The film stars Patricia Neal,[3][4][5] Cloris Leachman,[5][6] Bobby Darin (his last acting role),[5] Tessa Dahl,[5][3][4] Ron Howard,[5] Kathie Browne,[4][5] Joe Mascolo,[4][5] Simon Oakland,[5][7][8] and Thayer David.

Shaken, Ronda returns to the kitchen where Eddie Martin, the cook and her boyfriend, asks if that was him and she nods.

Noticing her daughter's interest in the young stranger, Cara upbraids Celia, then turns on her son Porgie.

Reading the letters, Roy discovers that Johnny is the son Ronda gave away for adoption years earlier.

Later, Porgie visits his sympathetic aunt Ronda, who reveals that Johnny is her son and asks him to pass the information to Cara.

Celia, meanwhile, has continued to spy on Piccolo and Crystal, and throws him a paper airplane containing a message to meet her at the summerhouse.

After discovering another dead body in the bathtub, Crystal turns to see Celia holding a cleaver.

Cara admits that upon discovering that George had an affair with her sister, she stabbed her stomach with a knife to abort her fetus.

As Johnny waits in the living room, he hears Cara scream, and sees Celia running down the stairs.

Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote in his review: "Anybody who has seen half a movie in his life will instantly recognize that a title like Happy Mothers' Day, Love George has to indicate gothic horror.

In this case, coastal gothic horror, as young Johnny (Ron Howard) returns to the New England fishing village of his childhood, in search of a father he has never known.

This town has two skeletons on the beach (under the beach, to be precise), a corpse in the master bedroom, another corpse in the summer house's upstairs bathtub, two more in guest rooms, a third in the overgrown front yard, a fourth fresh-killed in the garage, and still another fouling up the nets in the nearby fishing grounds.

But he does find his mother (Cloris Leachman), and his aunt (Patricia Neal), the local down-at-the heels aristocrat, who is also his father's widow.

Happy Mothers' Day, Love George, opened yesterday at the Plaza and New Embassy theaters.