I Finally Watched 1943’s ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ With My Dad

My Dad

The first movie my father ever watched was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It hit bookshelves in 1943, and theaters in 1945. The movie is so old, hardly any of the cast or staff that worked on and in the movie is alive, save for Ted Donaldson, who played twelve-year-old Neeley. Dad was born to an Amish family in March of 1933, smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression. He once told me one of his first memories was of all the dust in the trees, thanks to the Dust Bowl that accompanied the depression. His family was poor, so like most of the Amish of then and now, as soon as he was old enough, his mom and dad put him to work so he could bring in some money for the family. In the summer of ‘45, his parents sent their twelve-year-old off to a friend’s farm to work.

Their friends weren’t Amish, so during that summer, dad was able to enjoy some of the things an Amish boy of that era wouldn’t typically enjoy; like a movie. One day, they took him to a theater in town where A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was playing. He never told me much about seeing it, except that he was so in awe by the images and emotion he saw on screen, that he actually cried. It is an emotional movie, but if you’ve ever seen it, you’ll know that boys back then usually tried to act tough. Little Neeley Nolan from the movie was no exception to that. But to hear my dad, my tough-as-nails dad with a heart of gold, admit that he cried during a movie? That convinced me of one thing; I needed to watch this movie.

During the entire process, seeing each scene of the movie for the first time, it sometimes felt as though I was actually watching it with him.

The Backstory

The novel is actually five different books, so to speak, each set at a different time in the main family’s lives. It focuses on the Nolans, an Irish-American family living in Brooklyn. The grandmother of the family immigrated from Ireland and raised her family in New York. The movie covers books one through three, focusing on several months in the life of the family. Katie Nolan is the housewife, who does what she can to make money for the family to survive on. Johnny is the husband, a dreamer who gets the occasional paying gig, singing and performing for the higher class, but has a drinking problem that usually costs him most of his meager paychecks.

Their children are 13-year-old Francie and 12-year-old Neeley. Francie adores her father, and Neeley is a typical rough-and-tumble boy of that era, born in the same year as my father.

The Experience

Watching the movie, I had to do the exact opposite of what I do when I watch a new release these days. My usual flavor is DC and Marvel, so I have to turn off my brain quite often while in the theaters or on my couch. Killer robots, lizards, explosions; it’s all loud fun and very little emotion for me. Watching A Tree, I had to forget every movie I’ve watched in the last decade or so, and power through it. The strange dialogue of the era, the black and white, the acting…it was an experience I hadn’t had in a long time. It actually took multiple tries to finish the movie, as bad as I wanted to watch it and try to feel what dad felt. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it; it was just different for this child of the 80s.

The movie mainly concentrates on the close relationship between Francie and her father. Seeing how dad was the only boy in his family with three sisters, perhaps he saw some of his sisters in Francie. I’m pretty sure he saw a lot of himself in Neeley, or a part of himself he dreamed could be real had he been born into an immigrant family in Brooklyn, instead of an Amish family in Kansas.

Whether you’re breaking this oldie out because you need a break from the God of Thunder, or you’re a fan of the black and white classics and want to cross it off your list, I think you’ll enjoy it. A Tree has everything a movie needs; a dreamer (the father), a villain (his alcoholism), his saving grace (his daughter), and even a small plot twist.

My Parting Thought

After knowing this movie existed pretty much all my life, and finally getting around to watching it after 43 years, I did a little research. The tree referenced in the title is the Tree of Heaven, or Tree of Paradise as mom and dad called it. Growing up in the same town with my parents that my dad grew up in, there was this massive tree in our backyard that I spent a LOT of time in. Climbing up, making slingshots out of its branches, jumping onto the house’s roof; even after we had to pay someone to cut the monstrous tree down, it kept sprouting up everywhere, all over our yard and town. Needless to say, it’s a very small town. But I never put it together until after watching the movie; the tree in the book and movie and the tree from my childhood home are the exact same species of tree.

How d'you like them apples.