What Happened to Father

Summary

A harried patriarch, drowning in IOUs, barters his last asset—his own absurdity—by mortgaging domestic harmony to a lecherous financier who covets the household’s dewy-eyed ingénue; what unfurls is a delirious carnival in which matrimony, opera, and bankruptcy share the same breathless heartbeat. While organ chords swell for his elder daughter’s aisle-bound rapture, the old man’s telephone erupts with the soprano’s shriek: the backer’s discarded mistress is usurping the diva’s throne. Galloping off in a honeymoon jalopy still ribboned for another destiny, he crashes into his own opus, “Frolic of the Frogs,” only to discover that every croaker has fled the pond. One frantic dress rehearsal later, the debt-ridden dreamer himself metamorphoses into a croaking knight-errant, jeered by a pitiless amphitheater, slugging the puppet-master before landing behind iron bars where, like some vaudeville Prospero, he conjures a jailbreak from broom handles and baritones. Across moonlit rooftops, coal-dust alleys, and the perpetual honk of Tin Pan traffic, the fugitive patriarch ricochets until the family, bruised but beaming, reassembles beneath the same flower-wreathed archway that once mocked his absence.

Synopsis

To pay back his increasing debts, Father writes a comic opera, Frolic of the Frogs , with the financial backing of Carelton Bayne, who fancies Father's youngest daughter. On the day of the opera's opening, Fredericka, the elder daughter, is to be married, but when Father receives a frantic call from the opera's leading lady, who is about to be replaced by one of Bayne's former lovers, he abandons the wedding and rushes to the theater in the honeymoon car. Arriving too late to stop the exodus of both male and female stars, Father steps in as the leading man after one panicked rehearsal and is vigorously booed by the audience. The show in ruins, Father slugs Bayne and is hauled off to jail but organizes the other prisoners and effects a clever escape. Several adventures, car chases and misunderstandings later, Father and family finally reunite for the wedding.