How could Warren's father never know?
I don't get it, HOW could Warren's father go to his grave NEVER knowing that his son was born a girl?
shareGood question--and one of many puzzlers never really addressed in movie. (And, let's face it, if they had been, there wouldn't have been much of a movie.) Supposedly doctor, nurse and justice of the peace were in cahoots to cover up child's real sex--but if the parents didn't put them up to it, who else had any motive? Another big head-scratcher: Why did Warren (who was actually a female posing as a male all his life) suddenly decide it was necessary to have a sex change in the first place? If (s)he had successfully masqueraded as a man for that long, why would he need an operation to claim his inheritance? It's not like the lawyers were going to give him a genital exam before handing over the check.(And if they had, they would immediately known something was very fishy!)
shareI have to see the movie...but I think the mother was involved in making sure everyody said it was a boy. After all, Miriam was born and the father threw her mother over for another woman to have a boy with. So it could be Warren's mother wanted to make sure he didn't leave her as well.
He wasn't exactly posing all his life, remember that Helga took him to Denmark when he was a little boy...and as has been said before, Denmark was about the only place at the time performing competent transsexual operations so it could very well be that his body became a boy's body while he was still a child, because Warren mentions to Helga, she couldn't scream like he did when he was younger and nobody could hear him.
The MOTHER (who was the father's second wife) is the one who was in cahoots with the doctor and the nurse. She knew her husband was a chauvnist and wanted a son not another daughter (Miriam was the child of his first marriage, he was widowed). The mother knew by passing off her female child as a boy the father would leave his estate to his "son".
It wouldn't be hard to pass off Warren as a boy in early childhood. Such a rich, remote father no doubt would never participate in really raising the child like giving him a bath or something. Remember, Warren and his mother moved out of the country during the pre-teen years so he was away from the father (who apparently died during this period) and the locals.
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SPOILER!!! Wow! I must have been in the Coward's Corner when they passed out the Cliff's Notes explaining all the murky plot holes that the screenwriter conveniently glossed over in the script. But not even the film's most ardent enthusiasts (and I love the movie as much as anyone despite the many logic lapses) have ever been able to satisfactorily explain why a sex change was necessary--having posed as a male for much of his life, Warren would hardly need to submit to a physical to collect his inheritance.
That's assuming that indeed such an operation even occurred: While vaguely hinted at, via mention of a trip to Denmark, there was never ANY specific mention of an operation in the movie. . .and obviously the vast majority of people who visit Denmark do not come back to America a different gender from when they left. And even if there WAS a female-to-male sex change, any doctor examining Warren would have spotted the sexual reassignment in a second--even now, nearly fifty years later, the female-to-male procedure does not leave the patient looking like an anatomically perfect biological man.
Yeah, I know--"It's only a movie." But one thing's for sure--based on the opening scene of the kids, young "Warren" had to be one of the strangest-looking children on the face of the earth, male or female! Poor girl.