My maternal grandmother passed away over the weekend, so I’d like to pay her tribute with a movie list. I’m not sure how big a fan of movies she was, having not grown up very close to her, physically, but Grandma Gloria can be credited with introducing me to movie hopping, at least. One of the few summers I was able to visit her was in 1992, and I mainly recall the year due to the movie we snuck into, Sister Act. And the movie we legally watched before it, Death Becomes Her. I probably would have forgotten both of these lame films in any other circumstance, but the significance of the event has kept the specific time and place of their viewing in my memory probably forever.
Grandma Gloria certainly wasn’t the most free-spirited grandmother to ever live, but a few things, such as the introduction to movie hopping, always made me think she was a bit cooler than other kids’ grandmas. Then there was the fact that she’d been married four times, which my friends found shocking. Grandmas aren’t supposed to go through husbands like that, apparently. Did it make her cool, though? My cousin would refer to her as “Grandma Get-Around,” and supposedly Grandma Gloria took the nickname as a compliment. I guess that made her a little cooler, proudly acknowledging this decidedly un-grandmotherly trait.
A list of coolest grandmothers in movies may not be the greatest way of honoring Grandma Get-Around, but in a way the fact that most of the following characters aren’t really that cool shows me just how hip my grandma really was. While grandfathers are often portrayed as fun and wise and as great storytellers, grandmothers tend to fall to one of two uncool extremes, traditionally grandmotherly or youthfully lewd. The latter category doesn’t necessarily only consist of unlovable characters, and I hope one day there’s a Who’s the Boss movie so that “Mona” can take the top spot on this list. Until then, here are the ten coolest grandmas I could think of. If you know any that are cooler, please let me know by commenting below.
10. Maureen Stapleton as “Grandmother” in The Electric Grandmother (1982)
Technically she’s not really anyone’s grandmother, because she’s an android. And it’s debatable if the ability to dispense milk from your fingertips makes you cool or not. But this cross between Mary Poppins and RoboCop (or, if you’re a Robin Williams fan, between Mrs. Doubtfire and Bicentennial Man), originally from the mind of Ray Bradbury, is at least hip in a superhero sort of way. She’s indestructible, can make kites fly (let’s at least pretend this is due to a Storm-like ability to control the wind) and she has the strange power to create muffins that have transcriptions of recorded dialogue inside them.
9. Sandy Martin as “Grandma” in Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
She may not look too hip in that teddy bear t-shirt, and she’s not very Internet savvy, but compared to her grandsons this lady is Miles Davis cool. You wish your grandma had a pet llama instead of that mean little ankle-biting dog and/or that uppity old cat. Plus, Napoleon’s grannie enjoys riding ATVs, at least until she crashes into a sand dune and breaks her coccyx, which is pretty badass for an old woman.
8. Mai Zetterling as “Helga Eveshim” in The Witches (1990)
It’d be one thing if Helga only told stories of her childhood experience with evil witches. Many grandmas have tall tales and embellished anecdotes to share with their grandchildren. However, Helga was indeed an old adversary of the Grand High Witch, and when her grandson is turned into a mouse, she helps in defeating the whole coven. Fans of Harry Potter may not appreciate a grandmother who kills witches, but most kids should agree that being saved by their grandmother would earn her cool points.
7. Helen Shaw as “Grandma” in Parenthood (1989)
The matriarch of the Buckman clan (who ends up a great-great-grandma by film’s end) doesn’t immediately come off as being too with it. In fact, she appears to be completely senile. But maybe that’s just because she’s done a lot of cool things in her life, including drugs that have messed with her mind. We see that she likes inhaling helium during the birthday party scene, after all. She also plays Nintendo and is cool with porn. And later she delivers a wise speech about preferring the excitement of the roller coaster to the safe and predictable merry-go-round.
6. Shirley MacLaine as “Katherine Richelieu” in Rumor Has It… (2005)
I love Shirley MacLaine enough to think she’s cool anytime she plays a grandmother, but here she has special reason to be considered a hip old lady: she’s apparently the inspiration for the Mrs. Robinson character in The Graduate. Unfortunately, Rumor Has It… turns the story a little less agreeable by making MacLaine’s character the first of three generations of women to sleep with the same man. But it doesn’t necessarily make her any less cool so much as it makes Jennifer Aniston’s character quite lame and disturbing.
5. Shirley Jones as “Grace” in Grandma’s Boy (2006)
Grace isn’t the titular grandparent of this film. That would be “Lilly,” played by Doris Roberts, who ends up being fairly hip by playing pranks, playing video games and accidentally getting high off marijuana tea. However, Grace, one of Lilly’s Golden Girls-esque roommates, is far cooler due to her claim to giving a hand job to Charlie Chaplin and bedding both Abbott and Costello. Jones, who was born in 1934, seems a little young to be telling the truth, and it would have made more sense to have her admit to doing Harold Lloyd (who also had a film titled Grandma’s Boy), but even if the stories aren’t legit she’s cool for talking so frankly, anyway.
4. Gloria Stuart as “Old Rose” in Titanic (1997)
Say what you want about Titanic, but if Kate Winslet’s character went on to be your grandma, you’d think a lot better of the story. Just the romance element alone would make a cool tale to hear your grannie tell. The fact that she also survived the sinking of the Titanic, though, can hardly be beat as far as far as grandparents’ anecdotes go. After you brought her to show and tell, no kid could ever follow with anything better.
3. “Madame Souza” in The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
When her champion bicyclist grandson is kidnapped, the silent Souza heads out on an adventure, accompanied by their ugly dog, Bruno, to find him. She maneuvers a pedal boat all the way across the Atlantic even, to seek the help of the three titular old singers who live in a caricatured New York City. She may not be hip in the way most people think of the word, but her determination and heroism is undoubtedly cool. And even before her grandson is kidnapped, the way she cares for him and trains him to be the best — we could all have done with such an attentive guardian.
2. Maureen Stapleton as “Mary Luckett” in Cocoon (1985) and Cocoon: The Return (1988)
As a robot grandma she was plenty cool, yet Maureen Stapleton impressed me a lot more as a member of the Cocoon cast. The first movie made her and the rest hip and youthful. However it was the sequel that put them way up on the cool chart, because they’d been to another planet and lived among awesome glowing alien beings. Interestingly enough, her grandson in these movies, Barret Oliver, also previously played an android family addition.
1. Sylvia Sidney as “Grandma Florence Norris” in Mars Attacks! (1996)
She may not know what the heck is going on most of the time, but Grandma Florence is cool enough for being a fan of Slim Whitman. And not just because the country crooner’s voice is ultimately used to save the world from Martians. The Beatles may not have existed without Whitman’s influence, and Michael Jackson was a huge fan, too. So, she’s got great taste in music. Obviously the fact that she inadvertently discovers how to kill evil alien invaders gives her extra cool points, edging her past the other grannies to top this list, even the one who hung out with aliens.
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