Coffee and Father

“He guzzles down at least twenty cups of coffee every day.”

So wrote a publicist about my father, Gerald Mohr, in a 1952 letter sent to Hollywood’s moguls at the time: Howard Hughes, Jack L. Warner, Dore Schary, Louis B. Mayer, and Y. Frank Freeman. Hughes ran RKO Pictures then. Jack L. Warner headed Warner Bros. Studios; Dore Schary, production at MGM. Mayer ran MGM and in 1952 became chairman of Cinerama. Freeman was an executive at Paramount. The publicist begged these gentlemen to sign up my father. “I’ll make book,” she wrote. “This guy will be a star.” Although her letter groaned with hyperbole, she was right about the coffee. I’m not sure the number of cups he drank was twenty a day, but it certainly was at least ten. 

Coffee and my dad were inseparable. He craved it more than cigarettes, and thank goodness for that, for he was a chain smoker. The aroma of a good cup of coffee canceled the pungent odor of his Virginia Rounds cigarettes. Without coffee, our house could have become a stinking fetor.

I’m told Dad started to smoke because an early acting role called for cigarettes. Also, he needed something to do with his hands. But coffee? He never told me, but I’m sure his love of the brew arose organically. He never rhapsodized about cigarettes, but mornings—anytime actually—might find him singing a 1940 hit, “The Java Jive.” (The song mentions tea in passing, but really, it’s a valentine to coffee.)

One morning when I was five, we hiked Vasquez Rocks, the location for several  Westerns he’d appeared in. Then it was over to a nearby restaurant, I think Ranch House was in the name. Along with a heaping breakfast of steak and pancakes, a waiter brought him a cup of piping hot coffee. I got orange juice. “Aah,” he said after his first sip. Then a more lingering aaahh with the next swallow. He never frowned with coffee nearby.

Throughout my teens and until his early death at 54, my father and I enjoyed numerous brunches and lunches together, and each time, the moment we sat down, my father said, “May I have coffee while I wait?” If something had gone wrong at the studio, he might snap, “Coffee now.” But once it arrived, he relaxed into the banquette, then lit up the restaurant with his trademark smile. It wasn’t alcohol that fueled Dad and his actor pals when they showed up at his home for marathon games of Hearts. It was the coffee, which kept on coming. Amidst the whoops and hollers every time someone shot the moon, the cups never stopped rattling against the saucers.  

Little wonder that starting with college and lasting into the practice of law, I turned to coffee to keep studying and then boost those billable hours. But unlike my father, my doctor made me slow down. Maybe a cup or two a week. But the odor? There’s no limit. And every sniff summons my dad.

– Article penned by Anthony Mohr, son of actor Gerald Mohr

Anthony Mohr is the son of radio and film actor Gerald Mohr. His memoir, EVERY OTHER WEEKEND: Coming of Age with Two Different Dads, chronicles Tony’s childhood growing up in a blended family at a time when divorce was seen as strange and shocking after the split of Gerald Mohr and Tony’s mother, Rita.