Molly Ringwald’s ‘Sixteen Candles’ father reveals the perverted line he ended up re-writing

Everyone’s favorite dad, actor Paul Dooley, revealed in his memoir that when he starred as Molly Ringwald’s father in “Sixteen Candles” he nixed one particular line that he found perverted and incestuous in nature.

His memoir is called, “Movie Dad: Finding Myself and My Family, On Screen and Off.” Dooley, 94, recounts filming his father-daughter talk in the movie with then-15-year-old Ringwald in his book.

“Near the end of their talk, the script had the dad giving a friendly pat on his daughter’s behind while saying, ‘Where the heck are your panties?’” he shockingly wrote, recalling the line.

It bothered him a great deal and it also incensed Ringwald’s real-life mother evidently.

(Video Credit: Good Filmz)

“A pat on the behind? If you can detect missing panties, that’s more like copping a feel,” he bluntly wrote.

Ringwald’s mother asked about changing or removing the line and Dooley edited it so that it was not perverted in any manner.

“I would have the dad say, ‘When you finally meet your Mr. Right, make sure he knows you wear the pants in the family,’” he wrote and then commented that although the remark was innocent, it was also loaded given the audience knows Ringwald’s character gave a boy her underwear.

“Molly’s mom loved it,” Dooley stated. “We took it to [director] John Hughes, who liked it too. That became the ending to the scene.”

Ringwald is now 54. She has also spoken about being uncomfortable with some of the scenes in the classic 1984 teen movie.

The leftist Breakfast Club star told NPR in 2018 that she saw “Sixteen Candles” in a different light as an adult.

“There were parts of that film that bothered me then. Although everybody likes to say that I had, you know, John Hughes’ ear and he did listen to me in a lot of ways, I wasn’t the filmmaker,” she admitted.

(Video Credit: Pamul Thakur)

“And, you know, sometimes I would tell him, ‘Well, I think that this is kind of tacky’ or ‘I think that this is irrelevant’ or ‘this doesn’t ring true,’ and sometimes he would listen to me but in other cases he didn’t. And, you know, you don’t want to speak up too much. You don’t want to cross the line. Or at least that’s the way that I felt at the time,” the actress claimed.

“Times were different and what was acceptable then is definitely not acceptable now and nor should it have been then, but that’s sort of the way that it was,” Ringwald commented in a reference to a politically correct culture that tends to demonize just about everything.

Dooley’s book came out on December 15. He said he originally turned down the offer to do “Sixteen Candles,” as his agent considered the part too small after his career-making role in the movie “Breaking Away.”

But his portrayal of Jim Baker was legendary and made him an even bigger star.

Dooley played the father role to a number of actors over the years including Julia Roberts in “Runaway Bride,” Philip Seymour Hoffman in “My Boyfriend’s Back,” Helen Hunt in “Mad About You,” and Toni Collette in “Clockwatchers.” But he’s best remembered as the dad in “Sixteen Candles.”

Republished with permission from American Wire News Service

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