Superdad is a 1973

1973 in film

The year 1973 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces his second wife, Barbara Blakely. Blakely would later marry actor/singer Frank Sinatra....

 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 by Walt Disney Productions and starring Bob Crane

Bob Crane

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane was an American actor and disc jockey, best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E...

, Barbara Rush

Barbara Rush

Barbara Rush is an American stage, film, and television actress.-Career:A student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Barbara Rush performed on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse before signing with Paramount Pictures...

, Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell

Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...

, Joe Flynn

Joe Flynn (US actor)

Joseph A. Flynn was an American character actor. He was best known for his role in the 1960s ABC television situation comedy, McHale's Navy. He was also a frequent guest star on 1960s TV shows such as Batman and appeared in several Walt Disney film comedies...

, and Kathleen Cody

Kathleen Cody (actor)

Kathleen Cody, often credited as Kathy Cody is an American actress. She is known for her role as the characters Hallie Stokes and Carrie Stokes, on the cult television series Dark Shadows, appearing in 49 episodes...

. The film marks the on-screen debut of Bruno Kirby

Bruno Kirby

Bruno Kirby was an American film and television actor. He was perhaps best known for his roles in the Hollywood films City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally..., Good Morning, Vietnam, The Godfather Part II and Donnie Brasco.-Early life:Kirby was born Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu, Jr. in New York City,...

.

This film was an attempt by the Disney company to address the generation gap

Generation gap

The generational gap is and was a term popularized in Western countries during the 1960s referring to differences between people of a younger generation and their elders, especially between children and parents....

 and the social upheaval of the Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 era, but it was a critical and commercial failure.

Plot

An executive (Bob Crane

Bob Crane

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane was an American actor and disc jockey, best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E...

) tries to wrest his daughter (Kathleen Cody

Kathleen Cody (actor)

Kathleen Cody, often credited as Kathy Cody is an American actress. She is known for her role as the characters Hallie Stokes and Carrie Stokes, on the cult television series Dark Shadows, appearing in 49 episodes...

) from her childhood sweetheart (Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell

Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...

), of whom he disapproves.

Home viewing

After its theatrical release, it appeared on the Wonderful World of Disney anthology television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series. To date it has not been widely released on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 (made available exclusively to members of the Disney Movie Club in that format), but it did have a limited release on VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

. It was also recently released on iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

.

In other media

Superdad was featured in the biographical film Auto Focus

Auto Focus

Auto Focus is a 2002 American biographical film directed by Paul Schrader that stars Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. The screenplay by Michael Gerbosi is based on the book The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith....

, with Bob Crane

Bob Crane

Robert Edward "Bob" Crane was an American actor and disc jockey, best known for his performance as Colonel Robert E...

 (Greg Kinnear

Greg Kinnear

Gregory "Greg" Kinnear is an American actor and television personality who first rose to stardom in 1991. He has appeared in more than 20 motion pictures, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in As Good as It Gets.-Early life:Kinnear was born in Logansport, Indiana, the son of...

) seeing his role as the leading man in this Disney film as a way to revive his career following the retirement of his hit series Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes is an American television sitcom that ran for 168 episodes from September 17, 1965, to March 28, 1971, on the CBS network. The show was set in a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Bob Crane had the starring role as Colonel Robert E...

. Footage of the film is shown where Crane is on water skis (Kinnear in a re-shoot of that scene), along with a voice-over of how Superdad sat on the shelves for a year before flopping at the box office.