclaim the life he wanted."
In 1997, Robin received an Oscar nomination -- his third -- for his performance in "Good Will Hunting." He did win the award.
In accepting the prestigious trophy, he said, "My father told me I should always have a backup profession like welding."
According to Will and Ariel Durant, the family is the nucleus of civilization. It is composed of parents and children. Of course, the head of the family is the father.
"A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be," Frank A. Clark once said.
Through thick and thin, father is in. The famous American novelist Mark Twain remembered his father well: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
Like Robin Williams, Gene Hackman also credited his father for his award-winning performances. He lived with his parents in his maternal grandmother's house near the rail tracks in Danville, Illinois. His father, Eugene, a pressman for the local newspaper, wore rough overalls and had oil grit under his nails.
Normally, father and son did things together on Saturday. Then at age 13, his father told him he had other plans. Gene went off to play in a friend's front yard.
Then, something made him look up just as his father's car was passing. Eugene waved - a quick, off-hand flip of a wave -- and from that single gesture the boy knew his father was never coming back.
"Saturday after Saturday, for three years after his father left, Gene sat in the cinema in Danville, daydreaming through the hurt and anger of rejection," wrote John Culhane, author of the article. "He saw himself as the hero in all of Errol Flynn's World War II movies, and before long he was fantasizing about becoming an actor himself. He could do it, he felt; he just didn't know how."
To make a long story short, Hackman became an actor. In one of his movies, "I Never Sang for My Father," life seems imitate life.
