James MacArthur

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Swiss Family Robinson

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Swiss Family Robinson

Swiss Family Robinson is a difficult movie to evaluate from a modern perspective. This is only surprising in that most of Disney’s biggest hits have aged extremely well. Walt’s animated classics have remained timeless. The most popular live-action films may require a bit more effort but you can still see what audiences responded to, even if the effect is now somewhat diminished. But Swiss Family Robinson, the fourth highest-grossing film of 1960 behind Spartacus, Psycho and Exodus, is a textbook case of “maybe you had to be there”. Maybe it’s the wave of remakes and copycats that washed up in its wake. Or maybe it’s just that the novelty of finding yourself isolated with your entire family doesn’t seem like such a fantasy in 2021.

Walt and producer Bill Anderson had been kicking around the idea of adapting Johann Wyss’s 1812 novel for a while. They’d both seen RKO’s 1940 version starring Thomas Mitchell and thought it was ripe for the Disney treatment. They considered producing it for television, which makes sense given the episodic nature of the story. Eventually Anderson figured out how to turn it into a movie by introducing the ever-present threat of pirates, an enemy that doesn’t factor into Wyss’s book at all.

Perhaps inspired by the Swiss air, Disney and Anderson revisited the idea while on location in Switzerland for Third Man On The Mountain. They approached that film’s director, Ken Annakin, about Swiss Family Robinson. Annakin picked up a copy of the book and couldn’t for the life of him figure out why they were so gung-ho about this particular story. Still, he agreed to take it on and reportedly used the 1940 movie as a template of “what not to do”.

(Walt would eventually buy the rights to the 1940 movie with the sole purpose of keeping the film out of circulation. Ironically, it’s now available on Disney+ and pops up as a recommendation alongside the Disney version, exactly the kind of comparison Walt was trying to avoid.)

It wasn’t difficult for Annakin to differentiate his movie from the earlier version. Instead of a black-and-white, studio-bound picture, the Disney version would be shot on location in Technicolor and Panavision. Where the 1940 film remained relatively faithful to the book, Annakin and screenwriter Lowell S. Hawley (a Zorro writer making the leap to features) essentially tossed Wyss’s novel aside. Survival is almost beside the point in the Disney version. At the very least, it’s simply assumed. There’s never any question whether or not the family is going to make it. Here, the Robinsons’ primary concerns are comfort and entertainment.

Swiss Family Robinson book-and-record set

The cast was made up almost entirely of familiar Disney faces. James MacArthur, who had made his Disney debut with 1958’s The Light In The Forest and was most recently seen in Kidnapped, starred as Fritz, the eldest son. This will be MacArthur’s final appearance in this column. He’d return to the studio once more in 1967 to star in the three-part Willie And The Yank (released theatrically overseas as Mosby’s Marauders) for Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color. The next year, he was cast as Danny “Dan-O” Williams on Hawaii Five-O, a role that would make him a TV icon and extremely rich. He’d essentially retire after leaving Hawaii Five-O in 1979, working whenever he felt like it on stage or in guest spots on TV shows like The Love Boat. James MacArthur passed away in 2010 at the age of 72.

Fritz’s younger siblings, Ernst and Francis, were played by Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran, once again playing on-screen brothers after Old Yeller and The Shaggy Dog. Swiss Family Robinson actually marked a homecoming for Kirk, who had been temporarily let go from the studio after The Shaggy Dog. He was developing into an awkward, gangly teenager and the studio couldn’t figure out what to do with him. But after The Shaggy Dog turned into a surprise hit, Disney decided they wanted to keep him in the family. This column still hasn’t seen the last of either Kirk or Corcoran.

Janet Munro was reunited with MacArthur, her Third Man On The Mountain costar, as Roberta, another shipwrecked victim of the pirates rescued by Fritz and Ernst. Munro was also nearing the end of her Disney contract. She and MacArthur were to be teamed again on the comedy Bon Voyage!, but when production was delayed she was reassigned to The Horsemasters, another TV production given an overseas theatrical release.

The Horsemasters brought Munro back home to England, where she stayed and starred in such films as The Day The Earth Caught Fire and Life For Ruth. Life For Ruth netted her a BAFTA Award nomination but the movie was a flop. In 1963, she married actor Ian Hendry. They had two daughters but it was not a happy relationship. Between her tempestuous marriage and floundering career, Munro began drinking heavily. Munro and Hendry divorced in 1971 but irreparable damage had already been done to both her career and her health. Janet Munro died of a heart attack in 1972. She was just 38 years old.

Mother Robinson (neither parent is given an actual name) was played by Dorothy McGuire. McGuire had already appeared as Kirk and Corcoran’s on-screen mom in Old Yeller. She has quite a bit less to do here than in her previous Disney outing. In Old Yeller, she was essentially a single parent while Fess Parker went off to tend to man’s business. Here, she’s in a more passive maternal role, worrying about her kids’ safety and tending to the cooking and the sewing while Father and the boys take care of everything else.

Even though John Mills had never appeared in a Disney project before, this wasn’t his first time on a Disney set. He’d played chaperone to daughter Hayley while she filmed Pollyanna. Father Mills never became as ubiquitous a Disney presence as Daughter Mills. He’s terrific here but as the 1960s went on, Disney’s focus became increasingly American. I’m sure if there had been a need for British father figures, Mills might have become as familiar to Disney fans as Fred MacMurray.

The Robinsons are emigrating to New Guinea when they’re hit by a trifecta of disasters. Pirates attack, forcing the ship to flee into a storm that the Robinsons’ cowardly crew can’t handle, causing them to abandon ship. All of this happens before the movie even starts with the storm playing out under the opening credits. The next day, they discover they’re marooned off the shore of a tropical paradise that is miraculously free of people but teeming with the kind of exotic wildlife typically only found in zoos or roaming the grounds of an eccentric millionaire. These animals are in addition to the two Great Danes and assorted livestock they manage to rescue from the ship.

Once the Robinsons make it to shore, shelter understandably becomes their first priority. Rescue is a distant second. Father raises a quarantine flag on the wreck of their ship. This succeeds in scaring off the pirates, who believe it to be a plague ship, but it would presumably also scare off any would-be rescuers. Father opts to build an elaborate treehouse, ostensibly to protect the family from tigers and such. But it’s also far enough away from the beach that no passing ships would spot them. Again, pirates. But you also start to get the idea that Father isn’t really all that interested in leaving.

For her part, Mother is primarily concerned with young Francis’s safety around animals and the treehouse. Fortunately, the boys are such skilled scavengers (and Ernst is a gifted engineer) that those fears are quickly allayed. Father and Fritz even manage to rescue the ship’s pipe organ and Ernst constructs a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom complete with running water and icebox. All that’s left for Mother to do is pick out the curtains.

Eventually Fritz and Ernst persuade their parents to allow them to circumnavigate the island in order to get some idea of where they’ve ended up. Along the way, they again encounter the pirates, who have captured a British sea captain (Cecil Parker) and his cabin boy. The Robinsons rescue the lad and come to find out that “he” is actually the captain’s granddaughter, disguised to protect her from the pirates’ unwholesome intent. This is really the only hint we get that the pirates are capable of doing much more than pillage.

Swiss Family Robinson comic book adaptation published by Gold Key Comics

Legendary Japanese star Sessue Hayakawa, a recent Oscar nominee for The Bridge On The River Kwai, was cast as Kuala, the pirate chief. Hayakawa had been one of the biggest icons of the silent era and the first American movie star of Asian descent. His fame had diminished considerably since then due to a number of factors. His accent became a liability with the introduction of sound. The restrictive (and racist) Hays Code explicitly banned miscegenation, limiting his viability as a romantic lead. And as the country became gripped in anti-Japanese fervor in the years leading up to World War II, Hayakawa increasingly found work abroad. He was filming in France when the Germans occupied the country, trapping him there for the duration of the war. He wouldn’t appear in another Hollywood film until Tokyo Joe in 1949. Swiss Family Robinson would be one of only a handful of film and TV appearances by Hayakawa after the late-career high point of Bridge On The River Kwai.

The depiction of the pirates is really too abstract to be considered offensive. They represent an ill-defined “other”, clearly not Anglo-European but otherwise difficult to pin down. The presence of Hayakawa and the design of their ship marks them as more-or-less Asian but that’s about as specific as it gets. Compared to some of the other Asian stereotypes and caricatures Disney has unfortunately indulged in, the depiction of the pirates is practically enlightened.

Fritz, Ernst and Roberta manage to lose the pirates and make their way back to the treehouse just in time for a Christmas polka party. Concerned that the pirates might come looking for Bertie, Father decides to fortify his stronghold. The entire family gets in on the act, building coconut grenades and log rolls. Francis even manages to capture his tiger in a pit. When the pirates do show up (interrupting a spirited animal race), the Robinsons swing into action, transforming into the most skilled primitive warriors this side of the Ewoks. They’re able to hold the pirates at bay long enough for Bertie’s grandfather to show up and save the day. Despite the rescue, most of the family decides to stick around, as does Bertie. Only Ernst sails back to civilization to further his education.

While there’s nothing about Swiss Family Robinson that strikes me as actively bad, it also doesn’t seem special enough to have become a pop culture touchstone. The cast is agreeable enough. Mills and McGuire make for a warm, believable couple. MacArthur gives his best, most relaxed Disney performance and he’s a good foil for Tommy Kirk. Kevin Corcoran, who had been a bit more restrained lately in movies like Toby Tyler, is unfortunately back to his irritating old hyperactive ways, running around the island on a constant sugar high.

But for an adventure movie, there are only a handful of scenes that generate real excitement. The opening storm is kind of cool. Fritz and Ernst run into some trouble while they’re outrunning the pirates. But most of the action here ranges from silly to goofy. The finale with the pirates is a nonstop barrage of slapstick mayhem with all the lasting consequences of a Road Runner cartoon. And then there’s that whole animal race sequence, in which poor Tommy Kirk learns that it’s impossible to keep your dignity while riding an ostrich.

Swiss Family Robinson theatrical re-release poster

But as I said, maybe you had to be there. Swiss Family Robinson struck a chord as an ideal family adventure (and maybe the perfect fantasy of colonialism), raking in over $8 million in its initial release. In 1962, the Swiss Family Treehouse attraction opened in Disneyland, allowing visitors to climb into a replica of the Robinsons’ home. Although the original ride was refurbished into Tarzan’s Treehouse in 1999, you can still visit Swiss Family Treehouses in Orlando’s Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland.

The copycats and ripoffs started arriving fairly quickly. In 1962, Gold Key Comics (who had inherited the Disney license from its predecessor, Dell Comics) began publishing Space Family Robinson. A few years later, Irwin Allen’s very similar Lost In Space premiered on CBS. (Gold Key was already publishing another Irwin Allen comic, so rather than risk antagonizing him with a lawsuit, they decided to just add Lost In Space to their title.) 1975 brought us The Adventures Of The Wilderness Family, about another family named Robinson leaving on their own in the wild. That movie spawned its own franchise, culminating in Mountain Family Robinson in 1979.

There have been several subsequent TV adaptations of Wyss’ book, both live-action and animated. In 1987, Disney Television produced Beverly Hills Family Robinson starring Dyan Cannon, Martin Mull and a young Sarah Michelle Gellar. That appears to be the studio’s most recent attempt at a reboot but they certainly haven’t stopped trying. Over the years, everyone from Lindsay Lohan to Bill Paxton to Will Smith and the entire Smith family have been rumored to be involved in a new version. Back in 2014, Steve Carell was reportedly attached to Brooklyn Family Robinson. It’s been nearly seven years since that news broke, so odds are the project is dead in the water.

Rest assured that sooner or later, Disney will have another go at this property. Swiss Family Robinson is too iconic to leave dormant for long. And honestly, I don’t have a problem with that. Walt’s version is fine for what it was but it isn’t an untouchable classic. Sure, it would be very easy to make an updated version that’s a lot worse. But the template is so universal and basic that all the elements are in place to make it even better. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the Robinsons.

VERDICT: I don’t have a lot of enthusiasm for this one but it isn’t terrible, so I guess it’s a very mild Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Kidnapped

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Kidnapped

Walt Disney’s Treasure Island launched the studio’s live-action division with a bang back in 1950. The movie raked in a small fortune, both domestically and overseas. So it was only a matter of time before Walt decided to return to his library’s Robert Louis Stevenson shelves to see what else might be worth adapting.

Stevenson was a popular and prolific writer of novels, short stories, poetry, essays and nonfiction. But as far as Hollywood is concerned, his entire life’s work can pretty much be boiled down to Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped. Of those, Kidnapped is the most “obscure”. There have only been about a dozen different movie and TV versions of the novel over the years, compared to the countless official and unofficial adaptations of Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll.

Director Robert Stevenson (no relation to the author, although the Disney publicity department certainly wished he had been) was in production on Darby O’Gill And The Little People when Walt suggested Kidnapped as a follow-up. Stevenson thought that was a fine idea and wrote the screenplay himself. Stevenson had started his film career as a scriptwriter in England, gradually directing more and more and writing less and less. He hadn’t received a screenwriting credit since Jane Eyre in 1943. This would be the first and only time he’d be credited as a writer for Disney, despite his long and profitable association with the studio.

Stevenson had been obliged to shoot Darby O’Gill in California but Kidnapped would be filmed on location in Scotland, with studio work done in London at Pinewood Studios. The entire cast and crew hailed from the United Kingdom, with one notable exception. All-American contract player James MacArthur, star of The Light In The Forest and Third Man On The Mountain, starred as David Balfour, rightful heir to the dilapidated House of Shaws. MacArthur had definitely improved as an actor since his Disney debut but attempting a Scottish accent was punching above his weight.

David’s parents have recently died and, armed with a letter of introduction, he makes his way to his ancestral home and Uncle Ebenezer (John Laurie, who had appeared as Blind Pew in Treasure Island). When the eccentric and miserly Ebenezer discovers that the House of Shaws rightfully belongs to David, he tries to arrange a little accident for him. When that doesn’t work, he pays off an old sailing associate, Captain Hoseason, to shanghai the young man and sell him into indentured servitude. The great character actor Bernard Lee makes his one and only Disney appearance as Hoseason. He would soon begin a lengthy association with Darby O’Gill’s Sean Connery as M to Connery’s 007.

Hoseason’s ship has barely made it out to sea when it collides with a boat in the fog. The sole survivor of the accident turns out to be Alan Breck Stewart, the real-life Jacobite rebel played here by Peter Finch. Finch’s performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Disney’s The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men had given his career a nice little boost. Kidnapped would be Finch’s only other Disney project before moving on to such acclaimed films as Sunday Bloody Sunday and Network.

After David discovers that Hoseason is planning to rob and murder Stewart, the two men fight their way off the ship and are separated as they make their way back to shore. David makes his way to the town of Appin where he encounters Colin Campbell (Andrew Cruickshank), known far and wide as the Red Fox, an emissary sent to deal with the Jacobites. While the Red Fox is interrogating David, he’s shot dead by a hidden assassin. Pursued by Redcoats, David runs into Alan, who denies that he’s the killer.

Once again, the Appin Murder is an historical incident that is presumably fleshed out a lot more in R.L. Stevenson’s book. In R. Stevenson’s 97-minute movie, this entire middle section is more than a little tedious and confusing. There’s a lot of talk about politics, loyalty and taxation which will likely make your eyes glaze over unless you’re extremely well-versed in 18th century British history.

The highlight of this section is the first screen appearance of Peter O’Toole. Peter Finch had worked with O’Toole at the Old Vic and recommended him to Stevenson. O’Toole plays Robin MacGregor, son of Rob Roy MacGregor whose own struggles against the Redcoats had been indifferently dramatized in Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue. The second O’Toole enters the scene, you forget that poor James MacArthur is even there. You can’t take your eyes off him and he has an electricity with Finch that MacArthur can’t hope to replicate. Even the fact that the scene culminates in a bagpipe duel, a spectacle that’s even more ridiculous than it sounds, can’t dim O’Toole’s undeniable star quality.

O’Toole and Finch would remain good friends until Finch’s untimely death in 1977. There’s a great story that the two Peters were out drinking late one night in Ireland. When the landlord refused to serve them another drink, they bought the pub. The check bounced but hey, it’s the drunken impulse that counts. Unfortunately, Peter O’Toole will not be back in this column, unless I’ve decided to include Pixar movies by the time we get to Ratatouille. Just a couple years after Kidnapped, O’Toole would hang up his bagpipes for good as Lawrence Of Arabia catapulted him to a whole new level of stardom.

Eventually, David and Alan make their way back to the House of Shaws where they confront Ebenezer and get him to confess to his misdeeds within earshot of a lawyer. David gets his inheritance, Alan heads off presumably to further adventures and all’s well that ends well. Or something. At least it ends.

For its first twenty or so minutes, Kidnapped holds some promise. The Scottish countryside is lovely, the old ruins of the House of Shaws are creepy, John Laurie is an engagingly sinister presence and James MacArthur…well…he fulfills the terms and obligations of his contract. But the actual kidnapping part of Kidnapped is over much too quickly. Scotland is not a huge country, so it feels like David is really only on board that ship for less than a day before he and Alan escape. It seems about as perilous as missing your stop on a bus.

The rest of the film gets bogged down in endless dialogue scenes. Robert Stevenson the director gave too much control over to Robert Stevenson the screenwriter. You can tell that he wanted to remain as faithful to the book as possible but he does so by concentrating on incident and plot over character and emotion. And since the story is circular, ending up right back at the House of Shaws, everything in the middle feels a bit pointless.

Finch delivers an entertaining performance but Alan’s story remains vague and confusing for anyone not familiar with the novel or history. The emotional crux of the story should hinge on the developing bond between Alan and David but that never materializes. By the time they part ways, they still seem like relative strangers to each other.

Contemporary critics and audiences agreed that Kidnapped was no Treasure Island. Robert Stevenson recovered quickly, however. He’d continue to work for Disney into the 1970s, directing some of the most profitable and beloved movies in the studio’s history. He’ll be back in this column again. So will Robert Louis Stevenson for that matter, although not for a very long time.      

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Third Man On The Mountain

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Third Man On The Mountain

It’s a little bit hard to imagine that Walt Disney was ever an avid mountain climber. Apart from a brief phase as a polo player that came to an end after he injured his back in 1938, Walt wasn’t much of an outdoorsman. But even if he wasn’t a climber himself, he had a lot of respect for people who were. More importantly, he absolutely loved Switzerland. He and his family had taken several holidays in the Alps. In 1955, he produced Switzerland, an entry in the People And Places series of documentary shorts, sort of a travelogue cousin to the True-Life Adventures. It was nominated for an Oscar but Walt felt he still hadn’t quite tapped the country’s cinematic potential. Or perhaps he just wanted an excuse to take more working vacations in Switzerland. In any event, the country and its landscape are the real stars of the 1959 feature Third Man On The Mountain.

Producer Bill Anderson found James Ramsey Ullman’s book Banner In The Sky, based on the story of the first ascent of the Matterhorn. Anderson brought the book to Walt, who probably gave the project a greenlight as soon as he heard the word “Matterhorn”. Eleanore Griffin was hired to write the screenplay. This was her first and only assignment for Disney but she had been a veteran screenwriter since the 1920s, winning an Oscar for the 1938 Spencer Tracy drama Boys Town.

Director Ken Annakin, who had previously helmed the UK productions The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men and The Sword In The Rose, was brought back into the Disney fold. The two young leads were Disney contract players. James MacArthur, last seen pretending to be an Indian in The Light In The Forest, played novice mountaineer Rudi Matt. His love interest was Janet Munro, fresh off the set of Darby O’Gill And The Little People.

David Niven was to play gentleman climber Captain John Winter but ended up being replaced by Michael Rennie, the star of The Day The Earth Stood Still and the 1952 version of Les Miserables. This would be Rennie’s only appearance in a Disney film, while Niven had merely postponed his Date with Disney Destiny. He’ll eventually show up in this column.

Walt assembled a first-rate cast and crew for Third Man On The Mountain but the location itself was always the number one priority. Unlike Darby O’Gill, which had substituted sunny California for its Ireland setting, Third Man would be shot on location in the shadow of the Matterhorn itself. More than that, Annakin wanted the climbing sequences to look as authentic as possible. Both the cast and the crew were given an intensive two-week training course, after which Alpine guides decided if the stars were capable of doing the stunt work themselves.

The physical shoot took its toll on the cast and crew, though no one seems to have been hurt too seriously. Both MacArthur and Munro ended up doing a lot of their own stunts, although Munro’s actual climbing time was a lot more limited. She ends up dangling at the end of a rope, hoisted up the mountain like “a bundle of firewood”. Needless to say, sisters weren’t exactly doing it for themselves in little Swiss villages in 1865 or most Hollywood movies in 1959, for that matter.

The stunt work is fairly impressive, especially for its time. Annakin does a terrific job staging these sequences, making it difficult at times to tell the difference between actual location footage and special effects. No movie is seamless, of course, but in general, it’s pretty convincing. You definitely get the sense that this was not an easy movie to shoot. Walt wanted to make sure that 1959 audiences knew exactly how difficult the shoot had been. He promoted the movie with a behind-the-scenes episode of Walt Disney Presents called Perilous Assignment.

The story is pretty much exactly what you might expect, even if you know absolutely nothing about this film other than it’s a Disney movie about mountaineering. MacArthur’s Rudi Matt works for his uncle (James Donald) as a dishwasher but dreams of being an Alpine guide like his late father. He sneaks out regularly to climb the foothills around the Citadel (the fictional name given to the Matterhorn), the mountain that cost his father his life.

On one of these trips, he rescues Captain Winter (Rennie). Winter knew Rudi’s father and intends to be the first man to conquer the Citadel. Against his uncle’s wishes, Rudi goes along as an apprentice but his recklessness almost causes an accident. Winter goes off to hire a more experienced guide (the great Herbert Lom as the sinister Emil Saxo) while Rudi trains and learns about teamwork. Lessons are learned, the mountain is conquered and dreams are fulfilled.

Dramatically, Third Man On The Mountain is pretty inert. But nobody’s watching this for the gripping plot. You watch it for the scenery and the mountain-climbing and on those points, Annakin delivers. Cinematographer Harry Waxman (who would later shoot such disparate films as Wonderwall and The Wicker Man) captures every inch of the breathtaking Swiss landscape. It’s easy to see why Walt fell in love with the place.

It’s also easy to understand why people decided to just drop by the set for a visit. One such visitor was MacArthur’s mom, the legendary Helen Hayes. She thought the movie looked like fun, so Walt and Ken Annakin gave cameos to her and MacArthur’s then-wife, Joyce Bulifant. They can be spotted as a couple of American tourists leaving the hotel. Both Hayes and Bulifant will be back in this column in considerably more substantial roles. James Ramsey Ullman, the author of the original book, also popped by to see how things were going and ended up in front of the camera.

Apart from the scenery and the stunts, Third Man From The Mountain isn’t bad so much as it is bland. MacArthur is better here than he was in The Light In The Forest but he’s just not in the upper echelon of charismatic Disney stars. Munro is pretty and energetic but she doesn’t have much spark with MacArthur. That’s not a knock on him. Munro’s previous costar was Sean Connery, after all. Almost anybody would pale in comparison.

Third Man On The Mountain was released in November 1959 and most critics found good things to say about it. But it was a failure at the box office, another disappointment in a year where only The Shaggy Dog had been a hit for the studio. Today, it’s considered one of Disney’s most obscure live-action features. They’ve never released it on Blu-ray and it isn’t currently available on Disney+, although you can rent or buy a decent-looking digital version in HD.

And yet, Third Man On The Mountain has had more of a lasting cultural impact than some better-known Disney films, thanks to a consistently popular ride at Disneyland. The Matterhorn Bobsleds opened at the park in June, just a few months prior to the film. Walt had been struggling with a concept for a toboggan ride for a couple of years. While on location for Third Man On The Mountain, Walt grabbed a postcard of the Matterhorn and sent it to Imagineer Vic Greene with a simple message: “Vic. Build this. Walt.”

The Matterhorn Bobsleds ride at Disneyland, inspired by Third Man On The Mountain

Greene did exactly that, modeling his roller coaster on the Matterhorn itself. Over the years, the ride has been updated in ways that make its connection to Third Man On The Mountain more tenuous. The Abominable Snowman, for example, does not make an appearance in the film. But it has remained popular for decades, the Matterhorn becoming almost as visually associated with the park as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

Considering its connection to the ride, I’m surprised that Disney has ignored Third Man On The Mountain for so long. It’s no masterpiece but it’s a well-made little adventure movie that’s absolutely gorgeous to look at. Walt himself was happy with the way it came out, so you’d think that should count for something. It deserves better than to languish in obscurity.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Light In The Forest

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Light In The Forest

The films of Walt Disney are some of the most recognizable and familiar titles of the last century. The studio has done a commendable job keeping most of them in the public eye, so odds are good that you’ve seen quite a few of them. Even if you haven’t, Walt’s taste in source material ran toward popular classics like Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. You don’t need to have seen Davy Crockett to know what it’s about. But I have to admit I had no idea what to expect from The Light In The Forest.

The movie is based on a 1953 novel by Conrad Richter. If you’re anything like me, you don’t know who that is, either, even though he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He’s probably best known for his trilogy The Awakening Land. Those books were turned into an NBC mini-series in 1978 that I vaguely remember my grandmother watching at the time.  

Lawrence Edward Watkin, Walt’s go-to writer of historical adventures, wrote the screenplay. Watkin’s previous script, The Great Locomotive Chase, failed to find much excitement in a real-life Civil War incident. While The Light In The Forest is fiction, Richter did incorporate a number of real historical figures and events into his book, including Henry Bouquet, a colonel in the British Army who is today notorious for coming up with the idea to give Native Americans blankets infected with smallpox.

The movie doesn’t mention that incident and picks up some time later, with Colonel Bouquet (Stephen Bekassy) negotiating a peace treaty with the Delaware Indians. As part of the terms, the Delaware are required to hand over all their white captives. But these “captives” are mostly women and children who have been fully assimilated into the tribe. One of them, True Son (James MacArthur) has been raised by the Chief himself. True Son has no memory of his birth family and hates all whites. But Chief Cuyloga (Joseph Calleia, previously seen as the Padre in The Littlest Outlaw) displays no favoritism and delivers True Son along with the rest.

On the trail, True Son shows he’d rather die than return to his white family by attempting to eat some poisonous mandrake. Hoping to avoid further trouble, Bouquet asks his trusted guide and translator, Del Hardy (Fess Parker), to escort True Son to his parents and help him get settled. Del becomes something of a surrogate father to True Son, teaching him the ways of the white man and helping reconcile them with his Indian beliefs.

Now this is an interesting, provocative set-up for a story. And as you might imagine, a live-action Disney movie from 1958 is not equipped to handle all the complexities and rough edges of a story like this. However, it comes closer than you might think. The Delaware are treated respectfully, for the most part. The scene where they turn over their so-called “captives” to the British Army is uncomfortable, especially in 2020 when stories of immigrant children separated from their families are still very much in the news. It’s not quite clear whose side the filmmakers are on here but they deserve some credit for at least acknowledging the fact that these people did not want to leave the tribe.

Things get even more complicated when True Son meets his birth parents. At first, his mother (Jessica Tandy, already playing a frail old woman at the age of 48) appears like she’s going to be small-minded and racist. She makes him put on new clothes and refuses to let him leave the room until he says his “real” name, John Butler. But later when she’s teaching him English, we realize she’s not trying to make him forget his Indian language. She thinks he should learn as much as he can about everything and asks him to teach her the language of the Delaware.

The town’s real racist is Wilse Owens (Wendell Corey), a member of the Paxton Boys, a real-life vigilante mob notorious for slaughtering Indians in the Conestoga Massacre. Wilse goes out of his way to antagonize Johnny/True Son, even building a scarecrow out of his Indian clothes to use as target practice. Wilse also has a pretty 17-year-old indentured servant named Shenandoe (Carol Lynley in her film debut). And even though this is a Disney film, it’s very clear that Wilse’s intentions are less than honorable.

The movie’s ideology gets particularly jumbled in its final act. After Wilse kills one of Johnny’s Delaware friends, he returns to the tribe. The murdered boy’s father wants revenge but Cuyloga cautions against breaking the treaty. When the council outvotes him, he reluctantly agrees to join them on the warpath, attacking a group of white settlers, including women and children.

True Son is forced to prove his loyalty to the tribe by luring in another group but warns them away from the ambush at the last second. He’s appalled that his Indian brothers are ready to kill innocents. The tribe turns on True Son, painting his face black-and-white to symbolize his two-faced nature and planning to burn him at the stake. Cuyloga intervenes and spares his life but exiles him, declaring he no longer has any Indian blood in him.

Del finds True Son/Johnny and promises to take him back home, hoping that Johnny’s experiences have taught him that there’s good and bad in everyone. Except for maybe Wilse Owens, who seems to be pure evil. Johnny wants to kill him but Del warns he can’t exactly do that. Instead, Johnny challenges Wilse to a fist fight, “like a white man”. After Johnny kicks Wilse’s ass, they come to some kind of reconciliation with Wilse begrudgingly and somewhat admiringly admitting, “He’s white, alright.” Wow.

That ending is really the biggest flaw in The Light In The Forest and it’s a doozy. Wilse is an unrepentant racist, a murderer, and presumably a rapist. And yet he receives no punishment and learns nothing from all this. His comeuppance only serves to reinforce his racist beliefs. This is like Disney saying there are some very fine people on both sides. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It’s a shame because the rest of the movie at least attempts to grapple with the complex issues it raises. Shenandoe is an interesting character and an effective way to hint at the shadow of slavery without throwing another racial dynamic into the film’s already confused politics. The lyrics of the title song inform us that the light in the forest is love (it is not one of Disney’s greatest hits) because Johnny and Shenandoe end up together. A better, braver movie would have cast a Black actress as Shenandoe and dealt with slavery head-on. But considering Disney’s track record with racial issues, it’s probably just as well they went with Carol Lynley instead.

Both Lynley and James MacArthur made their Disney debuts with this film. Of the two of them, Lynley was the real find. She’s beautiful, charismatic and soulful. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer. So naturally she was smart enough to avoid signing a long-term Disney contract. She went on to a long, eclectic career that included appearances in Bunny Lake Is Missing and The Poseidon Adventure but she never returned to Disney. Ironically, one of her last roles was in a completely unrelated 2003 family movie called A Light In The Forest.

MacArthur came from a show business family. His parents were the great screenwriter Charles MacArthur and legendary actress Helen Hayes. James was attending Harvard when he was cast in The Light In The Forest and one of the stipulations in his contract specified he could only work during his summer break. His performance is more than a little stiff but that could just be the unfortunate way actors were directed to play Native Americans in 1958. We’ll soon find out. MacArthur did sign a contract with Disney. He’ll be back in this column soon.

But this would be Fess Parker’s last rodeo for Disney. No one would deny that he had a hell of a ride, catapulting from obscurity to overnight international stardom on the strength of Davy Crockett. But Walt didn’t want Parker to do anything but play Davy Crockett. Parker had already lost out on plum roles in The Searchers and Bus Stop after Walt refused to lend him out to other studios. And he was getting increasingly bored with playing the same type of role again and again.

After The Light In The Forest, Walt cast Parker in a relatively small role in his next western, Tonka. Parker flat-out refused the part, which was not something actors did to Walt Disney. Walt placed him on suspension and Parker, fed up with the way he was being treated, quit. Afterwards, Parker bounced around movies and TV shows for a few years before landing his second iconic role, Daniel Boone.

Daniel Boone ran for six seasons between 1964 and 1970, not quite reaching Davy Crockett levels of popularity but certainly good enough. Parker pretty much retired from acting after Daniel Boone, turning to real estate ventures and winemaking. Fess Parker died in 2010 but the Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard is still open for business in Los Olivos, California.

Herschel Daugherty directed The Light In The Forest. Not only was this his only work for Disney, it was one of the few theatrical films he ever directed. He went on to become an extremely prolific TV director, helming multiple episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza, Dr. Kildare, Star Trek, Hawaii Five-O (which co-starred none other than James MacArthur as Danny “Book ‘em, Danno” Williams) and many, many others. Daugherty had a good eye and his camerawork is more active than we’ve seen in some of Disney’s other live-action features. It’s unfortunate that Walt didn’t bring him back for more.

The Light In The Forest is almost certainly the most obscure Disney movie this column has covered so far. The studio has not made it available on Disney+ or any other digital platform. They’ve never even released it on DVD, much less Blu-ray. It has flown entirely under the radar since its initial VHS and laserdisc release.

(UPDATE: A reader informs me that Disney has released this on DVD once. The Disney Movie Club once had an exclusive Educators Resource collection. I don’t think they do anymore and these Classroom Editions can be difficult to find but they do exist.)

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that the studio fears a Song Of The South-style backlash against the movie’s well-meaning but muddled racial politics. That could be but, to be honest, Hollywood studios generally don’t demonstrate that much sensitivity when it comes to Native Americans. Offensive, caricatured portrayals of Indians are shrugged off as just the way things were. If Disney was really worried about their past portrayals of Native Americans, there are a lot of places to start other than this.

To me, the more likely reason is simply that nobody at Disney has given that much thought to the movie. It got some decent reviews at the time and did okay at the box office but it was never a huge hit. Even the novel it’s based on has fallen into obscurity. Nobody in 2020 is clamoring for a big revival of The Light In The Forest.

The truth is it’s not a bad little movie. It’s certainly more interesting than something like Westward Ho The Wagons! But it is a movie that could benefit a lot from a remake. The dark, difficult story it’s trying to tell is directly at odds with Walt Disney’s rose-colored view of the past.

VERDICT: I appreciate the attempt at doing something a little different, so a very minor Disney Plus with reservations.

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