Happy Mother's Day: A Tribute to Moms

To all our maternal readers out there, The Corner Stool decided to pay tribute this year by compiling a list of famous moms throughout television and film history.

Below you'll find a series of YouTube clips commemorating moms, in no particular order. These characters, though fictional, represent all the comforting feelings us mommas-boys from dear, ole' ma. (Notice I used ole' instead of old). But these characters aren't fit to carry the giant purses and maintain the AOL accounts of today's real moms.

So Happy Mother's Day to all, from Ryan Staffing. Here's our tribute:


Carol Brady


Between 1969's first airing of The Brady Bunch and 2002's made for TV movie The Brady Bunch in the White House, the mother of the lovable bunch of swingin', singin' children was played by just two actresses: Florence Henderson and Shelley Long.

In the television show, Carol was always managing the troops, providing words of encouragement to Jan; helping to milk Marsha's ego; and making sure Cindy didn't get into any trouble.

In the two major motion pictures that came out during my lifetime, she was a comedic compliment to the outrageous dialogue from her husband.



I personally appreciate the satire of 1970s home life.

Kitty Foreman


Speaking of '70s satire, the mother of Eric and Laurie Foreman oozed of down-home comedy. She babied her whimsical son, while dispersing tough love to her rambunctious daughter. All the while she openly talked about sexuality with her conservative husband, Red.

Compared to Carol, Kitty was a real feminist, working as a nurse during most of That 70's Show eight year run, 1998 - 2006.

For this blog post, I used this Web page for TV Moms as a launching off point. Not a lot of moms on that list were working mothers in their respective shows, so hats off to Kitty.


J.C. Wiatt 


While television's most famous moms may not have been career-women, film took the working-mom angle to the big screen, especially during the span of 1985 - 1995.

Diane Keaton portrayed a businesswoman turned parent in the 1987 film Baby Boom.

While her lack of maternal instincts provide comic relief throughout the movie, Keaton eventually decides that she can juggle the diaper-changing board with the executive board room.

Elaine Miller


Played by Frances McDormand, Elaine brings the single-mom demographic to our list.

This character from the 2000 film Almost Famous is interesting because she goes through a real conflict in the movie. It is revealed that she lied to her son, William, about his age. So he is actually two years younger than his classmates.

To make up for this, she allows him to spend a month working as a rock-n-roll journalist. She doesn't quite let him go off on his own though, providing maternal wisdom along the way.

A college professor, Elaine has the famous line of telling her class, "Rock stars have kidnapped my son!"

Her hands-on parenting approach does push her daughter to leave as a flight attendant in the early stages of the movie. But the two do reunite for a heart-felt family moment.