Oh, Daddy!

A harried but soft-hearted clerk, perpetually skittish of both ledgers and ladies, discovers that a puckish infant has been deposited on his doorstep with nothing but a note scrawled “Oh, Daddy!”—instantly detonating his orderly bachelor cosmos. Eddie Lyons, all pratfall elbows and flustered double-takes, ricochets through cramped boarding-house corridors, rain-slick streets, and the cavernous waiting room of a very judgmental orphanage while the gurgling parcel in his arms orchestrates chaos like a miniature maestro. Each new face—landlady, constable, spinster neighbor, flirtatious stenographer—misreads the situation in deliciously farcical ways, snowballing gossip into urban legend: the mousey clerk must be a clandestine Lothario, a fugitive bridegroom, or, worse, the mayor’s clandestine heir. Cue slammed doors, runaway perambulators, a slapstick chase through a muddy park, and a final paternity hearing where the squirming infant finally coos “Da-da” and melts every heart, including ours. The film ends on a freeze-frame of Lyons, eyes wide with terror and tenderness, clutching the child like a ticking time-bomb of joy.