1961

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Babes In Toyland

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Babes In Toyland

Music played an integral role at the Disney studio practically from its inception. From “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?” to “Someday My Prince Will Come” to “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”, Disney films made (and continue to make) invaluable contributions to the Great American Songbook. But by 1961, even though the studio had been producing live-action features for over a decade, they still had not attempted a full-on, big-budget live-action musical. With Babes In Toyland, Walt made his first attempt at rectifying that oversight.

Not that there weren’t still plenty of original tunes flowing out of the Disney recording studio. Everything from Ten Who Dared to The Parent Trap had managed to shoehorn an original song or two. But these songs weren’t as seamlessly integrated into their productions as the songs in Disney’s animated classics. It’s impossible to imagine Snow White or Pinocchio without the songs. The only people who would miss “A Whale Of A Tale” if it had been cut from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea would be the theatre owners who probably enjoyed a boost in concession sales during the scene.

For a while, it appeared that Walt’s first live-action musical would be an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. The rights to The Wizard Of Oz were tightly controlled by MGM. But in 1954, Walt was able to secure the rights to the other thirteen books in the series. He began developing a project called The Rainbow Road To Oz as a showcase for the Mickey Mouse Club’s Mouseketeers. Darlene Gillespie was to play Dorothy. Annette Funicello was Ozma. Walt originally thought of it as a television production but as work went on, he began to think it might work as a feature.

Eventually, Walt decided to abandon the Oz project. No one’s exactly sure why, although one can assume that the MGM movie cast a huge shadow. There’s no way that Walt would have gone ahead with Rainbow Road To Oz unless he was absolutely sure that it could live up to or surpass the gold standard set by Judy Garland and friends. Judging by the segments that aired on Disneyland’s fourth-anniversary show, Rainbow Road To Oz did not. Check it out for yourself. It’s pretty weird.

(The Disney studio did eventually return to Oz with Return To Oz in 1985, a genuinely bizarre film that proved deeply upsetting for an entire generation of young people. I love it with all of me and can’t wait to include it in this column.)

At around the same time that The Rainbow Road To Oz was falling apart, Walt announced his intentions to make an animated feature based on Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta Babes In Toyland. Herbert’s show had also been filmed previously, most notably as a 1934 feature starring Laurel and Hardy. Walt put animator Ward Kimball in charge of the project and Kimball worked on the script with storyman Joe Rinaldi. Kimball and Rinaldi had a hard time cracking the project. They streamlined the complicated storyline as much as they could, turning it into a romantic triangle between fairytale lovebirds Tom Piper and Mary Contrary and the evil Barnaby, who wants to marry Mary for her inheritance.

By late 1959, Walt had reconceived Babes In Toyland as a live-action musical. Lowell S. Hawley, who had written for Zorro and Swiss Family Robinson, was brought on board to rewrite Kimball and Rinaldi’s script for live-action. Jack Donohue, a Broadway choreographer and TV director responsible for several variety shows featuring such stars as Frank Sinatra and Red Skelton, was hired to direct. Kimball, who’d had several disagreements with Walt over the scripts and casting, was sent back to the animation department.

Although she wouldn’t get a chance to rule Oz as Ozma, Annette Funicello still got her biggest movie showcase to date as Mary. Annette was a huge star on TV and had even had a few hit records. But so far, her only big-screen appearance had been a small supporting role in The Shaggy Dog. Walt believed she was ready for bigger things. At the time of Babes In Toyland, Annette was so famous that she didn’t even need to be credited under her full name. She’s simply “Annette”. Everybody already knew who she was.

The same probably couldn’t be said about her costar, teen idol Tommy Sands. Sands made a big splash right out of the gate, starring as an Elvis-like singing sensation in an episode of Kraft Television Theatre called, appropriately enough, The Singin’ Idol. His signature number on that show, “Teen-Age Crush”, made it all the way to #2 on the Billboard chart. 20th Century Fox produced a feature-film remake of The Singin’ Idol called Sing, Boy, Sing but while Sands received some praise for his performance, the movie was a flop.

Nevertheless, Sands continued plugging away at both his acting and recording careers (he also married Nancy Sinatra in 1960). It makes perfect sense why Walt would cast him in Babes In Toyland. He was popular enough to make it seem like the studio wasn’t completely out of touch with the kids but not so popular that he’d be too cool for a Disney movie. Walt certainly made the most of Sands’ short time on the lot, recruiting him to sing the title song to The Parent Trap with Annette.

The Oz connections continue with the casting of Ray Bolger as Barnaby. The former Scarecrow had kept busy on stage (winning a Tony Award for his performance in Where’s Charley?) and television, where his sitcom Where’s Raymond? was eventually retitled The Ray Bolger Show. His only Disney appearance offers him a rare chance to play the bad guy and he has fun with it, playing to the cheap seats with his stovepipe hat and purple-lined cape.

Most of the rest of the cast was filled out with members of the Disney Stock Players. Ed Wynn does his Ed Wynn thing as the zany Toymaker. Tommy Kirk, still stuck in the “what-the-hell-do-we-do-with-this-kid” phase of his Disney career, appears as Wynn’s apprentice. Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon, fresh off appearances in Zorro and Toby Tyler, are again teamed up as the bumbling crooks Gonzorgo and Roderigo. Kevin Corcoran shows up as Little Boy Blue. Perhaps hedging his bets against Moochie eventually hitting puberty, Walt also recruited Kevin’s brother, Brian Corcoran (who had appeared in a few episodes of Daniel Boone and Texas John Slaughter on TV), to add some additional precociousness as Willie Winkie.

The newest member of the Disney family was young Ann Jillian, who appears as Bo Peep. Jillian’s Disney tenure was relatively brief. She’d go on to appear in the TV production Sammy, The Way-Out Seal. But Jillian was one of the rare child stars who became much more famous as an adult, starring on the sitcom It’s A Living, as Mae West in a popular TV-movie, and as herself in the made-for-TV biopic The Ann Jillian Story. She’s still out there on the lecture circuit discussing her experiences as a breast cancer survivor, proof that not every child star’s career ends in tragedy.

Theatrical release poster for Babes In Toyland

Walt spared no expense on Babes In Toyland. He spent years developing the script. The production cost in excess of $3 million. George Bruns and Mel Leven, who had recently made a splash with their music for One Hundred And One Dalmatians, were brought on board to update Victor Herbert’s music for the swinging sixties. Cast and crew alike were stocked with top professionals from both inside and outside the studio.

So why is the movie itself so terrible?

The trouble starts right away as an inexpertly performed goose puppet named Sylvester is thrust through a velvet curtain to address the audience. This is no Jim Henson creation. It’s a cheap looking puppet whose beak movements don’t even sync up with the dialogue. Sylvester is held throughout by Mother Goose (played by musical theatre performer Mary McCarty). Mother Goose and Sylvester bring us up to speed, welcoming us to Mother Goose Village and inviting us to the wedding of Tom and Mary. The whole thing feels a bit like a play performed by an amateur children’s theatre group and the movie never manages to rise above that level.

The opening number foreshadows the table-setting theatrics of “Belle” from Beauty And The Beast, introducing all the characters and showing us around the elaborate but somehow still chintzy-looking sets. But “Mother Goose Village and Lemonade” has none of the charm and sweep of “Belle”. The fact that it morphs into an inexplicable tribute to lemonade for some reason should tell you all you need to know.

Babes In Toyland soundtrack album cover

Bruns and Leven were both responsible for some terrific songs but virtually none of them are in Babes In Toyland. Annette’s big number, “I Can’t Do The Sum”, is essentially all about how bad she is at math because she’s just a girl. It’s livened up by some neat visuals, including Annette dividing into four multicolored doppelgangers, but it’s still in service of a truly lousy song. Most of the other songs are just forgettable.

There is one good song in the batch, Ray Bolger’s “Castle In Spain”. I first encountered the song on the great Hal Willner-produced album Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films where it was performed by Buster Poindexter. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Babes In Toyland and had no idea what movie the song was from. I still prefer the Buster Poindexter cover but Ray Bolger’s version is fun, too.

(If you’re unfamiliar with Stay Awake, I highly recommend tracking it down. Other highlights include Tom Waits’ take on “Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs’ Marching Song)”, Los Lobos on “I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” and The Replacements tearing through “Cruella De Vil”. Oddly enough, Buster Poindexter (a.k.a. David Johansen) will not be back in this column, despite the fact that his voice is ideally suited to animation. He did appear on an episode of The Magical World Of Disney, performing at the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park Grand Opening, but that’s the extent of his involvement with the studio.)

Babes In Toyland has a lot of problems: the mediocre music, the non-existent character development, the off-putting production design and visual effects. But the movie’s fatal flaw is that for the first time, a Walt Disney production feels like it’s talking down to its intended audience. Walt Disney was in the business of making family entertainment. At his best, he made films that are universal in their appeal. Babes In Toyland is specifically directed toward young children. Very young. Ann Jillian would have been around 10 or 11 at the time she appeared in this and she would have already aged out of the target audience. The whole movie feels forced and condescending in a way we don’t typically associate with Disney.

Released in time for Christmas 1961 (although I wouldn’t really call this a Christmas movie, it’s more Christmas-adjacent), Babes In Toyland wasn’t exactly a bomb but it certainly didn’t do as well as anyone had hoped. The movie did manage to snag a couple of Oscar nominations, for Bill Thomas’s costumes and Bruns’s score, but it lost both to a far more successful musical, West Side Story. Both Thomas and Bruns will be back in this column and both will again be Oscar nominees for their work on Disney films.

Even today, the Laurel and Hardy version is still the best film adaptation of Babes In Toyland. The source material continues to confound those brave enough to attempt to film it, resulting in some truly weird spectacles. In 1986, Drew Barrymore starred in a TV remake alongside Richard Mulligan as Barnaby, Pat Morita as the Toymaker and Keanu Frickin’ Reeves as Jack-Be-Nimble. It’s…um…it’s something, alright.

Never one to live in the past, Walt certainly didn’t linger on the failure of Babes In Toyland. As usual, he had already moved on to his next musical project. Earlier in 1961, he had finally been able to persuade author P.L. Travers to let him have the film rights to her Mary Poppins books. Walt would take a more hands-on approach with this one and the results would be a whole lot better.

VERDICT: You have to ask? Oh, it’s a big-time Disney Minus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Greyfriars Bobby

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Greyfriars Bobby

Everybody knows that dogs are the most faithful and loyal companions in the animal kingdom. There is no better illustration of this than the Scottish legend of Greyfriars Bobby, the Skye Terrier who kept vigil at the grave of his deceased master for more than a decade. It’s an irresistible story that seems tailor-made for a sentimental dog-lover like Walt Disney.

As is the case with many stories in the oral tradition, the details in the real Greyfriars Bobby story vary depending on who’s telling the tale. Walt decided to base his version on the novel by Eleanor Atkinson, an American writer who took the broad strokes of the story and filled in the rest herself. Atkinson’s book had already been filmed once before, as the 1949 Lassie vehicle Challenge To Lassie. That version doesn’t sound all that different from the Disney movie. The only way you could argue that Walt’s version is more faithful is that he got the dog’s breed right.

Robert Westerby, a British novelist and screenwriter, was hired to write the script. Westerby will be back in this column but unfortunately, one of his best Disney projects will not. In 1963, he wrote The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh (released theatrically overseas as Dr. Syn, Alias The Scarecrow) for Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color. Scarecrow became a legitimate cult favorite, one of Disney’s best-remembered TV productions, and I’m sorely disappointed that it falls outside the purview of this column.

The director was Don Chaffey, another British talent who will continue to appear in this column. Chaffey started as an art director before working his way up to directing a number of crime pictures and television episodes. Greyfriars Bobby was his first Disney project but it would not be his last. It would also not be his last dog movie. In the 1970s, he’d direct the Lassie comeback movie The Magic Of Lassie, as well as the ludicrous Hanna-Barbera production C.H.O.M.P.S. about a robot dog.

Chaffey isn’t the only one in Greyfriars Bobby with a Lassie connection. Donald Crisp (last seen in this column as the mayor in Pollyanna) had previously starred in several Lassie features, including Challenge To Lassie. In that earlier telling of the story, Crisp played Auld Jock, Lassie/Bobby’s beloved master. Here, he’s James Brown, caretaker of Greyfriars Kirkyard and Bobby’s nemesis.

Alex Mackenzie takes over as Auld Jock, a much kinder and gentler role than his previous Disney appearance as the Ferryman in Kidnapped. As the story opens, Jock is being let go from his longtime post as a shepherd on a family farm. Jock tries to make Bobby understand that he must stay with the family but the little dog is so devoted to Jock that he escapes, hurrying after him to Edinburgh. He manages to find Jock, who smuggles him into the most ramshackle flophouse in the city. Sadly, Jock isn’t well and he dies in his sleep, a victim of pneumonia.

When Jock’s body is discovered, he has enough money on him to pay for a decent burial in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Bobby follows, only to be shooed away by James Brown, strictly obeying his own no-dogs-allowed rule. Bobby heads over to a nearby restaurant run by Mr. Traill (Laurence Naismith, previously seen in Third Man On The Mountain). Jock had taken his meals at Traill’s place and Traill feeds the dog, sneaking him back into the cemetery at night to sleep atop his master’s grave.

Brown continues to want Bobby gone but after his wife sees that the dog is a skilled rat-killer, she wants to adopt him as their own. Brown reluctantly agrees but Bobby has other ideas. He continues to go back and forth between Greyfriars and Traill’s place, acknowledging no one as a master except Jock.

Eventually the police get involved, charging Traill with harboring an unlicensed animal. Traill is dragged in front of the magistrate and refuses to pay the licensing fee, arguing that Bobby really isn’t his dog. Brown turns up and volunteers to pay but Traill won’t let him. As far as Traill’s concerned, it’s a matter of principle since Bobby isn’t his dog, either. Word gets around and a scruffy band of orphans takes up a collection, scraping together the fee penny by penny. The Magistrate is so moved by this demonstration that he declares Bobby a Freeman of the City, given permission to roam wherever he may please. Even Traill and Brown put aside their differences. Edinburgh is happy at last.

Comic book adaptation of Greyfriars Bobby

Greyfriars Bobby: The True Story Of A Dog (to use the film’s complete on-screen title) is a pleasant enough little movie. The exteriors were all filmed on location in Scotland, giving the movie an authentic atmosphere. Some critics and American audiences at the time complained that the actors’ thick accents were borderline impenetrable but they really aren’t that bad. If you can make it through the first ten minutes without subtitles, you should be fine.

The cast is uniformly excellent with Crisp and Naismith playing nicely off each other. Mackenzie brings real pathos to Auld Jock. Even though you know his days are numbered from the first frame, his death still carries genuine weight. As for Bobby, he earns his place in the pantheon of put-upon Disney dogs like Old Yeller and Nikki. He mercifully isn’t put in as much physical danger as his predecessors but he definitely conveys the emotional trauma of losing a loved one. He’s an easy little dog to love.

All that being said, Greyfriars Bobby is a far cry from being an upper-echelon Disney classic. The movie has two big problems that go hand-in-hand: nothing much actually happens and what little does happen gets repeated over and over. The opening narration pretty much tells us the entire story but it’s still a good 20 minutes or so before the movie starts climbing that hill. We spend a fair amount of time with the family that ostensibly owns Bobby, including Gordon Jackson as the farmer, Rosalie Crutchley as his wife and Gennie Nevinson as their daughter (there’s also a son but he barely registers at all). But Bobby only has eyes for Jock, so all this really does is make us feel bad for the little girl whose love for this dog is so clearly not reciprocated.

Somewhere in the middle of Bobby’s Edinburgh adventures, the farmer comes back to Edinburgh looking for Bobby. He takes him back home, only to have the dog escape yet again and head back. That’s no less than four trips back and forth between Edinburgh and the farm in a 90-minute movie. We get it, the dog misses the old man.

It also doesn’t help that the movie, like Atkinson’s book, is told primarily from Bobby’s perspective. This means that the audience is frequently several steps ahead of the characters in the movie. We know all about what happens to Jock, from his backstory to his death to his funeral. But when Brown buries Jock, he has no idea who it is. When Bobby goes back to Traill, he knows Jock but doesn’t know that he’s dead. So we’re left impatiently waiting for everyone to catch up to where we are.

Still, Greyfriars Bobby has enough going for it to make it worth a look. It’s a sad and sweet little story, expertly performed by a cast of old pros and centered around a very cute and scrappy little dog. Is it going to change your life? Absolutely not. But it’s a nice rainy afternoon movie that won’t insult your intelligence. And, unlike some other movies we’ve seen in this column, it won’t make you unduly concerned over its canine star’s welfare.

VERDICT: It’s just diverting enough to earn a low Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North

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Quad theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North

Walt Disney loved dogs, although you wouldn’t necessarily guess that based on some of the ordeals they go through in his films. We all know the sad fate of Old Yeller. The adorable little pup in Ten Who Dared comes within a whisker of being shot in the face himself. Even the animated dogs have a rough time of it. It’s a miracle all one hundred and one Dalmatians made it back to London in one piece. But all those dogs had it easy compared to Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North.

With Perri, Walt had constructed a fictional narrative about a squirrel using techniques honed by the True-Life Adventures crew. Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North represents the next step in that evolution. Winston Hibler, the narrator and cowriter of the True-Life Adventures, produced and cowrote the screenplay with Ralph Wright, a long-time Disney storyman and later, the voice of Eeyore.

Jack Couffer, one of two credited directors on the film, had been a cinematographer on films like Secrets Of Life. He’d go on to an Oscar nomination for his cinematography on the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The other director, Don Haldane, was new to Disney. He was a Canadian filmmaker whose company Westminster Films seems to have specialized mainly in educational films.

Hibler and Wright based their script on the novel Nomads Of The North by James Oliver Curwood. Curwood was a hugely successful and prolific author of Jack London-style wilderness adventure stories that I’d honestly never heard of before sitting down to write this. But evidently, nearly two hundred movies and TV shows have been based on his work, most of which you’ve probably never seen. One you might be familiar with is the 1989 French adventure film The Bear directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Now I’m not going to assume there are too many Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North superfans out there, so perhaps a more detailed plot synopsis is in order. When we first meet Nikki, a Malamute pup, and his master Andre (played by Jean Coutu, a Canadian actor who does not appear to have made many films in English other than this one), they’re peacefully canoeing down the river on their way to “fur trapping headquarters”. They make a pit stop and Nikki goes exploring, discovering a treed bear cub named Neewa.

Neewa had run afoul of a huge grizzly named Makoos and his mother died trying to protect him. Andre finds Nikki barking up at Neewa, spots the mother’s dead body nearby and pieces together what happened. At first, Andre is quite sensibly unsure that bringing Neewa along would be a good idea. But he can’t just leave the cub to die, so he gets it out of the tree and ties Neewa and Nikki together with a rope.

The three Canadian caballeros get back on the river, whereupon Nikki and Neewa predictably begin fighting. Andre’s attention is split between separating the animals and navigating the canoe through some treacherous rapids. Dog and bear cub go overboard, shooting down the rapids at a breakneck pace. Working together, they’re able to reach the shore. Andre searches for his lost dog but when Nikki sees him cruising down the river, the pup assumes he’s been abandoned.

Nikki and Neewa spend the next several weeks lashed together, roaming the forest like a wildlife version of The Defiant Ones. Nikki definitely gets the short end of this deal. Unable to hunt for food, he’s forced to adapt to Neewa’s diet of berries and grubs. When Neewa catches the scent of honey, it’s Nikki who suffers the worst of the bees’ wrath. And when Neewa climbs a tree to catch some sleep, Nikki ends up dangling from the rope beneath him.

Eventually the rope breaks (Andre must have been an Eagle Scout in knot tying) and the two go their separate ways. But the pair developed a bond, or at least some form of Stockholm Syndrome, during their forced cohabitation, so Neewa returns and the dog and the bear grow up together, roughhousing and learning the ways of the forest.

However, all good things must come to an end and when winter hits, Neewa returns to his den to hibernate. Nikki struggles to survive over the next few weeks. Food is scarce and he can’t compete with bigger predators like wolves. Relief comes when Nikki stumbles upon a trapping line. After some trial and error, Nikki figures out how to safely spring the trap so he can get to the bait inside. Our plucky hero has himself a little feast, following the line and stealing the fresh meat from the traps.

Needless to say, this does not sit well with diabolical trapper Jacques Lebeau (Émile Genest, who will be back in this column). Lebeau sets a trap for Nikki, lacing a piece of meat with enough poison to drop a horse. Nikki is smart enough to not eat the whole thing, consuming just enough poison to make him temporarily sick. Lebeau and his Indian guide (whose name is Makoki, played by Uriel Luft, although he’s only referred to as “the Indian” for most of the picture) catch up to Nikki. Impressed by Nikki’s size and strength, Lebeau decides he’d make an ideal fighting dog and starts him on a cruel and ruthless training regimen.

Lebeau and Makoki arrive at the trading camp, only to discover that the new factor has outlawed dog fighting. Nobody seems to take the new rule too seriously and Lebeau soon has a fight lined up. Nikki wins the savage bout but the new factor arrives to put a stop to it. The factor turns out to be Nikki’s old master, Andre. He naturally wants his dog back and Lebeau jumps into the pit to challenge Andre to a fight. When Makoki sees Lebeau pull a knife, he cuts Nikki’s restraining rope and allows the dog to jump in and save Andre.

Lebeau is killed and the entire camp is ready to put down the savage, uncontrollable dog. But once again, Makoki intervenes, demonstrating that Lebeau fell onto his own knife. With the dog exonerated, Andre hires Makoki and the three of them presumably live happily ever after.

Walt Disney's Story Of Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North album cover.

This is a difficult movie to judge on its own merits. It’s never boring, the wilderness photography is impressive and Nikki is a very good boy indeed. Directors Couffer and Haldane stage some very exciting sequences. The human actors are all pretty good, although their contributions are minimal. Genest in particular makes Lebeau into one of the most despicable villains in the Disney canon. Even fellow dog hater Cruella DeVil might find him to be a bit much.

All that being said, I’m not sure I can recommend Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North. There’s a reason this one isn’t available on Disney Plus. This is easily one of the most violent Disney movies I’ve ever seen. Nikki is really put through the wringer and it’s hard to imagine that the animal’s welfare was anyone’s primary concern. If the bullfighting sequence in The Littlest Outlaw rubs you the wrong way, you’re really not going to like seeing two beautiful dogs going at each other in a barren ice pit.

I’m not sure how well Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North performed at the box office. I assume it did okay relative to how much it cost to produce. By 1964, it was airing on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color. After that, it didn’t leave much of a mark. Today, it’s another live-action Disney obscurity. It isn’t impossible to find but you have to put in the effort to seek it out.

If the movie has a legacy, it’s the realization that dogs make much more interesting and sympathetic protagonists than squirrels. Walt would continue to build features around our canine companions. As a matter of fact, we’ll be seeing another one in this column next time. And while all of these movie star dogs will face challenges and obstacles, most of them will dial back the physical peril a few notches. Nikki definitely had it rougher than most.

VERDICT: If you’re cool with dog fights and other scenes that border on animal cruelty, this is a minor Disney Plus. If not, steer clear of this Disney Minus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Parent Trap

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Parent Trap

Hayley Mills has battled typecasting her entire career. This is to be expected when you are so closely identified with a particular brand. But quite honestly, it could have been worse. After Pollyanna became a runaway success, it would have been very easy for Walt to continue using her solely in period pieces celebrating Americana. He’d done it before with Fess Parker. Parker’s dissatisfaction with the roles he was assigned led to his leaving the studio. Walt seemed determined not to make the same mistake with his newest star. Her second Disney vehicle, The Parent Trap, was about as far away from Pollyanna as the studio could get.

David Swift, who had written and directed Pollyanna, based his screenplay for The Parent Trap on the novel Lottie And Lisa by Erich Kästner, a German writer perhaps best known for Emil And The Detectives (that book will turn up in a later column). The premise is simple but strange. Bostonian Sharon McKendrick (Hayley Mills) is sent to summer camp, where she meets her doppelganger, Susan Evers (also Hayley Mills). The two girls take an immediate dislike to one another, engaging in a series of Meatballs-style pranks culminating in an all-out brawl at a co-ed dance. Camp counselor Miss Inch (Ruth McDevitt) punishes the girls by forcing them to spend the rest of the summer together, sharing a separate cabin and taking their meals at an “isolation table”.

Eventually Sharon and Susan begin to tolerate each other and piece together the fact that they’re actually twin sisters. Sharon has been living with her mother Maggie (Maureen O’Hara) while Susan has been in California with her rancher dad, Mitch (Brian Keith). Curious to see how the other half lives, the girls switch places with the goal of ultimately reuniting the family. But Sharon discovers an unexpected complication upon her arrival in California. Mitch has become engaged to Vicky Robinson (Joanna Barnes), a gold-digging younger woman with zero interest in becoming a doting stepmother.

The Parent Trap raises far more questions than it’s prepared to answer. First and foremost, what the hell happened between Mitch and Maggie that they decided their best plan of action was to split up and literally never speak of each other again? Were they ever planning on telling their daughters that they had a sister? Who on earth would think it’s a good idea to get these two people back together? Sure, neither of them had remarried yet but you’d think the whole pretending their marriage never existed thing would trump that. And why would Mitch choose to send Susan to a camp all the way across the country? Surely they have some very lovely summer camps in California.

But the magic of The Parent Trap lies in the fact that, for the most part, you don’t really concern yourself with these very obvious questions while you’re watching the movie. Most of the credit for that goes to Hayley Mills. Before rewatching the movie, I had a false memory that Susan spoke with an American accent. That isn’t true. Mills makes no effort whatsoever to mask her Britishness, which is another weird question you might ask yourself. Both kids were born and raised in the States and there isn’t a single British person in the family, so why do they talk that way? But Mills is so appealing in both roles that you just kind of go with it.

What Mills accomplishes is pretty extraordinary, especially for a young actor just beginning her career. Sharon and Susan are both unique, distinct characters with their own physicality and mannerisms. But then Swift levels up the difficulty by having the girls trade places and pretend to be the other one. But somehow Mills is able to make it absolutely clear to the audience that Sharon-As-Susan is still Sharon and vice versa. In a sense, she’s actually playing four characters, not just two.

Mills is basically the whole show for the movie’s first third (although reliable character actors Ruth McDevitt, Nancy Kulp and Frank De Vol are certainly welcome presences as camp counselors). Swift successfully builds the twinning illusion through the use of split-screen effects, Mills’ photo double Susan Henning, and very precise editing which earned the film one of its two Academy Award nominations. (The other was for Best Sound. It lost both to West Side Story, which dominated the ceremony.)

Swift wanted to use fewer effects shots but Walt insisted on including as many as possible. For the most part, the effects still hold up today. In fact, the worst shot in the film doesn’t even include the twins. It’s a very obvious process shot with Hayley Mills and Maureen O’Hara strolling through a park. It doesn’t even seem like you’d need an effect to pull it off, so it’s odd that a perfectionist like Walt would leave it in.

Theatrical release poster for The Parent Trap

The movie’s two other secret weapons are Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara. The Parent Trap gives Keith a much better showcase for his talents than the misbegotten adventure Ten Who Dared. He coasts through the movie on his laid-back charm and some adept physical comedy. And he and O’Hara have some real chemistry, which sells the unlikely idea that Mitch and Maggie would even consider getting back together.

The role was a game-changer for Brian Keith’s career. After years of action pictures and westerns, Keith found himself offered more comedies and romantic leads. A few years after The Parent Trap was released, Keith followed fellow Disney star Fred MacMurray to television, headlining the sitcom Family Affair. We’ll be seeing a lot more of Brian Keith in this column.

Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing Maureen O’Hara again. O’Hara was in her early 40s when she made The Parent Trap, the age when Hollywood typically flips the switch on actresses from “leading lady” to “mom”. This is what happened to Dorothy McGuire, who was about the same age when she made Old Yeller. But O’Hara manages to retain her sexuality. In Old Yeller, it’s difficult to imagine McGuire and Fess Parker sharing more than a hearty handshake. Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara, on the other hand…they’ve got something going on.

By all accounts, O’Hara enjoyed making The Parent Trap and thought it turned out well. But in her memoir, she reveals that a contract dispute led to her walking away from the studio. According to the terms of her contract, O’Hara was to receive top billing. But when the movie came out, Hayley Mills’ name was above the title (twice, actually). O’Hara was not amused and swore she’d never work for the studio again. Don’t cross Maureen O’Hara, folks. She carries a grudge.

The Parent Trap was also the first major project for Walt’s newest songwriters. Richard and Robert Sherman had previously contributed the “Medfield Fight Song” to The Absent-Minded Professor but I’m fairly certain nobody left the theatre humming that tune. That would not be a problem for the earworms in The Parent Trap. The title song was performed by Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands, a teen idol in the Elvis/Ricky Nelson mold. Tommy and Annette were busy shooting Babes In Toyland, a major musical that will soon appear in this column, on the lot. The song accompanies the cute stop-motion title sequence. The animation is fun. The song, not so much. It’s undeniably catchy but it’s more annoying than irresistible.

Annette also recorded a version of “Let’s Get Together” that can be heard during the dance sequence. But it was Hayley Mills’ duet with herself that became a top ten hit. So naturally Walt hustled her back into the recording studio to cut a full album. Her follow-up single, “Johnny Jingo”, made it up to #21 but this was not the start of a long career as a recording artist. But “Let’s Get Together” is a legitimately fun song and Mills’ energetic performance of it is a high point.

Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills album cover

My only real beef with The Parent Trap is that it goes on a little too long. There’s no reason for a movie this slight to clock in at over two hours. We probably didn’t need a third original song, Maureen O’Hara’s pretty but sleepy “For Now, For Always”. The camping trip that proves to be too much for Vicky is fun and gives Joanna Barnes a chance to shine but Swift probably could have made the same point more economically. By the time Keith and O’Hara get together over bowls of stew in the kitchen, you’re ready for Swift to start wrapping things up.

Still, it’s easy to understand why audiences responded to The Parent Trap’s winning combination of teenage hijinks and sophisticated (by Disney standards, anyway) romantic comedy. The movie was released in June of 1961. By year’s end, it had raked in over $11 million, surpassing The Absent-Minded Professor to become the fourth highest-grossing movie of the year (behind El Cid, The Guns Of Navarone and the juggernaut of West Side Story). Hayley Mills was now a bona fide movie star. She’ll be back in this column.

The Parent Trap proved so popular that in 1986, the studio brought Hayley Mills back for a Disney Channel sequel. The Parent Trap II catches up with Sharon 25 years later, a divorced single parent in Florida. She’s planning to move to New York, much to the dismay of her daughter, Nikki. So Nikki plots with her best friend, Mary, to hook Sharon up with Mary’s widowed father (played by Tom Skerritt). This isn’t easy and Nikki calls her Aunt Susan to fly out and pretend to be Sharon in an attempt to move things along. Seems like a weird plan to me but hey, whatever works.

The Parent Trap II was a ratings smash. It became the first part of a latter-day Parent Trap trilogy. Parent Trap III came out in 1989, introducing triplets played by real-life triplets Leanna, Monica and Joy Creel into the mix. That movie was followed less than a year later by Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon. In 1998, Lindsay Lohan took on the double roles in a theatrical remake that this column will get around to eventually. Currently, Disney+ is working on yet another reboot.

The Parent Trap also went on to have a surprising second life in Bollywood. The first Indian version of the story, Kuzhandaiyum Deivamum, came out in 1965. It was a Bollywood blockbuster, leading to four different remakes in other languages. The Indian film industry has a long, proud history of unofficial remakes and knock-offs, so there may very well be others for all I know.

With The Parent Trap, Hayley Mills secured her position as the brightest star in the Disney galaxy. Pollyanna had shown she could do drama and pathos. The Parent Trap demonstrated she was equally adept at comedy and could even sing a little. The movie still holds up as a breezy, entertaining romp. But it should probably come with a warning to other children of divorce not to try this at home. Real-life parent traps don’t usually have as happy an ending as the one Mitch and Maggie get.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Absent-Minded Professor

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor

Walt Disney knew his way around a winning formula. It isn’t as simple as merely giving the people what they want. You do that too often and you run the risk of repeating yourself, which is something Walt tried to avoid at all costs. Instead, you have to create something that’s the same but different. Walt proved he knew how to do this repeatedly, through the many short films of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, through his animated classics, even through the long-running True-Life Adventures.

When The Shaggy Dog hit it big in 1959, Walt knew he had another winning formula on his hands. Today, that formula is as familiar to Disney fans as the names of the seven dwarfs. They typically take place in Anytown, USA, usually around some stodgy old institution like a college or museum. A student or inventor will make some improbable discovery, either scientific or paranormal, and hilarity ensues. In later years, Leonard Maltin would dub them “gimmick comedies”.

The Absent-Minded Professor cements the formula begun by The Shaggy Dog. This time, the source material was an obscure 1922 short story called A Situation Of Gravity by Samuel W. Taylor. Taylor (no relation to Samuel A. Taylor, the screenwriter of Vertigo) wrote a couple of screenplays, including Hugo Haas’s 1954 film noir Bait, but was better known, at least among the LDS community, for a series of Mormon-themed historical novels. His book Heaven Knows Why! is considered a classic of Mormon comedic writing, which is apparently a thing.

Taylor’s story is hard to track down, so I have no idea how much of it remains in Bill Walsh’s screenplay adaptation. If I had to guess, I’d say not much at all. Walsh had become one of Disney’s most reliable live-action writer/producers since transitioning from TV to features. He’d written The Littlest Outlaw, The Shaggy Dog and Toby Tyler so far. He’ll continue to be a major presence in this column.

Also returning from The Shaggy Dog was Fred MacMurray. But this time, MacMurray wasn’t a put-upon family man whose eldest son experimented with wacky experiments. Here, he’s Professor Ned Brainard, a confirmed bachelor whose obsession with his own wacky experiments keeps causing him to forget about his own wedding. Most women left standing at the altar would dump their fiancé after the first time. But Betsy Carlisle (Nancy Olson, last seen in Pollyanna) either has the patience of a saint or is a glutton for punishment. She’s given him one last chance (his third!) to tie the knot.

Unfortunately, Brainard stumbles on to a discovery that causes his garage lab to explode and knocks him out cold. He misses the wedding but upon coming to, finds he’s accidentally created a Silly Putty-like goo that gains energy and momentum every time it hits a hard surface. He excitedly dubs the stuff flubber (for “flying rubber”) and is confident that his discovery will save both his relationship with Betsy and his job at financially strapped Medfield College.

Betsy works as a secretary to the dean (Leon Ames, who will also be back in this column), so Brainard attempts to kill two birds with one stone by introducing them both to flubber at the same time. They couldn’t possibly care less. The dean has bigger problems since the massive loan he took out from ruthless tycoon Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn, another soon-to-be familiar face) is now due. Hawk also has a personal grudge against Brainard. The prof flunked his son Biff (Tommy Kirk, playing slightly against type as a dumb jock), preventing him from playing in the all-important basketball game against Medfield’s rivals.

To make matters worse, Peggy has finally decided to dump Brainard. Her escort to the game is English professor Shelby Ashton (Elliott Reid and yep, he’ll be back in this column too). Deciding he needs a more impressive demonstration, Brainard rigs up his old Model T with flubber and some garden variety radioactive isotopes he had lying around the house, creating the world’s first flying car. When Peggy refuses to go for a ride with him, he irons some flubber onto the team’s tennis shoes at halftime, resulting in a bouncy win for Medfield.

Even so, nobody will listen to Brainard about flubber. So he decides to call Washington, where various bureaucrats give him the runaround. The Secretary of Defense (Edward Andrews) is equally dismissive but the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force all overhear his conversation. For some reason, they take him very seriously and immediately head to Medfield to check it out for themselves.

Unfortunately, Alonzo Hawk happened to spot Brainard’s Model T flying across the night sky. He and Biff hatch a scheme to switch cars, leaving Brainard with egg on his face when he attempts to give the military men a demonstration. But Peggy gets a firsthand look at flubber in action at a dance with Brainard wearing flubberized shoes. She goes back to him and they launch their own scheme to get the Model T back.

Comic book adaptation of The Absent-Minded Professor

If The Shaggy Dog invented the gimmick comedy formula, The Absent-Minded Professor perfects it. Everything that worked in the previous film is back in some form or another. There are elaborate special effects sequences that go for laughs rather than action, suspense or visual opulence. The decision to film in black-and-white was made to help mask those effects, since Walt, Bill Walsh and director Robert Stevenson weren’t sure if they’d hold up in color. They aren’t exactly seamless but they are effective. The basketball game and the Model T bouncing off the roof of another car and driving on walls could have come straight out of one of Walt’s cartoons.

MacMurray was a lot of fun in The Shaggy Dog but he really hits his stride here. The Shaggy Dog had given him an essentially reactive role. He excelled in it because Fred MacMurray always had been a great straight man. But he’s the driving force behind The Absent-Minded Professor and he’s just as good. He gets in some great physical comedy (before the visual effects and stunt guys take over) but he’s a master at the half-muttered mostly gibberish dialogue he rattles off constantly. Walt got very lucky when Fred MacMurray joined the studio. He’d found a comedic leading man who could do it all.

The Absent-Minded Professor also introduces the concept of cameos and callbacks to the gimmick comedy formula. James Westerfield and Forrest Lewis are back as put-upon traffic cops Hanson and Kelly from The Shaggy Dog, still crashing into cars and splashing hot coffee into Hanson’s face. When the fire department turns up to try and stop Mr. Hawk from bouncing into the stratosphere, they’re led by Keenan Wynn’s father, Ed Wynn (last heard from in this column as the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland). This is actually a reference on top of a reference. In addition to the unremarked upon father-and-son casting, the elder Wynn had become a star on the radio playing the title character on The Fire Chief. These little touches of meta humor and winks to a shared universe would become a common trope in Disney comedies.

There are two more names in the credits who will soon become inextricably connected to Walt Disney. Brothers Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman began writing songs together in the early 1950s. They’d had a few hit songs, including “You’re Sixteen” and “Tall Paul”, which become Mouseketeer Annette Funicello’s highest-charting single. Annette recorded several other Sherman Brothers tunes and this caught the ear of Walt Disney.

Walt hired the brothers as full-time staff songwriters in 1960. Their first assignment was another song for Annette, “Strummin’ Song”, which was featured in the two-part Disneyland episode The Horsemasters. The Absent-Minded Professor’s “Medfield Fight Song” was their first credit in a Disney feature. It will not be their last. The Sherman Brothers will be back in this column many times. They also wrote “The Flubber Song”, a ridiculous novelty song for Fred MacMurray that doesn’t show up in the movie but did make it onto the record.

The Absent-Minded Professor record album

The Absent-Minded Professor premiered on March 16, 1961. It became the studio’s second consecutive hit of the year after the success of One Hundred And One Dalmatians, raking in over $11 million. It was the 5th highest-grossing picture of 1961 and the studio wasn’t done yet. The year’s 4th highest-grossing movie will be in this column next time.

The movie also provided Walt a somewhat unlikely return to the Academy Awards. The Absent-Minded Professor was nominated for three Oscars: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (both in the black-and-white categories) and Best Special Effects. It lost the black-and-white categories to The Hustler and The Guns Of Navarone took home the special effects award. Still, the idea that The Absent-Minded Professor was up against the likes of La Dolce Vita and Judgment At Nuremberg is pretty wild.

The legacy of The Absent-Minded Professor is very much alive and not just at Disney. Special effects comedies were rare before Walt Disney came along. Abbott and Costello had met the monsters but they weren’t playing with the kinds of budgets that Walt was able to lavish on his productions. The success of the gimmick comedies helped pave the way for later blockbusters like Ghostbusters and Men In Black. Like Professor Ned Brainard, Walt Disney had created an extremely successful formula. Flubber will return.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: One Hundred And One Dalmatians

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's One Hundred And One Dalmatians

By 1961, Walt Disney Animation Studios was a shadow of its former self. Their last feature, Sleeping Beauty, had been a costly failure at the box office. As a result, a wave of layoffs swept the organization. The short films, which had once been the studio’s bread and butter, had all but been eliminated. The shorts division had been shut down in 1956 and its work folded into the feature division. At its peak, the studio had been releasing more than a dozen shorts a year. Now they were lucky to release two or three. What little animation Disney was producing was mostly for TV.

Walt couldn’t have mounted another ambitious production like Sleeping Beauty even if he’d wanted to. Sadly, it was becoming increasingly evident that he really didn’t want to. The failure of Sleeping Beauty left him within a hair’s breadth of shutting the animation division down completely. Only a sense of loyalty to the medium he’d helped shape kept it afloat. That same sense of tradition would continue to keep animation alive at the studio in lean times to come. A Disney studio without cartoons would be like a McDonald’s without hamburgers.

For feature animation to continue to have a place at Disney, changes had to be made. The labor-intensive, impeccably detailed house style needed to be streamlined. Walt had seen more than a few animated features lose money, so the process had to be made more cost-effective. Even the sensibility that relied on fairy tales and timeless classics needed to be updated for the second half of the twentieth century. What the studio needed turned out to be puppies.

Theatrical re-release poster for One Hundred And One Dalmatians

British author and playwright Dodie Smith published her novel The Hundred And One Dalmatians in 1956. Walt read it not long after and fell in love with it. He bought the rights (much to the delight of Ms. Smith, who had kind of hoped Disney might make it into a movie) and immediately made it a priority. This decisiveness was somewhat unusual for Walt. It wasn’t unheard of for him to take years waffling back and forth on which project to tackle next. It was the first of many changes to come.

Previous animated features had employed teams of storymen, who would hash out every plot point and gag in minute detail. For Dalmatians, Walt assigned the writing job to just one man. Bill Peet had joined the studio in 1937 as an in-betweener, working on Donald Duck shorts and Snow White. He worked his way up to the story department, where he quickly earned a reputation as the best of the bunch. If anyone was capable of doing the job solo, it was Bill Peet.

Peet turned in his draft just two months later, making some significant changes to streamline Smith’s book. He eliminated the character of Cruella De Vil’s husband. He also combined two of the dogs, Missis and Perdita, into one. In the book, Missis is Pongo’s mate and the mother of the puppies. Perdita is a stray that the family adopts and acts as a nurse.

Walt thought Peet’s script was terrific and set him to work storyboarding the film. Again, this would be the first time that a single artist was responsible for storyboarding an entire feature by himself. But at the same time, they still had to solve the problem of animating all those unique, spotted dogs without spending a fortune.

Walt’s old partner Ub Iwerks, who had rejoined the studio in the visual effects department, came up with the solution. He had been experimenting with a Xerox camera to develop a way to transfer animators’ drawings directly onto cels, eliminating the need for hand inking. The process had been used successfully on the climactic sequence of Sleeping Beauty and on the short film Goliath II, also written by Bill Peet. Art director Ken Anderson proposed using Xerography on Dalmatians to Walt. Walt, who had lost interest in the nuts and bolts of animation by now, replied with a shruggy, “Yeah, you can fool around all you want to.”

The process worked, saving a fortune in production costs, but it had its limitations. By eliminating the inking stage, the finished animation looks rough and scratchy compared to the typical Disney style. Walt wasn’t a fan. He missed the smooth, perfect look of his previous films. The animators, on the other hand, loved it. They had long complained that the ink-and-paint department used a heavy hand on their work. For the first time, they were seeing exactly what they drew on the screen.

Bill Peet made another clever change to the book that would help cement One Hundred And One Dalmatians’ place in the Disney canon. In the book, Pongo’s pet (named Mr. Dearly) is basically a glorified accountant. He’s referred to as a “financial wizard” but his job doesn’t have much bearing on the story. In the film, Mr. Dearly becomes Roger Radcliffe, a struggling songwriter. This allows for some natural, unobtrusive ways to incorporate a few original songs by Mel Leven.

Leven was new to the studio but he’d already proven himself as a songwriter for Peggy Lee, the Andrews Sisters and other popular acts. He’d done some work at rival animation house UPA before landing at Disney. There are only three songs in One Hundred And One Dalmatians. Two of them, “Dalmatian Plantation” and the great “Kanine Krunchies Kommercial”, are so short that they barely register as musical numbers. But the third, “Cruella De Vil”, belongs on any shortlist of Disney’s all-time great original songs. It’s so good that you even buy the fact that it becomes a hit song in the movie itself, even though Roger would surely be opening himself up to a lawsuit. Cruella definitely seems like she would be litigious.

Theatrical re-release poster for One Hundred And One Dalmatians

The vocal cast was a mixed bag of newcomers and Disney veterans. Rod Taylor, who scored a big hit with George Pal’s The Time Machine in 1960, provided the voice of Pongo. Cate Bauer, a stage actress who made very few appearances in film or television, was cast as Perdita. The voices of their human pets, Roger and Anita, were provided by Ben Wright and Lisa Davis. There are really two love stories at the heart of the film and if either one of them didn’t work, the entire movie would suffer. But the vocal performances sell us on these relationships and they align beautifully with the naturalistic, easygoing animation. Of the four, only Ben Wright will be back in this column.

Betty Lou Gerson had been the narrator of Cinderella but she found her place in Disney history as Cruella De Vil. It’s a magnificent, flamboyant vocal performance, perfectly in sync with the marvelous character animation of Marc Davis. Davis had found a niche animating women, including Snow White, Cinderella, Tinker Bell, Aurora and Maleficent. Cruella would be Davis’s last major animation work for the studio. Afterwards, he transitioned into the Imagineering division where he worked on pretty much every iconic Disneyland attraction, including Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion and It’s A Small World. He retired in 1978, was named a Disney Legend in 1989 and passed away in 2000 at the age of 86.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about One Hundred And One Dalmatians is the seeming ease and simplicity of the film. This is one of Disney’s most relaxed animated feature, unfolding at a leisurely but never boring pace. I’ve seen it countless times (this is my girlfriend’s favorite movie, so it’s on heavy rotation here) and it never fails to surprise me how quickly it all breezes past.

It’s a busy movie, making room for all manner of delightful supporting characters including Jasper and Horace, Nanny, the barnyard militia of The Colonel, Sgt. Tibbs and Captain the horse, Old Towser, and the individual puppies, particularly Lucky, Patch and Rolly. The character design is exceptional, down to the smallest walk-on part (including some quick cameos from our old friends from Lady And The Tramp). It even finds time for the genuinely funny TV spoofs What’s My Crime? and The Adventures Of Thunderbolt. And yet for all that, it never feels overstuffed. There is not a wasted moment in the film and not a single scene that overstays its welcome.

The film’s tone is best exemplified by the extraordinary sequence of the puppies being born. As Nanny provides a running tally, Roger and Pongo go through a hilarious mix of emotions, from pride to completely overwhelmed. Then comes the news that one of the puppies didn’t make it. The tone immediately changes. Roger has one idea, gently taking the puppy and massaging its chest. Pongo looks on hopefully, placing a tentative paw on Roger’s knee as the storm rages outside. The music drops out entirely and the action plays out in a single long-shot. It’s magical.

Critics and audiences agreed that Walt had tapped into something special with One Hundred And One Dalmatians. It premiered on January 25, 1961, and raked in over $6 million on its initial release, making it the 8th highest-grossing film of the year. 1961 would be a very good year for Walt Disney. Two of his live-action films did even better. We’ll see the first of those next time.

Theatrical re-release poster for One Hundred And One Dalmatians

One Hundred And One Dalmatians also become one of those rare films that did even better with each subsequent re-release. In 1969, it made $15 million. The numbers went up again in 1979 and 1985. During its 1991 release, it earned an extraordinary $60 million, making it the 17th highest-grossing film of the year, right behind Kindergarten Cop. By comparison, Beauty And The Beast only made about $7 million more than that.

The dalmatians will, of course, be back in this column. In 1996, Glenn Close helped pioneer the trend of live-action remakes of animated classics with her take on Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. That film was popular enough to warrant a truly dire sequel, 102 Dalmatians, a short-lived animated series, and a direct-to-video animated sequel to the original, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure. Waiting in the wings is Cruella, presumably a prequel of sorts with Emma Stone taking on the furs and cigarette holder. That film’s release is currently pending thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One Hundred And One Dalmatians didn’t exactly represent a return to form for Disney animation. It’s too dissimilar from earlier films to be considered a return to anything. And there have unfortunately not been too many movies like it since. Dalmatians is an anomaly, a one-off experiment in loosening the rules that had governed Disney animation for years. The experiment worked. One Hundred And One Dalmatians remains an unqualified success and one of the studio’s very best animated features. But it wasn’t enough to prevent animation from sliding into decline. It’ll be a long time before this column sees another animated feature of this caliber.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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An Honor To Be Nominated: West Side Story

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THE CONTENDER: West Side Story (1961)

Number of Nominations: 11 – Best Picture (Robert Wise); Supporting Actor (George Chakiris); Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno); Director (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins); Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Ernest Lehman); Cinematography, Color (Daniel L. Fapp); Art Direction/Set Decoration, Color (Boris Leven, Victor A. Gangelin); Sound (Fred Hynes and Gordon E. Sawyer); Scoring of a Musical Picture (Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal); Film Editing (Thomas Stanford); Costume Design, Color (Irene Sharaff)

Number of Wins: 10 – Everything except Adapted Screenplay (sorry, Ernie)

Before I expanded the parameters of this column to encompass all Oscar-nominated films in all categories, the rules were very simple. To be included, a movie simply had to have been nominated for Best Picture and lost. Using those guidelines, I never, ever would have included West Side Story.

West Side Story is by far the winningest movie we’ve covered here to date. It came very close to a clean sweep, with only Abby Mann’s screenplay for Judgment At Nuremberg standing in the way of 11 for 11. Its soundtrack went on to become the best-selling album of the 1960s. Not just a year, the entire decade. It has been referenced and/or parodied in everything from The Muppet Show to The Simpsons to Curb Your Enthusiasm to Anchorman. And somehow, the closest I had ever come to seeing it before now was in seconds-long clips in award show montages.  

The Academy’s attitude toward musicals seemed to be changing in the early 1960s. The genre had been part of the Oscars pretty much since synchronized sound became the norm. Most years found at least one musical nominated for Best Picture. But only a handful had actually won, starting with The Broadway Melody all the way back at the second ceremony. But that changed in the 1960s, as musicals came to dominate the Best Picture category, winning more frequently than they ever had before or would since. It would be their last hurrah.

As Hollywood fought the encroaching medium of television in the 1950s, the movies got bigger. Fancy new processes were created to help embiggen the public’s love of movies, with fun futuristic-sounding names like CinemaScope, Cinerama, VistaVision and Todd-AO. The Academy embraced the Age of the Epic with open arms, handing out trophies to movies like Around The World In 80 Days and Ben-Hur as if they couldn’t sculpt the statuettes fast enough. It was an age when even a small movie, like Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, looked huge.

It didn’t take long for musicals to embrace the possibilities of widescreen cinematography. Movies like White Christmas, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Oklahoma!, and many more pushed the boundaries of the screen. Of course, all this extra space meant filmmakers needed more stuff to fill it with. So sets got bigger, costumes got more elaborate, and the number of dancers on screen at any given moment multiplied like rabbits. It was just as well that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were aging out of the genre. By 1961, the idea of paying to see just two people dance elegantly on screen was hopelessly outdated and quaint.

In many ways, West Side Story was the culmination of all this change. The play had debuted on Broadway in 1957, the brainchild of director and choreographer Jerome Robbins. Robbins recruited playwright Arthur Laurents to tackle the book and composer Leonard Bernstein to write the music. Eventually, Stephen Sondheim was brought on board to write the lyrics, resulting in a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of talent.

When it came time to bring the show to the big screen, the director’s reins were handed to Robert Wise. Robbins had wanted to direct himself but the money folks at The Mirisch Company balked at his total lack of experience with filmmaking. At the time, Wise must have seemed an odd choice. He had started his career as an editor, earning an Oscar nomination for his work on Citizen Kane and was notoriously put in charge of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons after RKO fired Welles.

As a director, Wise had bopped from horror (The Curse Of The Cat People) to noir (The Set-Up) to westerns (Two Flags West) to sci-fi (The Day The Earth Stood Still) to pretty much any other kind of movie you can think of but he’d never made a musical. So it was agreed that Jerome Robbins would stay on as co-director to handle the musical and dance sequences. But Robbins’ insistence on multiple takes led to the production going over-budget and, eventually, his firing. He never directed another feature which, as near as I can tell, makes him the only one-and-done Best Director Oscar winner in history.

What Wise, Robbins, cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp, and all the other filmmakers were able to accomplish with West Side Story was nothing short of extraordinary. Watching the movie, you would be hard-pressed to imagine that this material could ever be contained on stage. The sets are too big, the movement too expressive, the colors too vivid. It’s dynamic and exciting in a way that’s unique to film. And unlike too many other bloated epics of the period, West Side Story moves. It’s a long film, clocking in at around two-and-a-half hours, but there isn’t a wasted second in it.

It’s a little hard to judge the actual performances in West Side Story. Certainly the dancing and physicality is remarkable across the board. But this was a time when movie stars didn’t really have to sing in musicals if the producers didn’t want ’em to, so we end up with these odd Frankenstein performances with lip-synched vocals. The movie’s big name is Natalie Wood, who had already been a star for over a decade. She was still a teenager when she’d earned her first Oscar nomination for Rebel Without A Cause a few years earlier. 1961 ended up being a very good year for her. In addition to West Side Story, she’d garner her second Oscar nod for her other movie that year, Splendor In The Grass.

Even though Wood’s singing voice was dubbed by go-to ghost singer Marni Nixon and even though she’s no more Puerto Rican than I am, her performance as Maria is delicate and lovely. She hits just the right blend of sweetness and sensuality, really selling the emotion and pathos of the character. Richard Beymer as Tony isn’t quite as successful. He’s handsome and charming enough but his inexperience comes through occasionally. He just doesn’t yet have the depth as an actor to really connect with the songs he’s not singing (Jimmy Bryant dubbed his voice). He’d find it by the time he played Ben Horne on Twin Peaks (and as a Twin Peaks fan coming to West Side Story late, I should add that seeing Beymer and future Dr. Jakoby Russ Tamblyn together in this does result in a moment or two of cognitive dissonance) but back then, he seems a little out of his depth.

That is definitely not the case with Oscar-winning supporting actors Rita Moreno and George Chakiris. Both stars had an intensive dance background and both were sort of struggling to find their place in Hollywood when West Side Story came along. They made the most of the opportunity, especially Moreno who practically explodes off the screen. Moreno got to do most of her own singing and Chakiris did all of his, possibly just because he doesn’t get any big solo numbers. Their Oscar victories are even more impressive when you consider who they were up against. Chakiris’ competition included Montgomery Clift, Peter Falk, Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott, while Moreno was in her category opposite no less than Judy Garland.

Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with either Moreno or Chakiris. Rita Moreno found herself unemployed for seven years afterwards, not making another movie until The Night Of The Following Day in 1968. Eventually of course, she’d go on to be one of the rare EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winners and an all-around national treasure. As for Chakiris (who, again, not a Puerto Rican, but certainly believable and acceptable as one), he made some pretty forgettable movies throughout the 60s before becoming a prolific TV actor in the 70s.

The only nominee who went home empty-handed that night was screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Lehman was one of the great Hollywood script writers. If he’d done nothing else, his place in film history would be secured by his screenplay for North By Northwest, essentially the platonic ideal for the contemporary mystery thriller. Lehman would be nominated for six Oscars over his career, winning none. Perhaps he was overlooked this time because the Academy figured the movie was so faithful to the play that Lehman hadn’t really done much. In any event, he would go on to become the first screenwriter to receive an honorary Academy Award for his body of work in 2001, by which time he had long since retired.

It’s hard to make a case against any of West Side Story‘s Oscar triumphs. At the time, the technical awards were still split into two categories, color and black-and-white. Odds are this arrangement benefited the black-and-white movies more than West Side Story, which probably would have dominated no matter what it was up against. In the Best Picture category, its only real competition was the star-studded but somber Judgment At Nuremberg. Of the other nominees, The Hustler was likely too small to make much of a dent and The Guns Of Navarone was probably dismissed as just a popcorn epic. As for Joshua Logan’s Fanny, another movie based on a stage musical that perversely decided to eliminate all the songs…nobody remembers Fanny.

As they are wont to do, Hollywood learned all the wrong lessons from West Side Story. Musicals continued to get bigger and busier, eventually becoming so expensive to produce that they priced themselves out of existence. It didn’t help that musical tastes were changing rapidly in the 60s, turning big Broadway-style productions into dinosaurs. But West Side Story captured the form at its best, with a perfect storm of talent working together to bring a timeless story to life. The Romeo & Juliet template is essentially foolproof. It’s a classic, endlessly malleable story that everyone relates to on some level. When you apply this level of craftsmanship to a story this universal, the results will almost always be timeless.

West Side Story is available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.