Whistler's Mother - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • Mentioned by Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's 1966 film The Fortune Cookie. Impersonates painting pose to his estranged wife
  • A painting of Whistler's Mother is seen in multiple episodes of The Simpsons.
    • In "Rosebud", it's seen in Mr. Burns' bedroom .
    • In "The Trouble with Trillions", the painting can be seen when Mr. Burns gets arrested by two IRS agents.
    • It can also be seen in "The Burns and The Bees" when Mr. Burns' shoots an arrow at the picture in the "Billions Club".
  • In Bean, the portrait of Whistler's Mother is used as a plot device by having Burt Reynolds purchase the painting for $50,000,000 (USD) and return it to America. Within the story, Mr. Bean ruins the painting by using paint thinner and surreptitiously replacing the painting.
  • Part 6 of Don Delillo's "Underworld" is titled "Arrangement in Gray and Black."
  • John Lennon's album "Shaved Fish" features a cover for his song "Mother" which shows him in the position of Whistler's Mother.
  • In the musical Anything Goes by Cole Porter, Reno Sweeney refers to Billy Crocker as "Whistler's mama."

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