Plot: Upper middle class octogenarians Tom and Margaret Garrison live in the same expansive suburban New York home they have for decades. Both their health are declining, Margaret who suffered her first heart attack a year ago, and Tom who is slowly slipping into senility, although he does not acknowledge it. To those that look at Tom's life from the outside, they see a long upstanding pillar of the community. Their adult offspring Gene and Alice, however, see a domineering, unbending and unloving man who never truly provided the emotional support they wanted or needed, that type of support always coming from their mother. Tom long ago banished Alice, who now lives in Chicago, from their lives in any meaningful way when she married a Jew. Gene, a professor and published writer, lives in the city and quietly does whatever he can to help them out in their old age, although he does it more for their mother, their father to who he sees it more as an obligation than a want. Tom is however oblivious to Gene's feelings toward him. Widowed now for a year, Gene is thinking of moving to Los Angeles as he met Dr. Peggy Thayer, a physician with her own practice there to who he wants to get married. Although he hates the way his father makes him feel, he also hates the guilt he would feel of possibly "deserting" them, especially as he knows Tom's relationship with his own drunkard father was non-existent. Gene's mixed feelings about what to do are exacerbated after Margaret passes away leaving Tom on his own, he who refuses to move or to get professional help. Gene so wants to love his father, but it may be too late no matter what he decides to do.
Alternative Plot: Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman) is a successful college professor, who has a rocky relationship with his dad, Tom (Melvyn Douglas). He believes that his father has never truly accepted him and worries about how his plans to move to California and marry his girlfriend may affect his relationship with his father. His mother (Dorothy Stickney) encourages Gene to move on despite how Tom may feel. But when his mother dies, Gene worries that his marriage and move might depress his father even more.
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