1964

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Emil And The Detectives

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Emil And The Detectives

On paper, Emil And The Detectives makes total sense as a Disney film. It’s based on a perennially popular young adult novel. It features an ensemble of kids taking on a trio of over-the-top, cartoony bad guys. And later in the decade, these kinds of lightweight mystery/heist/caper pictures would become the studio’s bread and butter. But in practice, Emil And The Detectives is a sluggish affair that never fully delivers the fun promised by its animated opening title sequence.

Author Erich Kästner was no stranger to the Disney studio. His novel Lottie And Lisa formed the basis for the Hayley Mills blockbuster The Parent Trap. Emil And The Detectives was published in 1929 and had already been adapted to film in Germany, England and Japan. The 1931 German version was an early screenwriting credit for Billy Wilder. Walt’s version would be written by A.J. Carothers, who had previously handled the script for Miracle Of The White Stallions.

Director Peter Tewksbury was new to Disney, although he’d worked with Disney Legend Fred MacMurray on his sitcom, My Three Sons. Emil And The Detectives would turn out to be his only Disney credit. After this, he worked primarily in TV and directed a couple of Elvis Presley’s later movies.

The story is pretty simple. Young Emil (Bryan Russell) is sent to visit his grandmother in Berlin. His mother gives him 400 marks to deliver to Grandma, pinning it to the inside of his coat so he won’t lose it. Unfortunately, she does this in full view of Grundeis (Heinz Schubert), a “skrink” in a loud checkered suit and a bowler hat.

What, you may well ask, is a skrink? According to the film (which represents the only recorded use of the term, as near as I can tell), it’s a low, dishonest, disreputable person, often a criminal although not necessarily. Variations of the expression get used throughout the movie, as in “my skrinky sister”. By the end, you’ll wish you had a time machine to go prevent A.J. Carothers from trying to make “skrink” happen.

Anyway, Grundeis hops on board the bus and finagles his way into the seat next to Emil. He pulls out a pocket watch and hypnotizes Emil into falling asleep. Once that’s done, he picks Emil’s pocket and hops off the bus. If he’d been a better hypnotist, he probably would have gotten away with it. But Emil wakes up the second the door closes, so he gets off the bus and follows Grundeis to a nearby café.

While he’s spying on Grundeis, Emil meets Gustav (Roger Mobley), a street kid who seems to have a hustle for all occasions. When Emil explains the situation, Gustav whips out a business card introducing himself as a private detective. Since Emil has no proof that Grundeis stole his money, the police are useless. So Emil hires Gustav and his team of boy detectives to take the case.

Their one clue is a note Grundeis tried to destroy setting a time and place for a meeting that evening. Gustav saved most of it but the part with the name of the hotel got away (it went “skrinking off down the gutter”), so they split up to stake out all the hotels in the area. While this is going on, Emil sends a note to his grandmother, assuring her that he’s okay. But the message is intercepted by Emil’s cousin, Pony (Cindy Cassell), a cub reporter for her school newspaper. Sensing there’s a story in this, Pony trails the messenger boy back to Emil.

Grundeis meets two other skrinks, The Baron (Walter Slezak) and Müller (Peter Ehrlich). The three skrinks have hatched a plan to rob a bank by tunneling into it from the ruins of an old building nearby. Emil and Gustav spend the night at the ruins but the next morning, Emil is discovered and taken prisoner by the Baron. With their client missing, the detectives decide it’s finally time to call in the police. The cops show them a number of mug shots, one of which bears the name “Albert Jahnke”, which just so happens to be my grandfather’s name. I had no idea I had skrinks in my family tree.

The Baron ends up finding a use for Emil after all when Müller blows a hole through the wall that’s too small for any of the skrinks to fit through. Emil squeezes into the vault and passes as much cash as possible back to the thieves. But the Baron had always planned on double-crossing Grundeis. As soon as he and Müller get to safety, he rigs a dynamite charge to trap Grundeis and Emil underground.

While Gustav tries to rescue Emil, the rest of the detectives stay on the Baron and Müller’s trail. As they try to escape on foot, the detectives spread a rumor that they’re carrying a bagful of money and stopping every few blocks to give it away. Before long, every kid in the neighborhood is hot on their heels looking for a handout. The police arrive, the skrinks are carted off to jail and everyone agrees to never use the term “skrink” again.

Emil And The Detectives certainly has a lot of potential. The idea of a bunch of kids forming a private detective club is pretty irresistible. Erich Kästner’s book went on to inspire everything from The Famous Five to Encyclopedia Brown to the late Richard Donner’s movie The Goonies. But part of the trouble is not a whole lot actually happens in this movie. Especially in the first half, there’s way too much sitting around and waiting. Staking out hotel lobbies may be a realistic part of detective work but it isn’t much fun to watch. Things pick up considerably when Emil gets captured and Tewksbury instills those scenes with a sense of real danger. But it all happens too late to save the picture.

The other problem is the kids themselves. They’re pretty interchangeable and don’t have the most dynamic personalities in the world. Apart from the Professor (Brian Richardson), who likes to show off his ten-dollar vocabulary, and the twins (Ron and Rick Johnson), who are twins, I couldn’t tell you much about these kids. Say what you will about The Goonies but those kids had very distinct, colorful personalities. The detectives just seem like average, ordinary kids.

Walt may have agreed with that assessment because almost none of the young actors ever appeared in another movie, much less another Disney project. The two exceptions were Emil and Gustav. Bryan Russell had already been in one Disney movie, an uncredited appearance in Babes In Toyland. He’ll be back in this column but he’d also go on to appear in a couple of productions for Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color, including Kilroy, a comedy about an ex-Marine who has a big effect on his best friend’s hometown.  

Roger Mobley will also return to this column but he had an even bigger impact on TV. In 1965, Walt gave him the title role in The Adventures Of Gallegher. As an ambitious copyboy determined to make a name for himself as a reporter at the turn of the century, Mobley snooped his way through four series of Gallegher over the next three years. Walt seemed to be grooming Mobley for bigger things. His name was one of four jotted down (along with another actor we’ll be seeing soon enough, Kurt Russell) on Walt’s cryptic last memo before his death in 1966. But Mobley’s acting career was interrupted in 1968 when he was drafted into the Army. After a tour of duty with the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne) in Vietnam, Mobley never quite picked up the threads of his former career. We’ll see him again but it appears that he was quite content to leave acting behind.

We won’t be seeing any of the adult actors again, which is a bit surprising. Walter Slezak is certainly the best known of the three. He’d been in the industry since the silent days and had become a reliable character actor in movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. He’s a lot of fun as the pretentious Baron, hauling an ornate table setting, caviar and fine wine down into an underground tunnel. He’d have made a fine addition to the Disney roster of cosmopolitan villains.

Heinz Schubert and Peter Ehrlich were both German actors who never made much of a dent outside their home country but were particularly prolific on German television. They both acquit themselves well here. Schubert especially has an amusing physicality that draws you to him whenever he’s on screen. He has dialogue but the way he moves is reminiscent of silent film comedians. Maybe if the movie had been a bigger hit, Schubert would have had more opportunity to break through in America.

As it happened, Emil And The Detectives wasn’t a hit. It was positioned as the studio’s big Christmas release for 1964. And to be fair, Disney’s previous film, Mary Poppins, was continuing to cast a very long shadow. Any movie would have struggled to live up to the expectations set by that juggernaut. Despite some favorable reviews, Emil And The Detectives pulled in less than $2 million at the box office. By 1966, Walt had relegated it to TV status.

One other thing I should add about Emil And The Detectives. Despite its relative obscurity, Disney has elected to include it on Disney+. However, that version opens with a disclaimer stating the film has been edited for content. I can find no information about what exactly that edited content might be. There’s nothing that stands out as an obvious trim. Maybe the original version was a bit more violent? I really don’t know, so if anyone can shed some light on this mystery, I’d love to hear it.

VERDICT: It isn’t the skrinkiest movie you’ll ever see but anything this inconsequential has to be considered a Disney Minus.  

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Mary Poppins

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Mary Poppins

When Mary Poppins premiered in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, Walt Disney was riding high on some of the most enthusiastic reactions of his career. The only trouble was they weren’t for his films. On April 22, the New York World’s Fair opened and four Disney exhibits quickly became must-sees for every visitor: Carousel Of Progress, Ford’s Magic Skyway, it’s a small world, and Walt’s passion project and personal favorite, Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. These were groundbreaking feats of engineering and entertainment. The Audio-Animatronics developed by WED Enterprises’ team of “Imagineers” were the toast of the fair. As the first fair season came to a close in October, almost five million guests had visited the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion to get the song “It’s A Small World (After All)” stuck in their heads.

But back in Hollywood, the name “Walt Disney” had lost a little bit of its magic. Sure, people were still buying merchandise, watching the TV show and visiting Disneyland. But the studio barely made cartoons anymore. Their last animated feature, The Sword In The Stone, was noticeably different from earlier classics in both style and tone and the response to it had been lukewarm. And while the studio was still capable of putting out a sizable hit, they weren’t exactly the kinds of movies that brought invitations to the Academy Awards. Walt certainly wasn’t embarrassed by movies like Son Of Flubber or The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones. But even though audiences ate them up, they weren’t quite what Walt had in mind when he branched out into live-action.

The one movie that he had wanted to make for years was an adaptation of P.L. Travers’ book Mary Poppins. It had been a particular favorite of Walt’s daughters. He first tried to obtain the rights back in 1938 as part of his post-Snow White shopping spree, only to be turned down flat by Mrs. Travers. But Walt Disney was nothing if not persistent and persuasive. After years of flattery and cajoling (and presumably an increased need for cash on Mrs. Travers’ side), he finally got her to say yes.

The behind-the-scenes drama between Walt Disney and P.L. Travers is legendary, so much so that the studio made a whole self-mythologizing movie about it that will eventually appear in this column. Suffice it to say for now that Travers disagreed with almost every choice Walt and his team made, from the cast to the music to the animation. Especially the animation. P.L. Travers lived to be 96 years old, dying in 1996, and while she had come to terms with some parts of the film, she still hated cartoons.

Travers’ disapproval had to sting a little bit since Walt really had assigned his best people to bring Mary Poppins to the screen. Co-producer and co-writer Bill Walsh had been responsible for some of the studio’s biggest recent hits, including The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor. Co-writer Don DaGradi came from the animation side. He’d been a background and layout artist, an art director and a story man on a long list of Disney projects from Dumbo to Sleeping Beauty. He crossed over to live-action in 1959, first consulting on special sequences for films like Darby O’Gill And The Little People and The Parent Trap before moving on to cowrite Son Of Flubber with Walsh. They made a good team with DaGradi’s visual sense complimenting Walsh’s way with words.

Robert Stevenson had become one of Walt’s most reliable directors since joining the studio on Johnny Tremain. He’d been responsible for some of Disney’s biggest hits, including Old Yeller and the Flubber pictures. He was also adept with visual effects, as evidenced by his work on Darby O’Gill And The Little People. He’d never directed a musical before. But Walt hired the then-married choreographers Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood to handle the dance sequences and had the Sherman Brothers in charge of the songs, so the music was in good hands.

Richard M. Sherman and his brother, Robert B. Sherman, had been on the Disney payroll since around 1960. Walt met them through their association with Annette Funicello, whom they’d written several songs for. Since then, they’d written plenty of tunes, mostly title songs and incidental tracks designed to bridge scenes in movies like The Parent Trap or In Search Of The Castaways. But so far, their best public showcase had been the World’s Fair. Songs like “It’s A Small World (After All)” and “There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” were simple, catchy earworms that have had a global reach that boggles the mind. Even so, they hadn’t had much of a chance to show what they could do on a bigger canvas.

The closest the Shermans had come to writing full-on musicals had been Summer Magic and The Sword In The Stone, neither of which really captured them at their best. None of the songs in Summer Magic were staged as production numbers. They were just songs to sing around a piano or on the porch between dialogue scenes. The Sword In The Stone came a bit closer but these were mostly tuneless, rhythm-based character songs. An audience couldn’t really sing along to them very well, much less hum or whistle them. The film did receive an Oscar nomination for its music. But that went to George Bruns’ score, not to the Sherman Brothers’ songs.

But the Shermans had been working on Mary Poppins pretty much from the beginning of their association with the studio. Walt finally secured the rights to the book right around the same time he met Robert and Richard. They were two of the first people he brought on board and they were very important in shaping the finished film. The Sherman Brothers knew this was a huge opportunity and they made the most of it.

Theatrical poster art for Mary Poppins

The cast was a good blend of Disney newcomers and returning veterans. Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber may have been a bit young to be considered “veterans”. But their performances in The Three Lives Of Thomasina impressed Walt enough to cast them in the key roles of Jane and Michael Banks. Glynis Johns, who had co-starred in two of Disney’s early British productions, The Sword And The Rose and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue, returned to the studio as Banks matriarch and suffragette Winifred Banks. And Disney stalwart Ed Wynn was given the role he was born to play, Uncle Albert, an eccentric kook whose uncontrollable fits of laughter sends him floating to the ceiling.

Walt couldn’t have found an actor more ideally suited to the role of the repressed, emotionally withholding George Banks than David Tomlinson. Tomlinson was a consummate professional who’d been acting in British films and on stage since the early 1940s, interrupted only by his RAF service during World War II. He was the very image of a British gentleman and he’d toy with that stereotype throughout his career.

Dick Van Dyke was a somewhat more unconventional choice to play Bert, the cockney jack-of-all-trades. Van Dyke was a newly minted TV star thanks to The Dick Van Dyke Show but was relatively untested in films. The fact that the Missouri-born entertainer was distinctly not British did not seem to be a concern. Despite what Van Dyke himself would later refer to as “the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema”, the movie serves as a terrific showcase for his talents as a song-and-dance man and a physical comedian. Those skills are underlined with Van Dyke’s virtually unrecognizable second role as the elderly Mr. Dawes. Revealing the gag in the end credits by unscrambling the name “Navckid Keyd” is a nice touch.

Of course, the most iconic bit of casting in the film is Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins herself. Andrews had been a sensation on London’s West End and Broadway in such shows as The Boy Friend, My Fair Lady and Camelot. Jack Warner had bought the film rights to My Fair Lady and a lot of folks, including Andrews herself, were hoping she’d make her film debut as Eliza Doolittle. Warner had other ideas. He wanted a bankable star in the picture, so he cast Audrey Hepburn in the role. Andrews was pregnant when Walt first offered her the part of Mary Poppins. She turned him down but Walt promised to hold off on production until she was ready.

He was right to wait. Julie Andrews delivers a performance for the ages that seems effortless but is very much not. On paper, the character seems impossible to play. She’s magical but prim and proper. She’s warm and loving but not outwardly demonstrative. I don’t think she even gives anyone so much as a hug once in the entire picture. She’s also a world-champion gaslighter, constantly telling the children she has no idea about the magical adventure she just made happen.

Mary Poppins’ magic all comes from the inside out. It’s seen in the twinkle of Andrews’ eyes, the playful smile that only occasionally breaks into a dazzling display of teeth, and her matter-of-fact body language even as she’s literally walking on air. This performance defines Mary Poppins in the popular imagination. Other actresses have played the role on stage and Emily Blunt starred in the belated sequel that I suppose we’ll have to talk about in this column eventually. But they’re all filtering their performance through Andrews’ work here. Not only does the work defy anyone else’s attempt to put their own spin on it, most audiences don’t want to see another spin on it. The measure of success is how closely you can come to replicating the original.

Theatrical poster art for the 30th anniversary re-release of Mary Poppins

In supporting roles, Walt recruited a parade of venerable character actors. Former Bride of Frankenstein Elsa Lanchester pops in briefly as the last in the Banks’ long line of ex-nannies. Reginald Owen, who had played everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Ebenezer Scrooge, is great fun as the Banks’ neighbor, Admiral Boom. Jane Darwell, an Oscar winner as Ma Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath, makes what would be her final film appearance as The Bird Woman. And if you know where to look, you can spot several Disney voice actors in the cast, including Don Barclay (as Admiral Boom’s first mate, Mr. Binnacle), Marjorie Bennett (as the owner of Andrew the dog) and Cruella de Vil herself, Betty Lou Gerson (as the creepy old lady who scares the hell out of the kids after they run away from the bank).

I was never a big fan of Mary Poppins as a kid, so it was a pleasant surprise to revisit it and find that I had severely underrated it. The Sherman Brothers are clearly the MVPs here. As a musical, Mary Poppins holds its own with anything that was on Broadway at the time, including My Fair Lady. The Shermans won Oscars for both Best Substantially Original Score (beating out Henry Mancini’s equally iconic The Pink Panther) and Best Song for “Chim Chim Cher-ee”. It’s interesting the Academy chose to honor that one since nearly every song has gone on to become a classic. The titles alone will get the songs playing in your head: “A Spoonful Of Sugar”, “Let’s Go Fly A Kite”, and, of course, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (and yes, I copied and pasted that title).

In addition, Mary Poppins looks and feels like a big-screen movie. So many of Walt’s live-action films, especially from the 60s, look right at home on TV. In the 50s, Walt could get away with releasing made-for-TV productions theatrically because his production values were higher than normal for television. But as other studios made their movies bigger to compete with TV, Disney’s mostly stayed where they were. Mary Poppins was the exception. The sets, the costumes, the gorgeous matte paintings and other visual tricks were all state-of-the-art.

As enchanting as it is, Mary Poppins is not practically perfect in every way. P.L. Travers’ complaint about the animation isn’t wholly off-base. This was certainly Walt’s most ambitious blend of live-action and animation since Song Of The South. Technically, it’s extremely impressive and often lovely. It also goes on forever. They could have lost about half of it and no one would have been the wiser.

The “Jolly Holiday” song that takes up the first half of the sequence is one of the few times the narrative loses sight of the Banks family. Jane and Michael run off to explore the cartoon world while Bert serenades Mary Poppins and dances with some penguin waiters. A little goes a long way, especially since this doesn’t do anything to advance the story. Whatever weird past and/or present relationship Bert and Mary may or may not have had remains just as much a mystery. By the end of it, we haven’t learned a single new thing about either of these characters.

Overlength is probably the single biggest problem that plagues the film in general. Almost every scene, no matter how enjoyable, could probably be trimmed. “Step In Time” is an awesome production number but it feels like it’s never going to stop. I love the song “Stay Awake”, but the movie probably didn’t need two lullabies. And since “Feed The Birds” is a richer, more resonant song, “Stay Awake” feels like filler in comparison.

Mary Poppins single art

If critics or audiences shared these concerns back in 1964, they didn’t seem to care all that much. The press went nuts over Mary Poppins, praising it as Walt Disney’s greatest achievement. Audiences adored it. Walt may have suspected he had a hit but even he had to be surprised at how big a hit it became. Not only did Mary Poppins become the highest-grossing film of 1964, it became the Disney studio’s biggest moneymaker ever.

When Academy Award nominations were announced on February 23, 1964, Mary Poppins led the pack with 13 including Best Picture, a first for any Walt Disney feature. The ceremony pitted Mary Poppins against My Fair Lady and, in many ways, Jack Warner’s film came out on top. In most categories where the two films went head-to-head, My Fair Lady won (one exception being Best Adapted Screenplay, which both lost to Becket). But Mary Poppins still took home five trophies including two for the Sherman Brothers’ music, Best Visual Effects and Best Film Editing (the one category where Mary Poppins triumphed over My Fair Lady).

The sweetest victory had to have been Julie Andrews’ win for Best Actress. Audrey Hepburn wasn’t even nominated for My Fair Lady, leaving Andrews to take home an Oscar for her very first film. A few weeks earlier, Andrews had been in direct competition with Hepburn and won at the Golden Globes. Accepting her award, Andrews cheekily thanked Jack Warner “for making all this possible”.

Mary Poppins must have been a pleasant experience for everyone involved, since nearly everyone in front of or behind the camera will be back in this column sooner or later. That includes Julie Andrews, although it’ll be quite some time before she returns. She’d go on to additional Oscar nominations (for The Sound Of Music and Victor/Victoria), a storied career on film, TV and stage, and a long marriage to filmmaker Blake Edwards. In 1981, she parodied her Disney image with a role in Edwards’ hilarious and tragically underrated Hollywood satire S.O.B. The next time we see Julie Andrews in this column, she’ll be Dame Julie Andrews, DBE.

Decades later, Mary Poppins has emerged as an enduring classic and one of Disney’s crown jewels. After its release, Walt would focus his attention on other projects, notably the ongoing work of his Imagineers and what would eventually become Walt Disney World. He’d be less hands-on with film, animation and TV production, with only a few projects capturing his imagination. And perhaps that’s understandable. Mary Poppins was the culmination of his life’s work, a magically entertaining synthesis of everything he’d learned about animation, storytelling and live-action filmmaking. After this, Walt Disney had nothing left to prove.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Moon-Spinners

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Moon-Spinners

On April 18, 1964, Hayley Mills turned 18. This might have caused a bit of a problem. Walt Disney did not have a great track record when it came to transitioning his child stars to young adulthood. Former contract players like Bobby Driscoll, Luana Patten and even Tommy Kirk found themselves cut loose from the studio as they aged out of their original roles. But Hayley Mills was by far the biggest star Walt had ever discovered and he wanted to keep her in the family. He took some baby steps toward a more mature Hayley Mills by introducing some innocent romance to her last Disney film, Summer Magic. But with The Moon-Spinners, Hayley got her first (almost) grown-up role.

The Moon-Spinners reunites Hayley with her Summer Magic director, James Neilson. Michael Dyne, a former actor turned prolific television writer, adapted his script from a novel by Mary Stewart. In the 1970s, Stewart switched to the fantasy genre, writing a series of books called The Merlin Chronicles and a handful of books for younger readers. Her book The Little Broomstick provided the basis for the Japanese animated feature Mary And The Witch’s Flower. But in 1964, Stewart was “the Queen of Suspense”, a popular author of romantic thrillers with plucky and resourceful young heroines. In other words, young women a lot like Hayley Mills.

Hayley wasn’t quite old enough to play Nicola Ferris, a secretary at the British Embassy on the Greek island of Crete. So Dyne’s script turns Nicola into Nikky Ferris, a young tourist traveling with her Aunt Frances (Joan Greenwood in her only Disney appearance). They arrive at an inn called The Moon-Spinners run by Sophia (legendary Greek actress Irene Papas, another one-and-done Disney star). The inn is hosting a massive wedding and, at first, Sophia refuses to rent rooms to the newcomers. But her young son, Alexis (Michael Davis), soon talks her in to giving them a place to stay.

This is not good news to Alexis’ uncle, Stratos (Eli Wallach, another unlikely Disney star). Stratos doesn’t want anybody staying at the inn and is highly suspicious of any new guests. This includes a young man named Mark Camford (Peter McEnery, who will actually be back in this column) who spends a great deal of time out on the Bay of Dolphins. Nikky quickly develops a crush on Mark, so when he invites her out for a swim the next morning, she’s only too happy to agree.

Unfortunately, Mark isn’t able to make that date. When Stratos goes out for a little night fishing on the Bay of Dolphins, Mark follows him on shore, just as Stratos hoped he would. Mark ends up getting shot by Stratos’ henchman, Lambis (Paul Stassino, soon to appear as one of the bad guys in Thunderball). Mark vanishes underwater and Stratos and Lambis leave him for dead.

The next day, Nikky is told that Mark caught an early bus and checked out, so she goes exploring on her own. While visiting an old church, she finds a trail of blood that leads her to Mark, weak but alive. Nikky naturally has a lot of questions but Mark refuses to answer any of them, ostensibly for her own safety. Mark sends her back to the inn in search of supplies, including a first aid kit and a bottle of brandy.

A bit later, Aunt Frances discovers her first aid kit and other things are missing. She accuses Stratos of stealing them, which makes sense since he’s been nothing but antagonistic and shifty this whole time. Stratos finds Nikky and figures out where Mark’s been hiding. But Mark has already fled the church, so Stratos kidnaps Nikky for insurance and ties her up in a windmill. Don’t forget, at this point we still have no real idea what any of these people are doing or why they’re doing it.

Alexis hears Nikky’s calls for help and rescues her by grabbing ahold of the wooden sails, riding it around and climbing up into the single window. Once he gets Nikky down the same way, she and Mark take refuge in the ruins of an old temple overrun with cats. Here, he finally explains what all this is about. Turns out that Mark was a bank employee in London who was fired after he failed to follow security protocol and allowed some priceless jewels to be stolen on his watch. The bank and police suspected he was in on the job but Mark knows he’s innocent. He suspects Stratos is the thief and followed him to Crete to gather some proof and clear his name.

After spending the night in the ruins, Nikky and Mark are awakened by Anthony Gamble (John Le Mesurier), the British Consul. Gamble promises to help and takes them back to his house where his wife, Cynthia (Sheila Hancock), looks after Mark’s injuries. Everything seems fine until Cynthia gets drunk and raises suspicions with some very undiplomatic dinner conversation. As it happens, Gamble is actually Stratos’ partner. They plan on selling the stolen jewels to Madame Habib (legendary silent film star Pola Negri), an eccentric millionaire who travels the world on her yacht with her pet cheetah because why not.

To get him out of the way, the Gambles drug Mark and arrange to send them all back to Athens. In a hearse. During a massive street festival. Because again, why not. Nikky manages to separate herself from the others, steals a boat and heads out to Madame Habib’s yacht. She tells Madame Habib the whole story and begs her not to buy the stolen jewels from Stratos. Eventually, everybody converges on the yacht, including the police who arrest Stratos and the other bad guys. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a satisfying ending but at least it’s an ending.

Theatrical release poster for The Moon-Spinners

If last week’s film, A Tiger Walks, played out like Preston Sturges Lite, The Moon-Spinners is 100% Hitchcock Lite. The exotic location, the breathless chases and the quirky characters all feel ripped directly from the Master’s playbook. But James Neilson is no Hitchcock. The biggest problem is pacing. There’s more to building a mystery than just having everyone give each other side-eye and withholding information. We’re practically an hour into the movie before we learn what any of this is about. It’s difficult to care about a mystery when you don’t have the first clue why people are behaving mysteriously. It’s like trying to solve a Mad Libs riddle. When the mystery could be literally anything, it’s easy to assume it’ll turn out to be nothing.

On the plus side, Neilson does stage some very impressive setpieces, especially that windmill escape. It’s a whirl of vertiginous camera angles and movement, cut together quickly enough to mostly mask the dodgy process shots and obvious use of stunt doubles. It’s one of the coolest pure action sequences I’ve yet seen in a live-action Disney feature. It also helps that Neilson leans into the absurdity of all this and keeps ramping it up as the movie goes along. By the time we arrive at Madame Habib’s yacht, it somehow feels inevitable that this would all culminate with a cheetah roaming around an ornate stateroom on a boat.

As usual, Hayley Mills acquits herself nicely, bringing her trademark effervescence to a more mature role. This time around, she’s allowed to behave flirtatiously with McEnery and even gets in a kiss or two. In her funniest scene, Madame Habib makes her drink some brandy to warm up and Hayley quickly overdoes it. The sight of a drunk Hayley Mills trying to rattle off the convoluted plot of this movie is almost worth the price of admission on its own.

Walt gave Hayley a big vote of confidence this time around by surrounding her with distinguished character actors instead of his usual company of stock players. Eli Wallach was already a respected founding member of the Actors Studio who had appeared in such adult fare as Baby Doll and The Misfits. He may have considered The Moon-Spinners to be below his pay grade, as he seems faintly bored throughout. Still, his presence lends some gravitas to the proceedings.

Joan Greenwood and John Le Mesurier were both prolific on the British stage and screen. Greenwood had appeared in several classic Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts And Coronets. Le Mesurier had appearances in some Peter Sellers movies like Waltz Of The Toreadors and The Pink Panther. These consummate professionals fulfill their roles admirably, adding a light touch to the danger and suspense.

But Walt’s biggest get for the film was easily Pola Negri. In 1922, she made headlines becoming the first European film star to sign a Hollywood contract. By the end of the decade, she had become one of the most popular and wealthiest actresses in the industry. She’d had a remarkable career but retired in 1943. Billy Wilder had attempted to coax her back to the screen, offering her the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, but she turned him down. Walt, who was always an amazing salesman, succeeded where Wilder failed.

The casting is quite a coup for the movie. Even if you have no idea who Pola Negri is, you know she’s someone of great importance the second she appears on screen. Her regal bearing and exotic looks had not noticeably diminished since she’d last appeared on screen. Supposedly the cheetah was her idea. The Moon-Spinners turned out to be Pola Negri’s final film. After its release, she re-retired, turning down offers of roles from Vincente Minnelli and (again) Billy Wilder. She died of pneumonia in 1987.

The Moon-Spinners premiered July 2, 1964. It was not met with enthusiasm. Critics were lukewarm at best, noting that it was essentially a watered-down Hitchcock thriller, too juvenile for grownups and too grownup for kids. Audiences also preferred seeing Hayley Mills in more traditional Disney fare. The movie only grossed about $3.5 million, not enough to cover its budget. Hayley was nearing the end of her Disney contract anyway but it was becoming increasingly clear that if she wanted to develop as an actress, Disney wasn’t going to be the place to do it.  

VERDICT: Overall it’s a Disney Minus but the scattered Disney Plus moments make it a worthwhile watch.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: A Tiger Walks

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's A Tiger Walks

When you see the words “Walt Disney Presents” at the beginning of a film, you probably have certain expectations about what you’re going to get. If there is comedy, it will be broad. If there is danger, it won’t be particularly threatening. The virtues of small-town American life will be extolled and a warm feeling of sentimental nostalgia will cover everything like a down comforter. Almost every single one of those expectations goes unmet in the deeply odd 1964 film A Tiger Walks.

Director Norman Tokar, who joined the studio with Big Red and Savage Sam, moves from dogs to cats with this one. Lowell S. Hawley, who most recently had written In Search Of The Castaways, based his screenplay on a novel by Scottish author Ian Niall. Hawley transports the action from Wales to the US but apart from that change, I don’t know how closely the film follows Niall’s book. But Niall isn’t really known as a children’s or young adult writer, so I’m guessing A Tiger Walks wasn’t necessarily intended for young readers.

Our story takes place in the remote little town of Scotia located in what appears to be the Pacific Northwest, although the state itself goes unnamed. A traveling circus passes through and the truck carrying the tigers gets a flat tire. The local service station doesn’t stock tires that size, so while they’re waiting, the two tiger handlers Josef Pietz (Theodore Marcuse) and Ram Singh (Sabu in what ended up being his final role before his unexpected death at the age of 39) head over to the hotel bar for an early happy hour.

Pietz ends up getting good and drunk, so when he returns to find a crowd of children hanging around clamoring for a peek at the tigers, he’s only too happy to oblige. He jabs the big cats with a stick, riling them up. When he foolishly opens the cage a crack, Raja, the male tiger, makes a break for it. The kids scatter and Raja corners two of them, the sheriff’s daughter Julie (Pamela Franklin) and her friend Tom (Kevin “Moochie” Corcoran), in a dead-end alley. But rather than attacking, Raja leaps a fence and makes for the hills with Pietz and Mr. Singh in hot pursuit.

Sheriff Pete Williams (Disney regular Brian Keith) returns to organize a search party before dense fog moves into the area. They haven’t gone far before one of the men literally stumbles over the mutilated body of Josef Pietz. This is too much for most of the posse and they head for the safety of their homes.

Meanwhile, a local aspiring journalist (Doodles Weaver) has contacted the editor of the area’s biggest newspaper. By the time Sheriff Pete makes it back to town, a media circus has descended on the hotel determined to milk the story for all its worth. While the sheriff tries to prevent a panic, the hotel’s owner (Una Merkel) is charging reporters and other curiosity seekers double her normal rates. She even rents her office to the sheriff as a temporary headquarters. No wonder she glides around the place singing “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” while everybody else is barricading their doors and windows.

Temporarily stymied by the fog, the reporters decide to capture some human interest shots of Julie and Tom feeding the baby tigers. During her interview, Julie speaks out of turn and says her father has promised to capture Raja alive. Word gets back to the governor (Edward Andrews, one of Disney’s favorite avatars of ineffectual authority), who happens to be up for reelection. One of his advisers (Jack Albertson) convinces him that the sheriff is bungling the job, so the governor orders the National Guard to take over.

The sheriff asks the guardsmen to wait until the fog has lifted but the trigger-happy soldiers are eager to start their tiger hunt. Sure enough, it isn’t long before one of them accidentally shoots an old man (Arthur Hunnicutt). He had spotted Raja by his place, ran off the road in the fog and was coming down the mountain on foot to bring the news. Not wanting to risk another accident, the soldiers retreat to wait out the fog.

By this point, Julie’s impromptu press conference has become a children’s crusade thanks to a TV host named Uncle Harry (Harold Peary) who bears a slight resemblance to one Walter Elias Disney. Kids across the country are staging “Save That Tiger” demonstrations and sending in cash donations to purchase the tigers from the circus. Neither Sheriff Pete or the governor are pleased by this turn of events but the sheriff swears he’ll do his best, borrowing a tranquilizer gun from a nearby school.

Eventually the fog lifts and the soldiers spot the tiger from a helicopter. While the soldiers move in from the front, Mr. Singh figures that the noise will drive Raja further up the hill so they move to outflank him with nets. Julie and Tom arrive at the last minute with the tranquilizer rifle. Raja leaps and mauls Pete’s shoulder but not before the sheriff gets a dart in him. The soldiers arrive too late but the governor still wants them to pump a few bullets into the now harmless tiger. Pete intervenes, the tigers are donated to the zoo and the governor loses his bid for reelection, while Sheriff Pete is elected to another term.

There’s just a whole lot going on in this movie and none of it is your typical Disney fare. The cynical look at all the opportunists looking to exploit the situation comes across as Preston Sturges Lite. It’s not as clever or biting as Sturges would have been but it’s pretty sharp for Disney. This is one of Walt’s few films to depict smalltown America in anything less than glowing terms. Most of the folks who live in Scotia are quick to panic and only too happy to take advantage of out-of-towners.

This all plays out against the suspense of tracking down the loose tiger and those scenes are deadly serious. Tokar and cinematographer William E. Snyder make great use of shadows and fog. When Raja stalks the old farmer in his barn, the scene feels like something out of a horror movie. The juxtaposition works surprisingly well and A Tiger Walks could have been a minor classic if it had been produced by anybody other than Walt Disney. The Disney touch softens everything just enough to turn this into a curiosity piece.

Walt attracted an impressive cast of familiar faces and newcomers to this oddity. We’ve obviously seen Brian Keith in this column before and we’ll see him again. The great Vera Miles made her Disney debut as Keith’s wife. She’ll also be back soon. Pamela Franklin had only made a few film and TV appearances, including a role in the Wonderful World Of Color production The Horse Without A Head. A Tiger Walks was her only Disney feature. She’d go on to win acclaim in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and as a scream queen in such horror classics as And Soon The Darkness and The Legend Of Hell House.

This would be the last major film appearance for Kevin Corcoran, who has been a near constant presence and frequent source of irritation here since Old Yeller. And yet, he will be back in this column. After A Tiger Walks, he graduated high school and went to college, where he majored in theatre arts. After graduation, he went back to Disney to work behind the scenes. The next time Moochie appears in this column, it will be as an assistant director and producer in the 1970s. Later in life, he’d be a producer on the TV shows The Shield and Sons Of Anarchy, which is kind of wild to think about.

A Tiger Walks came out on March 12, 1964. Critics greeted it with confusion, trying to figure out who exactly this picture was aimed at. That question remained a mystery as audiences stayed away for the most part. The budget probably wasn’t high enough to make it an outright bomb but it certainly didn’t make much of a dent at the box office. Even today, A Tiger Walks is a bit of a head-scratcher. It’s not available on Disney+ and the studio has never released it on Blu-ray. You can only get it on DVD as a Disney Movie Club Exclusive. It isn’t a great movie but for the curious, it’s worth a look. It’s certainly unlike any other Disney movie from the era.

VERDICT: I’m glad I watched it, so let’s call it a minor Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones

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Theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones

In the early 60s, Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello were Disney’s favorite screen couple, although you wouldn’t know it based solely on the films covered in this column. Annette made her big-screen debut in The Shaggy Dog, playing second fiddle to Roberta Shore as Tommy’s primary love interest. Their roles were reversed in Annette’s big-budget musical Babes In Toyland. Tommy Sands was Annette’s leading man while Tommy Kirk was stuck playing Ed Wynn’s goofy sidekick.

It was on television that Tommy and Annette finally had a chance to click. They starred together in The Horsemasters and Escapade In Florence, two Disneyland two-parters that received theatrical engagements overseas. The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones was clearly intended for a similar release but, for reasons known only to Walt, it got bumped up to American movie theatres. It’s a baffling choice because this is not some widescreen Technicolor epic that demands to be seen on the silver screen.

The story was concocted by gimmick comedy maestro Bill Walsh and scripted by the husband-and-wife team Alfred Lewis Levitt and Helen Levitt. The Levitts were victims of the Hollywood Blacklist who had only recently begun to find work again, credited under the pseudonyms Tom and Helen August. Robert Stevenson, the prolific director behind such previous hits as The Absent-Minded Professor and Son Of Flubber, was recruited to bring some of that Flubber magic to the project.

For Tommy Kirk, Merlin Jones was a natural extension of the roles he’d played in The Shaggy Dog and the Flubber pictures. The Shaggy Dog’s Wilby Daniels was an amateur inventor and Biff Hawk had somehow become Fred MacMurray’s assistant in Son Of Flubber. Merlin Jones is, as the Sherman Brothers’ catchy title song helpfully explains, the scrambled egghead, the campus kook of Midvale College (not to be confused with Medfield College, home of Flubber). Annette plays Merlin’s loyal and remarkably patient girlfriend, Jennifer.

In the first part of the two-act adventure, Merlin creates an EEG machine out of a football helmet with a bunch of antennas and other assorted gizmos stuck to it. An accidental electric shock supercharges his brain, giving him the power to read minds, a fact that his science professor (Alan Hewitt, another Flubber alumni) is weirdly unimpressed with.

As Merlin comes to grips with his new ability, he reads the thoughts of no-nonsense Judge Holmsby (Leon Ames, last seen in this column as Medfield College’s President Daggett) as he tries to figure out where to stash some stolen diamonds. Merlin, who has already had some run-ins with the judge, determines that Holmsby is leading a double life as a criminal mastermind. The police don’t believe him at first. Even after he demonstrates his ESP, they can’t lift a finger without real evidence. So Merlin and Jennifer break into the judge’s house and dig up the supposed diamonds. But it turns out the whole thing was just a wacky misunderstanding. Judge Holmsby is leading a double life as a writer of detective fiction under the name Lex Fortas. Everyone agrees to forget the whole thing provided they keep Holmsby’s alter ego a secret.

Merlin’s telepathy disappears just in time for the second episode half of the film. This time, Merlin is conducting experiments with hypnosis. After hypnotizing his cowardly cat into chasing a dog up a tree, he decides to help Stanley the chimp stand up to his bullying keeper, Norman (played by custom car builder turned actor Norm Grabowski). The hypnosis works a little too well and when the science lab ends up trashed, Merlin is once again dragged in front of Judge Holmsby.

Now that Merlin and Holmsby are friendly, the judge has a request. He wants Merlin to hypnotize him into committing a crime that goes against his moral code as research for his next book. Merlin commands the judge to break into the lab and steal Stanley. The plan works perfectly but Merlin is caught trying to return Stanley the next morning. He’s arrested for the crime and, unfortunately for him, the judge doesn’t remember that he was actually the guilty party.

Theatrical release poster for The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones

Even by live-action Disney comedy standards, this is some deeply silly stuff not meant to be taken seriously even for a second. The only fair way to judge something like this is whether or not the gags land. Some do. The cat chasing the dog up a tree is kind of funny. Tommy gets a cute bit in the library where he’s overwhelmed by the loud thoughts of his fellow students (including one of Walt’s favorite targets, a poetry-writing beatnik). But overall, the movie is eminently disposable. These are all supposed to be smart characters but they behave in some of the dumbest ways imaginable. I understand Judge Holmsby forgetting about the details of his crime but did he also forget that he asked Merlin to hypnotize him in the first place?

At least the cast seems to be having fun. Tommy and Annette are a pleasant team and they play off each other well. Grabowski was pushing 30 at the time and looks about 40, so he’s an odd choice to play a college jock vying for Annette’s affections. Ames and Hewitt are squarely in their comfort zones as frequently befuddled authority figures. But the movie is so inconsequential that it begins to fade from memory even as you’re watching it. It also lacks the inventive visual effects that helped elevate previous gimmick comedies. That low-rent feeling does nothing to dispel the sense that this project would have been more at home on TV.

Sadly, The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones spelled the end of the line for Tommy Kirk’s Disney career. Tommy’s teen years had been miserable as he struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality. At the same time, his off-set behavior had become increasingly out of control. Alcohol and drugs began to sink their claws into him and he clashed with costars Fred MacMurray and Jane Wyman on the set of Bon Voyage.

While filming Merlin Jones, Tommy started seeing a 15-year-old boy on the sly. The kid’s mother found out about the affair and contacted Disney. This was the last straw for Walt. The fact that Tommy was gay was something of an open secret that Walt could ignore as long as it remained more secret than open. He decided not to renew Tommy’s contract and cut him loose. Later in 1964, Tommy was arrested for possession. The charges were later dropped but his All-American boy reputation was irreparably damaged.

And yet, this is not the last we’ll see of Tommy Kirk in this column. Money talks and, when The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones became an out-of-left-field hit in February of 1964, Walt brought Tommy and Annette back one last time for a sequel. In the meantime, Tommy followed Annette to American International Pictures where the two costarred in Pajama Party, a spinoff/sequel to AIP’s popular Beach Party series. Tommy plays Go Go, a Martian sent to Earth on a mission of conquest, because that’s the way those movies roll.

The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones is a minor entry in the Disney catalog that inexplicably hit it big. I think a lot of the credit for that goes to the Sherman Brothers song and the stop-motion animated titles by Xavier Atencio and Bill Justice (who had done similar work on The Parent Trap and The Shaggy Dog). Those are certainly the most memorable elements of the movie. But despite the fact that everything else is by the numbers, it was a shockingly popular film that even got a re-release in the 70s. Why it struck a chord is beyond me. I guess there’s just no accounting for taste.

VERDICT: Not actively bad enough to be a full-on Disney Minus but it’s borderline.

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