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They are also funny movies, finely crafted and boasting spectacular ensemble acting. Some of the young actors--Anthony Michael Hall, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy--have become brand names, a veritable Hughes' Who, in any household with an occupant under 18. But in these films they are consorts to the princess in pink. "Molly is in a class of her own," Hughes says, "as a bankable box-office attraction. Now audiences will go see a 'Molly Ringwald film.' " Hughes wrote his scripts for her, tailored the characters to her precocious range of emotions, found in her the focal point for his films. The symbiosis has paid off. Hughes is one of Hollywood's most distinctive and powerful moviemakers, and Ringwald is our model modern teen.
12:15. Molly's white BMW jackrabbits through the midday traffic as she drives from home to drop by her dad's luncheonette in Van Nuys. Bob's Snack Bar: "Where the Elite Meet to Eat." Ringwald, a burly, gray-bearded man, has been blind since he was ten; he took over the restaurant last year under a Government program to teach retail-management skills to the handicapped. Most days he is up at 5 and works in the shop until late afternoon. When Molly greets him, he stage-whispers, "I can't have you coming in like this. All my customers will be lined up for autographs instead of at the cash register." Proud dad. Proud daughter too. "I just admire him so much," she says, as she grabs two cups of coffee and slides behind a table.
With a little help from Molly, Bob has "seen" all of his daughter's films. She read him the Pretty in Pink script several times; at the premiere, she sat beside him and whispered descriptions of the sets, costumes and gestures. "Didn't think it was much of a story," Bob says bluntly, and he is as cheerfully caustic to his regular customers. His goal is to buy his own snack shop or maybe even a small restaurant-nightclub where the Great Pacific Jazz Band, the septet he has led from his piano for 20 years, can play. These days, they've got a regular Sunday gig in Encino. Sometimes Molly drops by to sing.
She started singing before she could talk, serenading her toes in a language of her own invention. As a toddler in Sacramento, she crooned to the dogs and cats. One day, while Bob noodled on the piano, Adele noticed that Molly was la-la-ing with bang-on pitch and phrasing. Soon she was on the stage of the California State Fair, her dad's band backing her, and belting out You Gotta See Momma Every Night or You Won't See Momma at All. The audience gave this three-year-old a standing O, and Bob told the crowd, "Someday, I'm gonna be known as the father of Molly Ringwald."
Molly the blues singer, that is. The one who recorded an album, Molly Sings, when she was six. Whose favorite vocalists were Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Who, for a second-grade show-and-tell about a famous American (in which most of the boys dressed as George Washington and most of the girls as Florence Nightingale), showed up as Bessie Smith, in a big old dress and a perm like an Afro. "When I was a little kid," Molly says, "I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs."