A `Movie Dad's' life goes off-script

Paul Dooley became a go-to paternal figure in films even as his own children disappeared for a decade

Paul Dooley had been a character actor, a commercial pitchman, a Broadway thespian and a stand-up comedian by the time writerdirector John Hughes cast him as the father of Molly Ringwald in 1984's “Sixteen Candles.”

After that? He was a dad, says Dooley, 94, as he talked recently about his new memoir, “Movie Dad.” “I got typed being a dad,” he says from his Los Angeles home. “So that's why the multitude of things are being a dad.”

He'd been a movie dad before. Director Robert Altman, a frequent collaborator, cast him as the father of Mia Farrow in 1978's “A Wedding.” A year later, he was Dad again in the acclaimed coming-of-age film “Breaking Away.” Oddly enough, Dennis Christopher played his son in both those films.

And he'd be a movie dad after that, too. Dooley played Julia Roberts' dad in 1999's “Runaway Bride,” walking her down the aisle three times — “Once on a horse,” he notes. Years later he had a recurring role on HBO's “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as Cheryl Hines' father, which made him Larry David's father-in-law.

But the irony in all those paternal roles, and all the other on-screen fathers he played, was that off the screen, Dooley's own children vanished for most of a decade, a trauma he alludes to in the subtitle of the book: “Finding Myself and My Family On Screen and Off.”

Many of his roles are well known, though the stories behind them are fresh and entertaining in his memoir. But that real-life family drama around his role as a dad is something Dooley says he has almost never shared.

“I don't think anybody knows about that until they read the book,” Dooley says. “Some of my friends know it. But even with many of my best friends, I didn't talk about it.

“You couldn't believe the thing was happening. Yet it happened.”

A boy grows up

For an actor so often typecast as a father, Dooley's own dad didn't provide much of a role model.

“The odd thing is I bonded with him to the extent that I wanted to be like him,” Dooley says. “If he didn't smile, I didn't smile. If he didn't laugh, I didn't laugh.

“I became this kind of character to portray these guys on-screen who were kind of withdrawn, stoic ... kind of, you know, unfeeling people. Sometimes cranky guys.”

At 12, he discovered radio comedies with stars such as Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny, and become obsessed with the art of jokes. A few years later, a high school friend introduced him to the films of Buster Keaton, and Dooley saw a vision of his future.

“I knew, somehow, I wanted to do what he did,” he writes in the book. “I wanted to try to become a comic actor.”

Success, then trouble

Things remained good in the '60s.

Steady commercial work filled the decade, interspersed with legitimate theater work. He was cast in “The Odd Couple” on Broadway as one of Oscar and Felix's poker buddies. When Art Carney left the show, Dooley replaced him as Felix opposite Walter Matthau as Oscar.

When the Second City comedy troupe came to New York City from Chicago, he discovered a love and natural talent for improv, and appeared with it regularly during a long run in Greenwich Village.

But at home things were not good.

Around the end of the decade, he and his wife split, sharing custody of their daughter and son.

Dooley stayed busy as his background in comedy and commercials led him to a new gig as a co-creator of Children's Television Workshop's series “The Electric Company,” which debuted in 1971.

The kid who loved jokes now got to make jokes for a new generation, though he found the work entertaining, too.

“I was doing little private jokes for myself and they became features,” Dooley says of some of the regular characters he created. Like Child Chef Julia Grownup, a play on the name of the real-life chef Julia Child, or the detective character named Fargo North, Decoder, a play on city and state.

Then, one summer day in the early '70s, while Dooley's kids were on vacation with his ex-wife, a letter arrived.

“I'm taking the kids,” it read in part. “We're not coming back.”

Heartache to happy days

“When it happened, I had some odd sense it could have been my fault,” Dooley says. “You think, what could I have said or done that made this happen? Well, you forgot about the fact that my ex-wife had her own problems for her own reasons.”

Dooley hired detectives. He went to court and got an order granting him sole custody. Yet no traces of the children could be found.

“In the first three months, it was almost just like a trauma,” he says. “But I didn't bring it up to friends. I didn't want to feel pity or anything. I just was hurt, but I was very passive, and I just ate it.”

Finally, after a year, he made the difficult choice to halt his active efforts to find them. A decade or so passed. Then, a tip arrived with his daughter's location. Soon, though hesitantly at first, Dooley and his nowyoung adult children were reunited.