Question: Who was the absent father in the HBO film Gey Gardens?
Context: Michael Sucsy (born February 14, 1973) is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning film director, screenwriter, and producer.  He is best known for creating the HBO film "Grey Gardens". March (2005) is a novel by Geraldine Brooks.  It is a novel that retells Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women" from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists' absent father.  Brooks has inserted the novel into the classic tale, revealing the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in 1862.  The novel won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Perry Meisel, Professor of English at New York University for over forty years, has written on literature, music, psychoanalysis, theory, and culture since the early 1970s.  His articles have appeared in "The Village Voice, The New York Times Book Review, Partisan Review, October, The Nation, The Atlantic", and many other publications.  His books include "The Myth of Popular Culture from Dante to Dylan", "The Literary Freud", "The Cowboy and the Dandy", "The Myth of the Modern", "The Absent Father", and "Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Repressed".  He is co-editor, with Haun Saussy, of Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics", and co-editor, with Walter Kendrick, of "Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924-25".  He is also editor of "Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays".  He received his B.A., M. Phil, and Ph.D. from Yale. Phelan Beale (May 23, 1881 – June 12, 1956) was an American attorney and sportsman in New York City who was married to Edith Ewing Bouvier, an aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  Beale is probably best remembered as the absent father chronicled in the Grey Gardens saga portrayed in a 1975 movie documentary, 2006 Broadway musical, and 2009 HBO Film, all of which were named for his home in East Hampton, New York. Ghar Kab Ao Gey is a 2000 Pakistani Urdu language action film directed by Iqbal Kashmiri which was released across theaters in Pakistan on Eid-ul-Fittar day January 9, 2000. Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life?  is a 1956 book by the psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler, in which the author argues that homosexuality is a curable illness.  Bergler denies that homosexuality is caused by hormonal or other biological factors, the Oedipus complex, or having a dominant mother and a weak or absent father, instead attributing both male and female homosexuality to pre-Oedipal factors involving an unsolved masochistic conflict with the mother during the earliest period of infancy.  According to Bergler, homosexuality in men reflects unconscious fear and hatred of women.  Bergler argues that there are several different types of homosexuality, each with a distinct clinical profile.  Bergler rejects the existence of bisexuality, maintaining that all supposed bisexuals are homosexuals, and criticizes the work of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.  He characterizes homosexual men as sexually promiscuous, and argues that this promiscuity is a result of their unsatisfying sex lives and masochistic craving for danger.  Bergler argues against immediately repealing laws against homosexuality, though he suggests that such laws could perhaps be repealed in the future if other measures against homosexuality proved effective.  Bergler proposes the publicizing of his ideas as a measure against homosexuality. Grey Gardens is an HBO film about the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale/"Little Edie", played by Drew Barrymore, and her mother Edith Ewing Bouvier/"Big Edie", played by Jessica Lange.  Co-stars include Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jacqueline Kennedy (Little Edie's cousin) and Ken Howard as Phelan Beale (Little Edie's father).  The film, directed by Michael Sucsy and co-written by Sucsy and Patricia Rozema, flashes back and forth between various events and dates ranging from Little Edie as a young débutante in 1936 moving with her mother to their Grey Gardens estate through the filming and premiere of the actual 1975 documentary "Grey Gardens". Hellion (also known as Retribution) is a 2014 American drama film written and directed by Kat Candler.  The film stars Aaron Paul as an emotionally absent father of two sons.  It also stars Juliette Lewis, Josh Wiggins, Deke Garner, Jonny Mars and Annalee Jefferies. 3 Generations is a 2015 American drama film directed by Gaby Dellal and written by Nikole Beckwith and Dellal.  The film stars Elle Fanning, Naomi Watts, Susan Sarandon, Tate Donovan and Sam Trammell.  It premiered in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, under the title "About Ray".  The film was released on May 5, 2017, by The Weinstein Company.  Teenager Ray (Fanning) realizes and pursues his true identity as male and his mother Maggie (Watts), lesbian grandmother Dolly (Sarandon) and absent father Craig (Donovan) must learn to accept him for who he is. Walkout is a 2006 HBO film based on a true story of the 1968 East L.A. walkouts.  It premiered March 18, 2006 on HBO.  Starring Alexa Vega, Efren Ramirez and Michael Peña, the film was directed by Edward James Olmos.  Moctezuma Esparza, one of the students who was involved in the walkouts, was the film's executive producer and many of the actors playing parents in the film were also protesters.
Answer: Phelan Beale