Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Happiest Millionaire

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Happiest Millionaire

Throughout the 1960s, Hollywood studios pumped millions of dollars into lavish epic musical extravaganzas and when they hit, they hit big. Disney had first-hand experience with this. In 1964, Mary Poppins became a phenomenon, becoming the highest-grossing film in the studio’s history and winning five Oscars. Needless to say, Walt wanted to do that again. But The Happiest Millionaire, which ended up being the last live-action film released bearing Walt Disney’s personal thumbprint, failed to recapture that old Poppins magic.

The Happiest Millionaire was based on a play by Kyle Crichton (no apparent relation to Michael Crichton, despite what IMDb may say), which was in turn based on My Philadelphia Father, a book Crichton cowrote with Cordelia Drexel Biddle. The Happiest Millionaire was not a musical when Walt acquired the rights to it. It was evidently Mary Poppins producer Bill Walsh’s idea to turn it into one. But Walt didn’t keep Walsh on the project. Instead, he turned it over to Bill Anderson, who had produced a lot of things for the studio (most recently The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin) but no musicals.

Anderson wasn’t the only one making his first musical. Screenwriter A.J. Carothers had been responsible for such non-singing-and-dancing films as Miracle Of The White Stallions and Emil And The Detectives. The closest Norman Tokar had come to directing a musical sequence was Fred MacMurray leading his boy scouts in the title song of Follow Me, Boys! That tune had been written by house songsmiths Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman. Once again, they’d be the ones primarily responsible for guiding the musical elements of the show.

Walt again cast his favorite leading man, Fred MacMurray, in the starring role. MacMurray was not the Shermans’ first choice (or, indeed, their second or third). They hoped to get Rex Harrison, star of My Fair Lady. But Walt had the final say on all casting decisions, so once he got his heart set on MacMurray, nobody else really stood a chance. You can understand why the Shermans might have wanted someone else. Despite his background as a saxophonist and vocalist early in his career, MacMurray wasn’t exactly known as a song-and-dance man anymore.

Second billing went to Disney newcomer Tommy Steele. Steele had become a star about a decade earlier in the UK. Considered Britain’s first rock and roll star, Tommy hit the top of the pops with songs like “Singing The Blues”. He made his movie debut (as himself) in 1957’s The Tommy Steele Story (released in this country as Rock Around The World because nobody over here had any idea who Tommy Steele was).

With his broad, toothy grin and ingratiating manner, Tommy Steele was an unlikely pop star, even by late ‘50s England standards. Still, he continued to be a big deal across the pond for a number of years. As the 1960s opened, Steele left rock ‘n’ roll behind to focus on acting. In 1963, he appeared on the West End in Half A Sixpence, a new musical developed specifically around his talents. Steele later took the show to Broadway and reprised the role again in the film version, which was made right after he finished work on The Happiest Millionaire.

Tommy Steele has a big, playing to the rafters energy that makes him an ideal musical theatre star. I’m sure seeing him live on stage was quite a treat. Heck, it may still be quite a treat. Now 84, the recently knighted entertainer was still performing as recently as 2018 in The Glenn Miller Story in London. But on the big screen, Tommy can be a lot. He’s the first character we meet in The Happiest Millionaire and his opening number, “Fortuosity”, reminds me a little bit of the “You’re Gonna Like Me” song Gabbo introduces himself with on The Simpsons.

“Fortuosity” sets the stage for everything that works and doesn’t work about The Happiest Millionaire. It’s a pretty good song that effectively sets up the story. Steele plays John Lawless, fresh off the boat from Ireland in Philadelphia, on his way to start a new job working for an elegant millionaire and his elegant family. The song is built around one of the Shermans’ favorite devices, a completely made-up word that the song defines. And Steele sells the hell out of the song, giving it all he’s worth.

It feels like the song is going to be one of those big Broadway-style opening numbers but that never really happens. Steele sings and dances all over the elaborate Main Street USA set, which is thoroughly populated by pedestrians in their best 1916 finery. But those passersby really do just pass on by. Nobody once joins in. Now in a musical, when you’ve got an energetic, effervescent guy singing and dancing up a storm, you kind of expect his enthusiasm to be contagious. But if life goes on like normal all around him, he just looks crazy.

At any rate, John arrives at the Biddle house where housekeeper Mrs. Worth (Hermione Baddeley, possibly wearing her old Mary Poppins costume) makes vague allusions to the family’s eccentricities. He gets an example of this almost immediately as patriarch Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (MacMurray) bursts in demanding chocolate cake and complaining that one of his alligators bit his finger. This, we soon discover, is not a euphemism. Lawless also meets the Biddle children, Cordelia or “Cordy” (Lesley Ann Warren), Tony (Paul Petersen) and Livingston (Eddie Hodges). All four are wearing identical turtlenecks emblazoned “Biddle Bible Class”, making the whole family look a bit like a cult.

Now at this point, I had to stop watching the movie to try and figure out what the hell was going on. Who are these people? Turns out, the movie is more or less based on a true story. The real Anthony J. Drexel Biddle’s family fortune gave him the freedom to focus on his passions: boxing and the Bible. He was a proponent of something called “Athletic Christianity” and considered a bit of a kook by Philadelphia’s upper crust. And he did in fact raise alligators for some reason.

Maybe if you live in Pennsylvania, the Biddles are more commonly known and you already knew this. But I had no idea and the movie makes no effort to clue us in. The movie is a bit reminiscent of Life With Father, another semi-autobiographical Broadway show depicting family life in the 1880s. But in that case, you don’t really need to know who the Day family really was because they’re presented as a fairly typical New York family of the era. The Biddles are anything but typical. The movie just throws us into the deep end with these folks and hopes we’ll figure it out as we go along, which makes the madly grinning John Lawless our guide and surrogate. Heaven help us.

Theatrical release poster for The Happiest Millionaire

The film’s primary conflict is between father and daughter, Cordy. Like her brothers, Cordy has been raised to be a fighter, which doesn’t help attract gentlemen callers. (The brothers are given one song, “Watch Your Footwork”, to size up a potential suitor, then completely disappear from the movie altogether.) Worried about Cordy’s future, Aunt Mary (Gladys Cooper) arranges for her to attend a private boarding school. Biddle isn’t sold on the idea but Cordy enthusiastically agrees to the arrangement.

At school, Cordy attends a dance hosted by some more rich relatives. Here, she meets Angier Buchanan Duke (played by future game show host John Davidson). “Angie” is expected to take his rightful place in the family’s tobacco business but what he really wants to do is move to Detroit and design cars. Angie and Cordy get engaged and Mr. Biddle is won over by the young man’s knowledge of jiu-jitsu. But the road to the altar hits a snag when Cordy realizes Angie won’t stand up to his domineering mother (Geraldine Page).

The wedding is called off and John Lawless, who has become a vital member of the household, follows Angie to a nearby bar. John gets him good and drunk, starting a barroom brawl that lands him in jail. Mr. Biddle comes to bail him out and, with a little reverse psychology, persuades Angie to run off to Detroit with Cordy and elope.

Now from that description, you may have noticed that The Happiest Millionaire appears to primarily be about Cordy and Angie and not so much about the top-billed stars, Fred MacMurray and Tommy Steele. This is true but both MacMurray and Steele still have plenty to do. As World War I draws near, Mr. Biddle makes repeated trips to Washington, offering to train men in the art of hand-to-hand combat. A new maid accidentally leaves a window open, freezing the alligators in blocks of ice. Somehow they manage to survive and Lawless spends several minutes trying to round the gators up. But all this business is just window dressing to the main romance.

The love story is not all that compelling in and of itself and the Shermans’ love songs, like “Are We Dancing?”, are the weakest parts of their score. If you end up caring about these people at all, it’s thanks entirely to the likable performances of Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson. Warren came to Walt’s attention after she starred in the TV version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Davidson also came from television, appearing in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of The Fantasticks and hosting The Kraft Summer Music Hall variety show. Both were making their film debuts in The Happiest Millionaire and they’ll both be back in this column before long.

Both Warren and Davidson are capable singers and dancers but the Shermans don’t do them any favors. The songs they’re given are either boring (the aforementioned “Are We Dancing?”), ridiculous (“Bye-Yum Pum Pum”, a duet between Warren and Joyce Bulifant that’s essentially a rewrite of “Feminity” from Summer Magic) or both (“Valentine Candy”, Warren’s solo lament in which she tries to decide if she’s “valentine candy or boxing gloves”).

Davidson at least gets to participate in the film’s biggest, most energetic number. “Let’s Have A Drink On It” is a rousing setpiece, led confidently by Tommy Steele. Here, finally, is the big, cinematic musical number that “Fortuosity” should have been. It comes a little late in the proceedings to solve everything but it’s a taste of what a better version of this movie might look like.

Tommy Steele is certainly a unique screen presence and it’s a little disappointing that he won’t be back in this column. After this, he only made one more Hollywood film, appearing as Og the leprechaun in Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Finian’s Rainbow. He then made a couple more British movies before returning to the stage for good. That was probably the right choice and it certainly seemed to work out well for him. But a part of me wishes he’d stuck around to inject more of his sugar rush energy into a few more Disney movies.

Comic book adaptation of The Happiest Millionaire

The Happiest Millionaire premiered in Hollywood on June 23, 1967. Intended as a roadshow attraction, it made its way across the country gradually with higher, reserved-seating prices. In November, it was booked at Radio City Music Hall as their Christmas attraction. But since it would be playing with a live stage show, the venue demanded that it be cut down. Twenty minutes were chopped out, bringing it from 164 minutes to 144. As the roadshow experiment faltered, the studio cut it down even further. By the time it made it into general release, the running time had been slashed to just under two hours.

One of the first things to go had been the song “It Won’t Be Long ‘Til Christmas”, sung by Mrs. Biddle (Greer Garson) as her husband struggles with empty nest syndrome. It’s actually one of the sweetest, most heartfelt songs in the entire movie. Fortunately, Disney has restored the complete roadshow version and that’s the one you can find on Disney+.

Casting Oscar winner Greer Garson as Mrs. Biddle must have been quite a coup for Disney. She was once one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, racking up seven Academy Award nominations over the course of her distinguished career. But she’d slowed down considerably in recent years, making occasional TV appearances and appearing in the Debbie Reynolds vehicle The Singing Nun. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot to do here, either. But “It Won’t Be Long ‘Til Christmas” is a nice spotlight for her and a tender moment among all the other wacky shenanigans.

When all was said and done, The Happiest Millionaire only earned about $5 million at the box office, just about enough to break even. The movie did mange to get a single Oscar nomination for Bill Thomas’s costume designs (it lost to another mega-musical, Camelot) and Tommy Steele was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Most Promising Newcomer – Male category (he lost to an even more promising newcomer, Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate). But the general consensus was that The Happiest Millionaire simply didn’t work.

It’d be nice to say that the general consensus was wrong and that Walt Disney’s last live-action project is really a misunderstood gem. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. There are individual moments in The Happiest Millionaire that sparkle but the whole thing never really comes together. Walt was nothing if not ambitious. But in this case, his ambitions got away from him and ended up smothering a project that never quite figures out what it wants to be.

VERDICT: This is almost (but not quite) a Disney Plus buried inside a Disney Minus.

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

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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