Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Fighting Prince Of Donegal

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Fighting Prince Of Donegal

When Walt Disney first started producing live action features, his favored genre was the historical adventure. This was mostly out of necessity. Since the studio was obligated to film in the United Kingdom, movies like The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men and Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue took advantage of the local scenery and talent. But swashbucklers had fallen out of favor, both at the studio and at the box office. Disney still occasionally filmed overseas but the studio hadn’t made an adventure picture since Kidnapped back in 1960.

The Fighting Prince Of Donegal was released on October 1, 1966, but it’s virtually indistinguishable from those other adventure movies released over a decade earlier. Robert Westerby, the screenwriter of Greyfriars Bobby and The Three Lives Of Thomasina, based his script on the novel Red Hugh: Prince Of Donegal by Robert T. Reilly. Hugh O’Donnell was a real Irish nobleman who fought the British in the sixteenth century, making this very much an Irish cousin to Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue.

Making his Disney debut was director Michael O’Herlihy, brother of the actor Dan O’Herlihy whom you should recognize from such films as RoboCop and Halloween III: Season Of The Witch. Michael O’Herlihy ended up working mostly in television, directing episodes of Hawaii Five-O, The A-Team and many others. If you watched TV at all during the 60s, 70s and 80s, you’ve seen his work. But The Fighting Prince Of Donegal kicked off a brief stint at Disney working on both television and feature productions. O’Herlihy will be back in this column.

As the movie opens, Red Hugh (Peter McEnery) receives word that his father has died, making him head of Clan O’Donnell. An old prophecy says that when Hugh succeeds Hugh, the Clans of Ireland will unite to stand against the British. This seems like a weirdly specific prophecy to me. I can imagine that the elder Hugh felt like he didn’t need to do much since the prophecy just has him waiting to die. Anyway, Red Hugh takes this all very seriously and immediately gets to work on this whole uniting the Clans business.

He first pays a visit to Lord McSweeney (Andrew Keir), a boisterous, hard-drinking man who pledges the aid of Clan McSweeney. Hugh also has his eye on McSweeney’s daughter, Kathleen (Susan Hampshire, last seen as the so-called “witch” in The Three Lives Of Thomasina). This annoys another would-be suitor, Henry O’Neill (Tom Adams), who decides to drag his feet before pledging the loyalty of Clan O’Neill. But after Hugh defeats him in an impromptu wrestling match, the two men become best of frenemies.

Before they can meet with more Clansmen, McSweeney and Hugh accept the invitation of a British merchant anchored just offshore. Once they’re on board the ship, they fall into a trap to arrest Hugh. It seems the British had heard about that prophecy too and managed to crack the code to figure out who the troublemaker was. Hugh is sent to a Dublin prison where he makes a powerful enemy in Captain Leeds (Gordon Jackson) after Leeds needlessly picks a quarterstaff fight with him and suffers a humiliating defeat in front of the other prisoners.

Sentenced to solitary confinement, Hugh escapes with the help of fellow prisoner Sean O’Toole (Donal McCann). He doesn’t get far before Leeds’ men pick him up and toss him back in. McSweeney and O’Neill attempt to buy his freedom with a treaty but Leeds rejects it and arrests O’Neill. With Hugh about to be transferred to the Tower of London, they enlist the help of a sympathetic waterboy to attempt a second escape, this time through the storm drains beneath the castle.

Leeds has had enough and decides to attack the O’Donnell castle and hold Kathleen and O’Donnell’s mother hostage. As John Belushi once pointed out, you should never mess with an Irishman’s mother. Hugh organizes the various Clans and attacks his own castle, soundly defeating the British and taking Leeds prisoner until a treaty can be ratified. The Clans are united and everyone celebrates in traditional Irish fashion, drinking a lot and fighting among themselves.

The Fighting Prince Of Donegal isn’t terrible but I definitely had a feeling of déjà vu while watching it. All of those British historical dramas started to blend together after awhile and this is very much cut from the same cloth. The fight sequences are active without ever feeling too dangerous or exciting. Everyone looks like they’re costumed for a renaissance fair and all the castles are Peter Ellenshaw matte paintings. If you’ve seen one of these swashbucklers, you really kind of have seen them all.

Maybe it would have been better if the fighting prince himself had been more inspiring. Peter McEnery made his Disney debut as Hayley Mills’ leading man in The Moon-Spinners. He was perfectly fine as a fired banker suspected of being a jewel thief. He has an everyman quality that lends itself to the light Hitchcockian thrills of The Moon-Spinners but doesn’t exactly make him a leader of men. With his shock of messy red hair, it’s kind of like trying to picture Ron Weasley in Braveheart.

Comic book adaptation of The Fighting Prince Of Donegal

This would end up being the final Disney roles for both McEnery and Susan Hampshire. Peter McEnery went on to a very distinguished career on the London stage, as well as roles in such films as Negatives and Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Susan Hampshire found her greatest success on television, winning three Emmy Awards for her roles in The Forsyte Saga, The First Churchills and Vanity Fair. They’re both still with us, so there’s always a chance they could pop up in another Disney project.

The most entertaining performances come from Andrew Keir as McSweeney, Gordon Jackson as the villainous Captain Leeds, and Tom Adams as Henry O’Neill. Around the same time The Fighting Prince Of Donegal was released, Adams starred as superspy Charles Vine in a trilogy of 007 knockoffs. Here, he’s saddled with an atrocious Prince Valiant wig but enough charm comes through that you can see why he’d be cast as an imitation James Bond. Tom Adams will not be back in this column. He died in 2014.

This’ll also be the last time we see Gordon Jackson, who last turned up as the farmer in Greyfriars Bobby. Like Susan Hampshire, Jackson also became a prominent TV actor. He won an Emmy for his role on Upstairs, Downstairs (which was as big as Downton Abbey in its day) and starred in the cult crime series The Professionals. Gordon Jackson passed away in 1990.

Andrew Keir also had a small role in Greyfriars Bobby. Between Disney gigs, he appeared in a number of Hammer Films. In 1967, he landed his most prominent role as Professor Bernard Quatermass in Quatermass And The Pit. He returned to the role shortly before his death on the BBC radio drama The Quatermass Memoirs. Around that same time, he also appeared in the non-Disney Rob Roy with Liam Neeson. Andrew Keir died in 1997.

The middling box office returns for The Fighting Prince Of Donegal confirmed that audiences weren’t all that interested in movies like this from Disney. So in some ways, this marks the end of an era but it’s difficult to feel too nostalgic for it. When people think of Disney movies from the 1950s and 60s, a very specific type of film comes to mind. Silly, perhaps even goofy movies with a song or three and maybe a fantasy element to it. Movies like this don’t fit that mold. It’s interesting that the studio directed so many of its resources toward serious-minded adventures rooted in history. If only they had done more to distinguish them from one another.

VERDICT: The movie’s overall been-there-done-that feeling prevents it from being a Disney Plus. Let’s put it on the high end of the Disney Minus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Moon-Spinners

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: The Three Lives Of Thomasina

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Three Lives Of Thomasina

You don’t have to be a professional animal trainer to figure out why there are a lot more dog movies than cat movies. Dogs’ emotions are written all over their furry little faces. They’re known for being brave, loyal and friendly. They’re also a heck of a lot easier to train.

Cats, on the other hand, are independent and somewhat inscrutable unless they’re purring and rubbing against you. Even the most well-behaved, well-trained cats have an attitude like they’re only willing to go along with your plan as long as it suits them. It’s not an accident that the most popular cat videos are the ones capturing them doing something stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats and consider myself a cat person. But it’s a lot of fun to see these self-satisfied little gremlins make fools of themselves.

When Walt Disney branched out into live-action animal pictures, he understandably focused on the canine set. It wasn’t until The Incredible Journey that a cat received a costarring role alongside two dogs. A few months after that film was released, The Three Lives Of Thomasina made a domestic house cat the center of attention for the first time.

The movie is based on the novel Thomasina, The Cat Who Thought She Was God (great title) by Paul Gallico. Gallico was a former sportswriter whose work had provided the basis of the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride Of The Yankees, earning him an Oscar nomination. He retired from the sports beat in 1938 and became a prolific fiction writer. His work for young people includes The Snow Goose and Manxmouse, a childhood favorite of J.K. Rowling. Grownups probably know him best for his novel The Poseidon Adventure, although I’d wager more people have seen the movie than read the book.

Gallico cowrote the screenplay with Robert Westerby, whose first work for Disney had been Greyfriars Bobby. Greyfriars Bobby and Thomasina have a fair amount in common. Both take place in Scotland around 1912 and both center around devoted pets who melt the hearts of cold, emotionally repressed men. So it makes sense that Walt also rehired Don Chaffey, the director of that film.

Don Chaffey had kept busy in the years between the dog movie and the cat movie. For Disney, he’d directed a pair of TV productions (The Prince And The Pauper and The Horse Without A Head) that received theatrical releases overseas. He’d also picked up a gig for producer Charles H. Schneer, directing the Ray Harryhausen classic Jason And The Argonauts. Chaffey will eventually be back in this column but not for awhile. He spent the better part of the 1960s back home in England, alternating between film and television. Some of his best work would be multiple episodes of the series Danger Man (retitled Secret Agent in the US) and The Prisoner starring his Three Lives Of Thomasina leading man, Patrick McGoohan.

McGoohan had been poised to become a breakout star since the mid-1950s, but it hadn’t quite happened yet. He was an acclaimed stage actor but producers couldn’t seem to find the right movie roles for him. In 1960, he was cast in Danger Man, a half-hour spy show that ran a little over a year before it was canceled. He turned down some other spy roles, including James Bond and Simon Templar on The Saint, and instead signed on with Disney. After appearing in Thomasina and TV’s The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh, Danger Man was revived as an hour-long series. This version caught on and McGoohan finally became a star. While he won’t be back in this column for quite some time, we will eventually hear from him again. McGoohan returned to Disney for his last film, voicing Billy Bones in the 2002 animated feature Treasure Planet.

In The Three Lives Of Thomasina, McGoohan stars as Dr. Andrew McDhui, a widowed veterinarian whose near-total lack of compassion isn’t exactly winning over the locals. If a beloved pet is beyond help, McDhui coldly informs the owner that old Rover needs to be put out of his misery.

McDhui lives with his daughter, Mary (Karen Dotrice), and her beloved cat, Thomasina (who narrates the film in the voice of Elspeth March). Mary enjoys dressing Thomasina up in doll clothes and pushing her around in a baby carriage (even here, the quickest way to humanize a cat is to humiliate her). One day, Thomasina is injured while making her rounds down at the market. Mary begs her father to save the cat but he’s otherwise occupied, trying to save the life of a blind man’s dog. He takes a quick glance at Thomasina, declares her beyond help and orders his assistant to have her destroyed.

Poor Mary is heartbroken and announces that her father is now as dead to her as Thomasina. She and some other children stage an elaborate funeral procession for Thomasina through the village. And it’s right around here that the movie takes a quick detour into the elaborately weird. It switches to Thomasina’s point of view as she tumbles through space and ends up in Cat Heaven. She ascends a stairway straight out of Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death, makes her way through dozens of other cats to appear before a gigantic statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast. You kind of have to see it to believe it. It’s sort of cool but it’s definitely odd.

Anyway, the kids’ funeral has attracted the attention of Lori MacGregor (Susan Hampshire), a beautiful young hermit rumored to be a witch. The kids run away at the sight of her and Lori discovers that Thomasina is still breathing. She takes the cat back to her cottage, where she nurses all sorts of different animals back to health. Thomasina slowly recovers but she has no memory of her previous life.

Meanwhile, the local kids have decided to run Dr. McDhui out of town by starting a whisper campaign focused on the fact that he didn’t even care enough to save his own daughter’s cat. The villagers’ faith in old-fashioned folk remedies returns as their distrust in science deepens (that sounds familiar). With word spreading about the beautiful witch with the miraculous healing powers, McDhui decides to pay Lori a visit. They work together to save an injured badger with Lori respecting McDhui’s knowledge and skill and McDhui admiring her compassion and gentle touch.

As Thomasina begins to remember her previous life, she finds herself drawn to Mary’s window on a stormy night. Mary catches a glimpse of the cat but Thomasina runs off before she can get to her. She chases after her pet and, because it’s raining and this is a Disney movie, immediately comes down with pneumonia. The doctor does everything he can but in the end, McDhui turns to Lori for help. Love conquers all.

The Three Lives Of Thomasina is a bit of a bumpy ride but it’s not a bad little movie. For such a low-key affair, the movie has a lot of different parts that don’t always fit together seamlessly. The Cat Heaven detour is just one extreme example. I didn’t even mention the ramshackle gypsy circus that’s brought up on charges of animal cruelty toward the end. McDhui and Lori team up to get them shut down and I suppose the sequence exists to further cement their bond and rehabilitate McGoohan’s callous character. But it comes just as McDhui is trying to save his daughter, so it’s like a climax in the middle of another climax.

It’s to Chaffey’s credit that the movie works as well as it does. He wisely stacks the supporting cast with wonderful character actors including many familiar Disney faces. Laurence Naismith and Alex Mackenzie were both previously seen in Greyfriars Bobby. Wilfrid Brambell was last seen alongside Hayley Mills in In Search Of The Castaways. Finlay Currie has been in this column several times, most recently in Kidnapped. Even the kids are familiar. Vincent Winter and Denis Gilmore were choirboys in Almost Angels. And while we haven’t seen Karen Dotrice or Matthew Garber in this column previously, we’ll be seeing them again soon enough. Thomasina ended up being a sort of screen test for the kids before moving on to Mary Poppins.

The movie also works as a technical achievement. Cats are not easy to work with on film sets and cinematographer Paul Beeson captures some impressive, long tracking shots of Thomasina making her way through the village. The animals were provided by Jimmy Chipperfield, whose family had owned and operated Chipperfield’s Circus in England since the 1680s. Jimmy left the circus in the 1950s and began training animals for films and television. He definitely earned his keep on this film, providing cats, dogs, frogs, badgers, deer and other assorted critters.

His daughter, Mary Chipperfield, would later take up the family business, serving as a trainer on the live-action 101 Dalmatians remake. Unfortunately, Mary was also eventually found guilty on multiple charges of animal cruelty, mostly surrounding her performing chimpanzees. Hopefully the animals in Thomasina were treated well, although some of those shots of the cat flying through space look a little sketchy.

Preview screenings of The Three Lives Of Thomasina took place in December of 1963 but the film didn’t go into general release until June of ’64. It did just OK at the box office and critics were fairly unimpressed. Years later, film critic and Disney expert Leonard Maltin championed the picture in his book The Disney Films. I wouldn’t rate it quite as highly as Maltin does but I agree with his claim that it deserves to be better known. At its best, this is a cute, charming little movie that carries a nice message about the importance of loving our pets. If my biggest criticism is that the movie packs in too many ideas, that’s actually a pretty good problem to have.

VERDICT: A low-key Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: In Search Of The Castaways

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's In Search Of The Castaways

In 1962, Hayley Mills was on top of the world. Her first two Disney films, Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, had been huge hits. The latter movie even netted her a hit single, “Let’s Get Together” by the Sherman Brothers. After The Parent Trap, Disney allowed her to return to England to make Whistle Down The Wind, based on a novel by her mother, Mary Hayley Bell. Whistle Down The Wind was another hit and Mills scored a BAFTA nomination for Best British Actress. Stanley Kubrick offered her the title role in Lolita but her father, John Mills, nixed that idea. Walt himself probably also played a part in keeping Hayley out of Kubrick’s film. After all, his contract players were typically kept on a very short leash.

Hayley Mills was by far the most bankable box office star Walt had ever had under contract. Up to this point, his biggest live-action hit had been his 1954 adaption of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. So it isn’t difficult to piece together how In Search Of The Castaways came about. The combination of Hayley Mills with the spectacle of another Jules Verne fantasy adventure must have seemed like a license to print money.

Robert Stevenson, who had proven himself equally adept with drama (Old Yeller), adventure (Kidnapped) and comedy (The Absent-Minded Professor), was assigned to direct. Lowell Hawley, the screenwriter of Swiss Family Robinson and Babes In Toyland, adapted Verne’s novel, originally titled Captain Grant’s Children.

Associate producer Hugh Attwooll had a somewhat unusual arrangement with Disney. He’d been working in the British film industry since he was a teenager, steadily working his way up through the ranks. His career was briefly interrupted by World War II and he spent a little while in Hollywood, working mostly for RKO, before heading back to England and Pinewood Studios. In 1959, Disney hired him to work on Kidnapped, beginning a long association with the studio. But unlike most other Disney crew members, Attwooll was never under contract. The studio simply liked his work and continued to hire him to as a producer for nearly everything they shot in England. His final credit was 1981’s Condorman, so we’ll be seeing a lot more from Hugh Attwooll.

Walt ran into a couple of small hiccups when it came to casting the film. He wanted Hayley Mills’ younger brother, Jonathan, to play her on-screen brother. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get the time off school and wasn’t able to follow in his sister’s footsteps. The role instead went to Keith Hamshere, who was then appearing on the West End in the musical Oliver!

In Search Of The Castaways ended up being Hamshere’s only big movie role but it was still a formative experience for him. At the time, he was interested in photography as a hobby and spent much of his downtime hanging out with the film’s stills photographer, John Jay. Jay encouraged Hamshere’s passion and gave him lessons. A few years later, Jay hired Hamshere to work as his assistant on 2001: A Space Odyssey (a surprising number of Kubrick connections to this movie). After that, Hamshere had a new career. He went on to become a much-celebrated stills photographer in his own right, working behind-the-scenes on such films as Barry Lyndon, Superman II, and a whole bunch of James Bond movies. He makes a cameo in License To Kill as, what else, a wedding photographer.

Walt also cast Charles Laughton as Lord Glenarvan, the shipping magnate who leads the titular search. But Laughton was forced to drop out of the picture after he was diagnosed with cancer. He died on December 15, 1962, just a few days before In Search Of The Castaways had its American premiere. Laughton was replaced by Wilfrid Hyde-White, the delightful British character actor.

The other two marquee names in the cast were Maurice Chevalier and George Sanders. Chevalier started his career in Parisian music halls before coming to America in the 1920s. He was a huge star in Hollywood throughout the 30s before a contract dispute sent him back to France. He had only recently begun making American films again with a role in Billy Wilder’s Love In The Afternoon in 1957. He followed that up with Gigi, an enormous hit and winner of multiple Oscars including Best Picture. In Search Of The Castaways would be his first collaboration with Disney but not his last. He’ll be back.

So will George Sanders, the great Oscar-winning star of All About Eve. Sanders was one of those rare actors who moved effortlessly between leading roles and supporting character parts. Sanders’ career (and life) had some tumultuous ups and downs but in 1962, he was still doing reasonably well. Two years earlier, he’d played the lead in Village Of The Damned, a low-budget horror movie that seemed to surprise everyone by becoming a sleeper hit. Between Village and Castaways, Sanders appeared in four more films and a few TV episodes, so he was certainly busy.

Alternate poster design for In Search Of The Castaways

Our story opens in 1858 Glasgow as Mary and Robert Grant (Mills and Hamshere) along with eccentric Professor Paganel (Chevalier) attempt to crash a bon voyage party hosted by Lord Glenarvan. Mary and Robert’s father vanished without a trace when his ship, one of Glenarvan’s fleet, went down. But Paganel recently found a bottle with a note in it that appears to have been written by Captain Grant. It isn’t entirely legible but Paganel and the kids believe it contains enough clues to be track Grant’s location.

At first, Glenarvan refuses to believe any of it. But his son, John (played by Michael Anderson Jr., the son of director Michael Anderson, who had himself filmed a Jules Verne adaptation, Around The World In 80 Days), started crushing on Mary the second he laid eyes on her. He persuades his father to mount an expedition. After some deliberation, Paganel decides that Grant’s most likely location is South America.

Up to this point, director Robert Stevenson has been setting us up for a relatively straight-forward adventure like Swiss Family Robinson. But once the searchers arrive in South America, Stevenson changes course and steers his ship toward Wackytown. The adventurers spend the night high up on a mountain in an area prone to earthquakes. When the quake hits, their rock shelf splits off, sending them careening down the mountainside and through a spectacular ice cavern on a stone toboggan. At the end of the ride, a giant condor appears and plucks Robert out of the snow, carrying him off to his aerie. Things look grim for Robert until a well-placed shot from a passing Indian, Chief Thalcave (Antonio Cifariello, continuing the tradition of Italians passing for Indians), rescues the lad.

Thalcave says he knows where the castaways are being held prisoner and agrees to lead the group. But before they get there, they decide to camp for the night by an enormous tree in a flood plain (these folks don’t use the best judgment when selecting campsites). Sure enough, a tidal wave floods the area, stranding the adventurers in the tree. Thalcave goes for help. While they’re awaiting rescue, a jaguar arrives to menace the group and a lightning storm threatens to burn down the tree.

They are eventually rescued by Thalcave but when they arrive at the village, it turns out that these aren’t the men they’re looking for. Paganel finally admits he was wrong about South America. They should be looking in Australia, which was where Lord Glenarvan wanted to go in the first place. So this entire trip (and basically the whole first half of the movie) has been a complete waste of time.

Off they go to Australia, where they encounter Thomas Ayerton (Sanders), who also claims to know where Grant’s ship went down off the coast of New Zealand. Turns out that Ayerton is actually a gunrunner. He and his men took over Grant’s ship, setting him adrift, and now intends to do the same thing to Glenarvan and his crew.

Glenarvan and company reach shore where they’re promptly taken prisoner by a tribe of Maori cannibals. They’re thrown into a hut with Bill Gaye (Wilfrid Brambell, best known, depending on where you’re from, as either Steptoe on the long-running British sitcom Steptoe And Son or as Paul McCartney’s Grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night). Bill Gaye was a shipmate of Captain Grant and has been planning to escape and rejoin him. But his plan depends on squeezing through a small window, just big enough for a boy Robert’s size.

They manage to escape the Maori, losing them by hotfooting it across an active volcano. Finally, they find Captain Grant (Jack Gwillim, who will always be Poseidon from Clash Of The Titans to me) dealing with the treacherous Ayerton. With Glenarvan’s ship left relatively unguarded, they recapture the vessel and rescue Captain Grant. All’s well that ends well.

In Search Of The Castaways soundtrack album

If Walt’s goal was to recapture the magic of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, he didn’t quite succeed. This is an unrepentantly goofy and amiable film. It doesn’t have a strong presence like James Mason at its center. The action sequences are treated with all the gravity and realism of a Donald Duck cartoon. The songs by the Sherman Brothers are silly little tunes with little to no bearing on what’s actually happening on screen. But if you can get on the movie’s wavelength, it offers some minor pleasures.

The cast certainly appears to be having a good time. Chevalier and Hyde-White are both a lot of fun, reacting to various life-or-death perils as if they’re minor inconveniences. Hayley Mills continues to be a charming screen presence. If she fails to generate many sparks with her romantic lead, that can probably be forgiven considering she was all of 15 or 16 years old at the time. And Keith Hamshere manages to avoid the Kevin Corcoran trap of overly precocious child actors.

The movie’s light touch works against it in some ways. It’s hard to become too invested in the search when every character sings a jaunty song in the face of mortal danger. And the midway revelation that they’ve been looking in the wrong place elicits groans more than anything else. It’s easy for the audience to check out at this point. If nothing we’ve seen so far has actually mattered, why should we expect that to change in the second half?

The film also borrows liberally from other Disney films. The search for castaways feels like it could be the flip side to Swiss Family Robinson. The oversized bird that captures Robert feels like an attempt to outdo some of the giant creatures from 20,000 Leagues. And the third act appearance of Bill Gaye brings to mind Treasure Island’s Ben Gunn, another long-haired, half-crazed sailor. They even have the same initials. But despite the film’s many flaws, it’s a hard movie to dislike. It coasts by on charm and spectacle, even as you find yourself rolling your eyes at some of its more unbelievable aspects.

In Search Of The Castaways was Disney’s big Christmas release for 1962. Critics weren’t exactly rapturous in their praise but most admitted that it was harmless fun, if nothing else. Audiences, on the other hand, seemed to love it. It became one of the highest-grossing films of the year in both the US and the UK. Hayley Mills’ winning streak wasn’t over yet. Neither was Robert Stevenson’s. He’ll be back in this column almost immediately.  

VERDICT: I had enough fun with it to make it a minor Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Greyfriars Bobby

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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