Bringing Up Father on AllMovie

George McManus' long-running domestic comic strip Bringing Up Father was brought to the screen by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures. Reportedly, Hearst had approached vaudeville's Three Keatons (Joe, Myra and young Buster) to star in this project back in 1916, but Joe Keaton hated films and turned the newspaper mogul down flat. This 1928 film stars J. Farrell McDonald and Polly Moran as nouveau riche Irish-Americans Jiggs and Maggie, with Gertrude Olmstead as their pretty daughter Ellen. Despite his wealth, Jiggs prefers keeping company with his old drinking buddies at the greasy-spoon emporium owned by Dinty Moore (Jules Cowles), but social-climbing Maggie has loftier ambitions, among them a wealthy marriage between Ellen and a hand-kissing Count (Andres de Segurola). With Jiggs' covert help, Ellen is able to spend her time with her true love Dennis (Grant Withers), leading to a wealth of farcical complications. The magnificent Marie Dressler is wasted in the comparatively minor role of Dinty Moore's wife Annie, a role created solely for the purpose of reteaming Dressler with her Callahans and the Murphys cohort Polly Moran.