Introduction
Welcome to my corner! This week, I'm sharing my thoughts on the film Father's Little Dividend. The TCM television channel played it on August 9, 2025. I recorded it then and just got around to watching it recently. Enjoy!
Father's Little Dividend
Father's Little Dividend is a 1951 American comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor. The film is a sequel to Father of the Bride (1950).
Plot: A year after dealing with a surprise engagement in Father of the Bride, Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy) and his wife, Ellie (Joan Bennett), are in for another shock when they find their daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) is now pregnant. Not ready to be a grandfather, Stanley keeps quiet while everyone else fawns over the mother-to-be and bothers her about baby names and nursery decorations. Ironically, his silence makes him the person Kay turns to most for help, which, in turn, helps him.
Acting: Spencer Tracy played Stanley T. Banks. His four most notable movies are: Judgement at Nuremberg, Father of the Bride, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Inherit the Wind. I think Father of the Bride is my favorite, though I like a lot of his movies.
Joan Bennett played Ellie Banks. Her four most notable films are Suspiria, Scarlet Street, Man Hunt and The Woman in the Window. I still haven't seen her other work. Elizabeth Taylor played Kay Banks. The four films she's most known for are: The Taming of the Shrew, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Suddenly, Last Summer. My favorite of her movies is Father of the Bride.
Don Taylor played Buckley Dunstan. Out of his notable titles, there was only one that he acted in; the other three he directed. These titles include Stalag 17 - for acting, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, The Final Countdown and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977). He directed more than he acted. However, I haven't seen any of his other acting or directing work.
Minor roles were played by: Billie Burke as Doris Dunstan; Richard Rober as Police Sergeant; Marietta Canty as Delilah; Russ Tamblyn as Tommy Banks (credited as Rusty Tamblyn); Tome Irish as Ben Banks; Hayden Rorke as Dr. Andrew Nordell; Paul Harvey as Reverend Galsworthy; and Donald and Donna Clark as baby Stanley Banks Dunstan.
Technical Aspects: Father of the Bride was such a hit at the box office and with critics that MGM rushed a sequel into production in 1950. Its working title was Now I Am a Grandfather.
Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett had appeared in films together at Fox two decades earlier, including Me and My Gal, in which their characters marry and She Wanted a Millionaire.
According to film critic Leonard Maltin, this film was one of the first examples of a modern film sequel.
From TCM: Father of the Bride, a delightful comedy about the effects of an impending marriage on a middle-class American family, starred Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. It had been such a smash hit upon its release in 1950 that MGM released the sequel —Father's Little Dividend (1951) — a mere ten months after the original. In it, we find that the curmudgeonly patriarch, Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy), is still recovering from the shock of his daughter's wedding to Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor) and must now deal with becoming a grandfather.
MGM had registered a tentative title of Now I'm a Grandfather for the sequel while Father of the Bride was still in production, and since most of the cast and crew were under contract to MGM at the time, producer Pandro Berman was easily able to reassemble them for the speedy 23-day shoot. Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich teamed up again on the screenplay, which eventually was titled Father's Little Dividend. Although director Vincente Minnelli was in the midst of shooting his next film, An American in Paris (1951), Berman was adamant about having the same director helm the second film. So, Minelli arranged to do Father's Little Dividend during a break during An American in Paris while he waited for sets to be completed for its famous ballet sequence.
Despite the success of Father of the Bride, Spencer Tracy wasn't keen on doing a sequel since he believed that they rarely lived up to the originals, and he wanted a bigger challenge than playing a role he had already done before. (You and I are thinking the same thing, Spencer.) Tracy's paramour Katharine Hepburn, however, convinced him to change his mind with the argument that he owed it to the studio and that it made good business sense to do it.
Like the first shoot on Father of the Bride, Father's Little Dividend proved to be a pleasure for everyone involved. However, the off-screen lives of the key actors involved didn't always match the picture-perfect world of the Banks and Dunstan families in the films. During the buzz surrounding Father of the Bride, all eyes had been on gorgeous ingenue Elizabeth Taylor as life imitated art, and she became a real-life bride for the first time with a much-publicized wedding to hotel heir Nicky Hilton. During the filming of Father's Little Dividend, however, Taylor's marriage was unraveling, and by the time the sequel was released, she had already filed for divorce.
When Father's Little Dividend became another big hit for the studio, there was talk of making a third installment, with hopes that the Banks family might become another cash cow for the studio in the same vein as the Andy Hardy family series. However, that never came to pass after actress Joan Bennett, who played Mrs. Banks, became embroiled in a scandal that adversely affected her film career. Bennett's husband at the time, Walter Wanger, believed her to be having an affair with her long-time agent Jennings Lang. One night, not long after Father's Little Dividend was released, Wanger confronted Bennett an Lang in a restaurant parking lot and shot Lang in the groin. Bennett's career never fully recovered after that, and as a result, there were no more Father of the Bride movies. (DANG!)
Final Thoughts: Did they seriously not name babies until their christening ceremonies back then? This poor baby didn't have a name until he was six months old, and at least on grandparent (Stanley) was surprised at the name. What were they calling them for six months, just "baby"? What about the birth certificate? Maybe that was just something they didn't think about or care about when making the movie, I don't know.
As far as sequels go, this was a pretty good one. I wasn't sure how it would live up to the first one, but it did a fine job. I think I still like Father of the Bride more, but Father's Little Dividend is a good watch too, probably just as funny. I recommend you watch both!
My favorite scene was when Stanley Banks left his sleeping grandson on a bench by the side of the road to play soccer with some little boys. After half an hour of playing, he realizes the baby is gone and goes rampant trying to find him. He finally ends up at the police station, and luckily, they have the grandson, but they're not too keen to give up the baby to someone who "lost" him. It is a hilarious scene, the best of the whole movie.
My favorite quote is, "Now look, Ellie, I know how anxious you've been to get your hooks into that baby, but the answer is NO. I've been through all that, you know, the 2:00 feedings, the colic and the measles and all the rest of it, I'm not going through all of it again, especially with somebody else's baby." —Stanley Banks.
Where to watch it: According to Google, Father's Little Dividend is currently available on Xumo Play, Tubi, Pluto TV, Sling TV, The Roku Channel, and PLEX. You can also purchase or rent a digital copy for a few dollars. I've also donated a DVD copy of the film to the Emil M. Larson Public Library in Clark for you all to enjoy, if you choose.
