Walter Brennan

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

A movie’s journey from preproduction to release is rarely a short one, especially when you’re in the business of making crowd-pleasers. So even though Walt Disney had been dead for more than a year, there were still a few titles in the pipeline that he’d signed off on, even if they didn’t start shooting until after his death. This helps explain why, in 1968, Disney released another slice of turn-of-the-century Americana, one of Walt’s favorite subgenres, with the marquee-busting title The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.

Walt had acquired the rights to Laura Bower Van Nuys’ 1961 memoir (published under the equally unwieldy title The Family Band, From The Missouri To The Black Hills, 1881-1900) with an eye toward adapting it for television. Since the word “band” was in the title, he asked the Sherman Brothers to come up with a couple original tunes. The Shermans landed on a carnival barker approach to the title song, elongating it into its current form. Once he heard it, Walt decided the project should be a big-screen musical.

Robert B. Sherman, at least, did not think that was such a great idea. He thought the story was, well, a little thin to support a feature film. Robert B. Sherman was not wrong. In comparison, Summer Magic, the Shermans’ 1963 musical dud, looks like a labyrinth of intricate plotting and complex characterizations. But Walt always had the final word, so the Shermans dutifully composed eleven new songs for the project.

The Shermans worked with screenwriter Lowell S. Hawley to figure out where to place the songs. Hawley had been with the studio for over a decade, writing such films as Swiss Family Robinson, Babes In Toyland and, most recently, The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin. The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band would be his final Disney credit. After Walt died, Hawley retired completely from show business, spending his remaining years with his family before his own passing in 2003 at the ripe old age of 94.

Michael O’Herlihy, director of The Fighting Prince Of Donegal and a bunch of TV stuff for Disney and other studios, was brought back for his second feature. As always, Walt had the final say on casting. For the most part, he didn’t look much farther than his usual talent roster. Walter Brennan, seen most recently in The Gnome-Mobile, was cast as bandleader Grandpa Bower. This would be Brennan’s third and last Disney picture. The show business veteran kept right on working to the end, though, continuing to appear in movies and TV shows (mostly westerns) until his death in 1974 at 80.

For his romantic leads, Walt tapped Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson, who just a few months earlier ignited (or, at least, singed) the screen with their G-rated chemistry in The Happiest Millionaire. They too would leave Disney behind after this film and move on to very different careers. Warren spent much of the 1970s on television (including an appearance as Lois Lane in the 1975 TV broadcast of the musical It’s A Bird…It’s A Plane…It’s Superman!) before really coming into her own as an actor in the 1980s, starting with an Oscar-nominated performance in Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria. John Davidson found his niche on television and on stage thanks to regular appearances on game shows like The Hollywood Squares and one-man shows in Las Vegas, Branson, and his own club in Sandwich, New Hampshire (called, I kid you not, Club Sandwich).

Unfortunately, Walt’s cast didn’t entirely come together as he’d envisioned it. Before his death, Walt approved the casting of his old polo buddy Bing Crosby as patriarch Calvin Bower. But the studio couldn’t come to terms with Crosby’s team, so Der Bingle dropped out. Instead, Disney veteran Buddy Ebsen returned for the first time since traipsing around the wild frontier with Davy Crockett. Buddy’s stock had gone way up since his days as George Russel. Since 1962, he had been starring as Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the most popular sitcoms in the country. The One And Only And So On And So Forth gave him an opportunity to return to his roots as a song-and-dance man.

Considering how many child actors have worked for Disney over the years, it’s a little surprising that most of the Bower kids were one-and-done at the studio (with one obvious exception, who we’ll get to in a moment). Pamelyn Ferdin played Laura, who grows up to write the book this is based upon. She had been in the business since the early 1960s and went on to a busy career as a child star. She voiced some prominent non-Disney animated characters, including Lucy in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, several TV specials and commercials and Fern in Charlotte’s Web (which also had songs by the Sherman Brothers). In live-action, she appeared in the terrific Clint Eastwood movie The Beguiled and the grindhouse classic The Toolbox Murders. And yet somehow, this remained her only Disney credit. These days, she’s a prominent animal rights activist.

A couple of the Brower kids, like Heidi Rook and Debbie Smith, only had brief flirtations with show business. Bobby Riha, who played Mayo Bower, guested on some TV shows and had a recurring part on the short-lived Debbie Reynolds Show in 1969. Smith “Smitty” Wordes (Nettie Bower) went on to an impressive career as a dancer and choreographer. You can see her dancing with Michael Jackson in the “Smooth Criminal” video and in the Disney theme park attraction Captain EO (which, unfortunately, does not qualify for this column). Sadly, she passed away in 2020 after battling cancer. She was 65.

There are two Bower kids who will return to this column. One is Jon Walmsley, who played Quinn. The same year The One And Only Etc. debuted, Walmsley took over as the voice of Christopher Robin for the short Winnie The Pooh And The Blustery Day. In 1971, he’d make his first appearance as Jason Walton in the TV-movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which led to the long-running family drama The Waltons. Walmsley continued to reprise the role as recently as the 1997 reunion film A Walton Easter. But apart from Waltons work, Walmsley mostly left acting to focus on his career as a musician.

Of course, the Bower kid who stuck around the Disney lot the longest was none other than Kurt Russell. Since making his Disney debut in Follow Me, Boys!, Russell had starred in the Wonderful World Of Color two-parter Willie And The Yank (released theatrically overseas as Mosby’s Marauders, presumably because the American title seems designed to make British schoolboys giggle). We’re about to start seeing a whole lot more Kurt Russell around these parts, so I hope you like him. (That’s a rhetorical statement, of course. Who doesn’t like Kurt Russell?)

Original Cast Soundtrack album for The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

Even with all this talent on board, Robert Sherman was right to be concerned about the material. The story opens in Missouri, where the Bower Family Band is awaiting a representative from President Grover Cleveland’s re-election campaign. Grandpa Bower, a lifelong Democrat, has written a campaign song and hopes to win the family an invitation to perform at the Democratic National Convention in St. Louis. Meanwhile, Alice Bower (Warren) is nervous to finally meet her long-distance beau, Joe Carder (Davidson), a newspaper publisher and diehard Republican from Dakota Territory.

Cleveland’s delegate is blown away by Grandpa’s song, “Let’s Put It Over With Grover”, and announces that he’d be thrilled to host the Bowers in St. Louis. (Incidentally, Cleveland’s campaign man is played by legendary voiceover artist William Woodson, narrator of countless sci-fi movies, TV shows and cartoons, including Super Friends.) Unfortunately, Joe Carder arrives in town with a very convincing song of his own, “Dakota”. Pretty soon, everyone is filled with Dakota Fever and the Bowers are no exception. They pack up their homestead and hit the trail to Rapid City.

The Bowers arrive in town just in time to see Carder leading a rally in support of Cleveland’s opponent, Senator Benjamin Harrison. One of Harrison’s campaign promises is statehood for Dakota. Not just one, but two new states, North and South Dakota, which would presumably mean four new Republican Senators, tipping the balance of Congress.

That is exactly the kind of no-account, dishonest chicanery that a good Democrat like Grandpa abhors, so he leads the band in a reprise of “Let’s Put It Over With Grover”. A few of the townsfolk are won over by the catchy tune but most of their overwhelmingly Republican neighbors are immediately suspicious of the rabble-rousing Bowers. Joe Carder insists they’re good people and he and Grandpa bet a wheelbarrow ride, the height of 1880s humiliation apparently, on the outcome of the election.

This causes a problem for Alice, who’s due to start her new job as the town’s schoolteacher (a job she is literally handed without a single question by mayor Richard Deacon the second she arrives in town). While she meets with the school board to answer the questions she probably should have been asked before being offered the job, Grandpa is sent to dismiss the children. He tries but is moved by the tears of a little girl who memorized a whole poem for the first day and is crestfallen that it was all for nothing. So Gramps hauls the kids back inside where, after little Edna recites her poem, he gives them a little history lesson on the War Between The States.

Now don’t forget, this all takes place back when Republicans were the party of Lincoln and Democrats were still trying to unify their own party after the Civil War. So Grandpa’s service in the Confederate Army is sort of waved away by his song, “Drummin’ Drummin’ Drummin’”, which shows he’s willing to admit he made a mistake and everyone should let bygones be bygones. Anyway, Grandpa’s lesson is brought on by a surly little boy named Johnny (played by Eddie Munster hisownself, Butch Patrick!) who has the audacity to challenge’s Grandpa’s teaching credentials. The school day comes to a close with Grandpa urging the kids to stand up for their rights and get out there and make a difference.

Having inspired a pee-wee rebellion, Grandpa’s in real trouble. Calvin (Ebsen), a Republican himself, forbids his father from discussing politics ever again. Grandpa would rather die homeless than have his freedom of speech interfered with, so he hits the road, stopping briefly at a town meeting to urge the school board to let Alice keep her job. Calvin is so impressed that Grandpa managed to shut the hell up about politics for five damn minutes that he asks him to come home. When Grandpa refuses, he reminds him of that bet he made with Joe Carder. He’d look like a welsher if he left before Election Day, so Grandpa stays.

Election Night arrives, along with a big production number, “West O’ The Wide Missouri”. This is easily the most energetic and fun number in the movie, partly because of a vivacious young woman named Goldie Jeanne Hawn making her big-screen debut as “Giggly Girl”. Goldie doesn’t really interact at all with her future partner but they share the screen a few times and it’s fun to see Goldie Hawn giving her all to a big dance number while Kurt Russell stands on stage behind her awkwardly pretending to play a drum.

Anyway, the votes trickle in and it appears that Cleveland has won re-election. Grandpa gets ready for his victory ride in the wheelbarrow when the telegraph operator comes rushing in with some late-breaking news. Although Cleveland won the popular vote, Harrison won the Electoral College and anybody who was around for the 2000 or 2016 presidential elections knows what that means. Benjamin Harrison is the new President of the United States. Grandpa and the other Democrats take this poorly and some G-rated Disney rioting breaks out (yes, cake is involved).

Eventually, Calvin’s cooler head prevails and he has the family band strike up a rendition of “America”. It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, Calvin urges. At the end of the day, we’re all Americans and that’s all that really matters. Well sir, apparently we just needed to have Buddy Ebsen around last January because his words of wisdom do the trick. Everybody calms down, agrees to put politics aside and march forward into a bold new future as one. It is, indeed, a sweet land of liberty.

Lobby card for The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

So in case it wasn’t clear, let me just say, for the record, this movie is bananas. When I sat down to watch The One And Only Yada Yada Yada, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I absolutely was not expecting a musical that revolves around partisan politics, gerrymandering, a contentious presidential election and the Electoral College. Maybe in 80 years, Disney will mount a remake updating it to the Trump era and it’ll be every bit as simplistic and weird as this. Look, I can understand Disney wanting to make a musical about a family band just before the turn of the century. But the decision to focus on this particular point in time and these events is downright baffling.

The bizarre subject matter would matter less if the songs themselves were more engaging. But with few exceptions, these are also-rans in the Sherman songbook. “Ten Feet Off The Ground” isn’t bad, although Louis Armstrong’s cover version is a lot better than the one in the movie, and “Let’s Put It Over With Grover” does have a banjo riff that’ll lodge itself in your head for days. But the title song is sheer cacophony and the love songs “The Happiest Girl Alive” and “’Bout Time” are tough to take despite the best efforts of Warren and Davidson.

The cast is certainly game. Walter Brennan seems like he’s having fun and it’s nice to see Buddy Ebsen in a musical again. Both Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson bring their musical theatre kid energy to the table. But the rest of the cast is given very little to do. Poor Janet Blair has a thankless role as Bower family matriarch, Katie. Her sole defining characteristic is her refusal to allow political talk in her house. As for the Bower kids, they’re forgotten about for long stretches. None of them even turn up in the school scene, which seems odd. Don’t these kids have to go to school, too?

The studio seemed to lose faith in The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band almost as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. The premiere was set for the end of March, 1968, at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The venue, as they had just done with The Happiest Millionaire, asked Disney to cut about 20 minutes from the film’s 156-minute run time. The studio was only too happy to oblige. Over the protests of the Sherman Brothers and producer Bill Anderson, they ended up dropping about 45 minutes, including two entire musical numbers, bringing it down to 110 minutes. Unlike with The Happiest Millionaire, Disney has to date made no effort to restore the missing footage. And frankly, as near as I can tell, no one has made much demand that they do so.

In the end, nobody was particularly impressed by TOAOGOFB. Critics mostly hated it and audiences stayed away. The back-to-back failures of The Happiest Millionaire and The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (and am I happy to be done typing that title) resulted in Disney shying away from musicals for awhile. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman would be back but they were no longer exclusive with the studio. Their next major project would be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for producer Albert R. Broccoli, a reunion with their Mary Poppins star Dick Van Dyke. Live-action musicals had always been risky, hit-or-miss propositions at Disney. From now on, the studio would hedge their bets with the genre.    

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Gnome-Mobile

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Gnome-Mobile

Ask anybody to start listing off live-action Disney movies and odds are The Gnome-Mobile is not going to be the first, second or even tenth movie they mention. Hell, even if you try to help them out by having them list off live-action Disney movies about magical little people, The Gnome-Mobile will come in at least second after Darby O’Gill. As of this writing, The Gnome-Mobile has not been released on Blu-ray and it’s not available on Disney+. It doesn’t seem to have much of a cult following. Just over 1,000 people have even marked it as “seen” on Letterboxd, making it slightly less popular than Johnny Tremain. But taken on its own merits, The Gnome-Mobile is a fun little movie that, for my money, is a lot more enjoyable than some of Disney’s other late ‘60s output.

Even though The Gnome-Mobile seems like a natural and even obvious subject for a Disney picture, it still has a somewhat unusual history. The movie is based on a novel by Upton Sinclair, of all people. Sinclair was a noted left-wing political activist and the author of such books as The Jungle and Oil! (later the basis for P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood).

Sinclair had a rocky history with the movie industry. He had approved of and produced the 1914 adaptation of The Jungle (a silent film now lost) and he got a big payday from Victor Fleming’s 1932 version of his book The Wet Parade. But in 1933, he was hired by movie mogul William Fox to write a hagiography of Fox Film Corporation. The resulting book, Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox, was a critical look at Fox’s attempt to create and control a monopoly. Needless to say, this did not endear him to Hollywood executives.

In 1934, Sinclair ran for governor of California as a Democrat with a Socialist-leaning platform. Every studio in town opposed him, churning out anti-Sinclair propaganda to defeat him (you may remember this being touched upon in David Fincher’s Mank). Sinclair practically went broke losing that election, so afterward he went out on a speaking tour to raise some money. The tour took him through Redwood National Park in northern California, which inspired him to write The Gnomobile, one of his only books for children.

After The Gnomobile was published in 1936, Sinclair’s friend, Rob Wagner (whose magazine, Script, had been one of Sinclair’s only defenders during his gubernatorial campaign), introduced Sinclair to Walt Disney, another former contributor to Script. Wagner and Sinclair thought The Gnomobile would make for a good cartoon. Walt thought it was better suited to live-action and promised to keep it in mind if he ever started making live-action pictures.

Upton Sinclair and Walt Disney discuss The Gnome-Mobile

Over the years, Sinclair held him to that promise, periodically checking in with Walt. By the mid-60s, a note of fatalism crept into Sinclair’s correspondence. He was getting up there in years and still hoped to see The Gnomobile turned into a movie before he died. Apparently, this worked. Walt assigned the newly-retitled The Gnome-Mobile to his A-team: director Robert Stevenson, producer James Algar and screenwriter Ellis Kadison.

(I don’t imagine Upton Sinclair and Walt Disney saw eye to eye on much of anything, especially politics, so I was very curious about how they got together. In particular, I need to thank author Ariel S. Winter, whose fascinating blog We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie provided a great deal of insight into their history.)

“A-team” might be a bit generous in describing Kadison who certainly had an interesting career but only worked with Disney on this one project. Like a lot of Disney writers, Kadison worked extensively in television. He’d also written, produced and directed some odd-looking, lower-budget family films like The Cat, Git!, and You’ve Got To Be Smart, which is probably what brought him to Disney’s attention. The Gnome-Mobile came toward the end of Kadison’s Hollywood career. His last major credit was writing several episodes of Sid and Marty Krofft’s psychedelic nightmare The Banana Splits Adventure Hour.

Triple Oscar winner Walter Brennan (last seen around these parts as a friend of Those Calloways) stars as San Francisco-based lumber tycoon D.J. Mulrooney. He’s on his way to an important business meeting in Seattle but not before he stops at the airport in his vintage Rolls Royce to pick up his grandkids, Elizabeth and Rodney (played by those Mary Poppins kids Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber…the credits actually introduce them as “those Mary Poppins kids” to remind you that you already liked one movie these kids were in).

The Mulrooneys stop for a picnic lunch among some giant redwoods. Elizabeth goes exploring and meets a young gnome named Jasper (Tom Lowell, Canoe from That Darn Cat!). Jasper has a big problem and his closest friends, a bunch of talking, animatronic forest animals, haven’t been much help. It seems that Jasper’s grandfather, Knobby (played by Brennan without his false teeth), is fading away. He’s lost the will to live since he’s become convinced that he and Jasper are the last of the gnomes.

Elizabeth convinces D.J. to give Jasper and Knobby a ride in the jauntin’ car, now dubbed the Gnome-Mobile according to the Sherman Brothers’ song, to search for other gnomes in other forests. Knobby agrees to go along with it despite his mistrust of “doo-deans” (that’s gnomish for big people), especially the loggers he refers to as “Mulrooney’s Marauders”. D.J. tries to keep his identity a secret but once the cat’s out of the bag, Knobby goes ballistic. He wants nothing to do with Mulrooney and D.J. decides he doesn’t want anything to do with the short-tempered, ingrateful gnome, either. He plans to drop them off and be rid of them at first light.

Unfortunately, Knobby’s tirade caught the attention of Horatio Quaxton (Sean McClory, Kurt Russell’s drunken dad in Follow Me, Boys!). Quaxton runs a traveling two-bit sideshow called Quaxton’s Academy of Freaks (unfortunately, we don’t get to see much of the Academy, otherwise this would likely shoot to the top of my list of favorite weirdo Disney movies). He manages to sneak into the Mulrooneys’ hotel room and kidnap the basketful of gnomes. Once the crime is discovered, D.J. calls his right-hand man, Mr. Yarby (Richard Deacon, last heard as the voice of the survival manual in Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.), and orders him to get their security team on the case immediately.

As far as Yarby’s concerned, this is just a sure sign that D.J. is cracking up. He arranges to have his boss locked up in a mental institution. Rodney and Elizabeth borrow the Gnome-Mobile, rescue their grandfather and figure out where Quaxton is hiding by interrogating a pair of his disgruntled employees (played by instantly recognizable character actors Frank Cady and Ellen Corby). By the time they get to Quaxton’s cabin, Knobby has already made his escape but they’re still in time to rescue Jasper.

Meanwhile, Yarby is still on their trail accompanied by a pair of male nurses (one of whom is played by Norm Grabowski from the Merlin Jones saga). They spot the Rolls while filling up with gas and immediately take off after them, yanking the hose out of the fuel pump in the process. D.J. leads them on a cross-country chase that ends up with Yarby’s car slowly coming to pieces bit by bit.

Ultimately, they get rid of their pursuers and are reunited with Knobby, who has found a gnome colony led by the thousand-year-old Rufus (who else but Ed Wynn). Rufus assures Jasper that there are plenty of other gnomes and a surplus of unattached gnome women. Jasper is immediately attracted to a shy beauty named Violet (Cami Sebring, ex-wife of celebrity hairstylist and soon-to-be Manson Family victim Jay Sebring). But in gnomish tradition, it’s the girls who chase the eligible boy. Jasper is dunked into a sudsy bath and whoever is able to catch him and hang on to him for seven seconds wins. In the end, Violet prevails over her more aggressive rivals. She and Jasper get married and D.J. donates 50,000 acres of forestland to the gnomes.

Theatrical re-release poster for The Gnome-Mobile

It seems clear to me that The Gnome-Mobile has been overshadowed by the not-dissimilar Darby O’Gill And The Little People. It’s easy to see why. Darby O’Gill has a lot going for it that The Gnome-Mobile has not, including richer characters and young stars like Sean Connery and Janet Munro. That movie makes room for drama, suspense and romance. This one is basically just a knockabout comedy. But it’s a funny, entertaining knockabout comedy and that goes a long way.

Sinclair was inspired to write his book in the first place by the magnificent redwoods and some echoes of his conservationist message still ring through the movie. But even though it looks briefly like the film is going to be Disney’s version of The Lorax, it never quite gets there. Sure, D.J. is an obscenely rich industrialist who made his fortune by deforesting huge swaths of land but he’s not a bad guy. He seems to feel that he’s made enough money and that it’s important to protect some land for future generations. Leave it to Disney to find away to make a movie that’s simultaneously pro-capitalism and pro-environmentalism.

At any rate, it’s not as though The Gnome-Mobile is heavy with messaging of any kind. The movie exists to showcase some fun special effects, engaging comic performances and goofy slapstick. I mean, what can you really say about a movie where a fuel pump starts spewing gas everywhere and the hapless gas station attendant tries to stop it with his hands and face? You can’t take any of this too seriously. As long as you go with the flow, you’ll have a good time.

We do have to say goodbye to a couple of familiar faces with this movie. Ed Wynn, who has been a presence in this column since Alice In Wonderland, died in 1966 at the age of 79. The Gnome-Mobile, his final film, was released posthumously about a year after his death. Wynn could be a lot but Disney usually had a pretty good sense of where and when to deploy his unique energy. Rufus is a good role for him to go out on. I’ll actually miss seeing him pop up in these movies.

The Gnome-Mobile also marks the end of Matthew Garber’s brief film career. He appeared in three Disney films beginning with The Three Lives Of Thomasina, then evidently decided acting wasn’t for him and went back to school. About ten years later, he contracted hepatitis in India. He died of pancreatitis back home in London in 1977 at the age of 21. In 2004, he and his on-screen sister, Karen Dotrice, were named Disney Legends. Dotrice will eventually find her way back into this column but it’ll be awhile.

When The Gnome-Mobile was released on July 12, 1967, critics weren’t exactly blown away but a lot of them found good things to say about it. It did OK at the box office, well enough to warrant a theatrical re-release in 1976. But it’s a movie that’s left a very small cultural footprint. You don’t hear it talked about much at all, either fondly or disdainfully. As usual, that’s kind of on Disney. They’re the ones deciding what to release on Blu-ray and promote on their streaming service. They could easily start introducing The Gnome-Mobile to a new audience if they felt like it. It’s a fun little movie that deserves another chance.

VERDICT: Another Disney Plus that’s not on Disney+.  

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Those Calloways

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Those Calloways

By 1965, Walt Disney had perfected the art of making two very specific types of live-action pictures. His True-Life Adventures team, including writer, producer and narrator Winston Hibler, found their documentary skills transferred well to dramatic animal movies like Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North. At the same time, Walt continued to indulge his love of Americana with nostalgic period pieces like Pollyanna set in his favorite era, the early 1900s. Those Calloways gave him an opportunity to combine the two. The results are surprisingly effective.

Those Calloways is based on the novel Swiftwater by Paul Annixter, a prolific writer of young adult fiction primarily about nature and animals. Louis Pelletier, who had recently written Big Red, wrote the screenplay, reteaming him with Big Red’s director, Norman Tokar. Hibler produced the film, bringing along several True-Life Adventure veterans. Dick Borden, who had shot some of The Vanishing Prairie, captured the wild geese footage in the film. The other animal unit was run by Lloyd Beebe and William R. Koehler, fresh off their work on The Incredible Journey.

The animals are important to Those Calloways but they aren’t the focus of the film. Rather, this is a slice-of-life drama depicting a year in the life of the title family, husband Cam (Disney regular Brian Keith), wife Liddy (Vera Miles, last seen as Keith’s wife in A Tiger Walks) and son Bucky (Brandon De Wilde). They live up in the mountains outside the little New England town of Swiftwater, where they’re viewed as local eccentrics. Cam was raised by the Mi’kmaq Indians (and as soon as you heard that bit of news, you could probably figure out why Disney+ slapped its standard “outdated cultural depictions” disclaimer on this). His upbringing has given him a deep affinity for nature, especially the wild geese considered to be a totem of the Mi’kmaq. This marks Cam as a bit of an outsider in a town where most everyone else hunts geese for food and/or sport.

Now before you get all excited and retroactively nominate Those Calloways for a PETA Award, be aware that Cam earns his living as a fur-trapper. And if you watch the movie through 2021 goggles, that dichotomy is going to cause some cognitive dissonance for you. Just keep in mind that conservationism was not an all-or-nothing proposition back in the 1910s. Living off the land very much included hunting, fishing and trapping in order to survive. You can do all that and still be against hunting for sport without being considered a hypocrite.

Cam has big plans for this trapping season, heading out to untapped land that the Mi’kmaq believe holds bad energy. They seem to have a point about that. Cam and Bucky are only on their first preliminary scouting expedition when Cam falls and breaks his leg. With his dad out of commission, Bucky heads out on his own. After the first day, he discovers a wolverine is killing all the game along his trapping line. Bucky and his faithful dog, Sounder, track the wolverine back to its den underneath an enormous treefall. After some intense close-quarters combat, Bucky manages to kill the wolverine with a hatchet, salvaging the season.

Despite a record haul of furs (including enough to make Liddy an ermine wrap as a surprise Christmas present), the market bottoms out. The furs go for less than five hundred bucks, which Liddy assumes will go toward paying off their mortgage. But Cam can’t let go of his dream of building a sanctuary for the geese and spends the entire sum on a down payment for a piece of land with a lake. Liddy is understandably upset but when push comes to shove and the Calloways are evicted from their home, she stands by her man, encouraging him to build a bigger, better cabin by the lake.

A lack of money means that work on the new house and sanctuary proceeds slowly at first (there’s even some shades of Swiss Family Robinson in the Calloways’ makeshift shelter by the lake). But soon traveling salesman Dell Fraser (Philip Abbott of Miracle Of The White Stallions) turns up, claiming to be a fellow nature-lover. He offers Cam some literal seed money to plant the corn Cam believes will bring the geese down to the lake. In reality, Dell represents an investor who plans on turning Swiftwater into a sportsman’s paradise, providing Cam’s plan guarantees that the geese will stop every year.

Not everyone in town has ulterior motives. The other villagers band together and volunteer for a community roof-raising, complete with a couple original songs by the Sherman Brothers! With the Calloways’ new home finished, everything looks on track for a happy ending. But then the geese come back, along with Dell and his entourage of wealthy hunters. When Cam gets wise to what’s happening, he burns down the corn and confronts the hunters, accidentally ending up with a bellyful of buckshot. A town meeting is arranged and while Cam recovers from his wounds, the townsfolk vote to reject Dell and his slick, out-of-town friends. Now you can have your happy ending.

I’ll be honest with you. I had very little expectation of enjoying Those Calloways. And for a while, it looked as though I wouldn’t. With a run time of over two hours, the film is leisurely to a fault and crams in a whole lot of extraneous business. I haven’t even mentioned the burgeoning romance between Bucky and shopkeeper’s daughter, Bridie Mellott (future Dynasty star Linda Evans, making her only Disney appearance). Or the rivalry between Bucky and mechanic Whit Turner (future Nostromo captain Tom Skerritt, who would later romance Hayley Mills in the made-for-TV The Parent Trap II). Or the semi-domesticated bear who hibernates in the Calloways’ root cellar. Or Cam’s occasional struggles with alcohol. Clearly, there’s a lot going on in Those Calloways.

But this is a movie that sneaks up on you and before I knew it, I was invested in these characters. It’s an uneven movie but its high points cover up a lot of sins. For instance, Tokar does a great job staging the wolverine sequence. The claustrophobic cinematography by Edward Colman and tight editing by Grant K. Smith creates a sense of real danger. It’s so good that it’s easy to forget that it’s preceded by several banal minutes of Sounder just scampering through the snow, chasing after weasels and other woodland critters.

Theatrical release poster for Those Calloways

The film’s stars work overtime bringing the audience into the story. Brian Keith and Vera Miles make for a compelling, believable couple. There’s a lot that goes unsaid between them but the way they look at each other speaks volumes. In their first scene together, Keith seems to be apologizing for an earlier fight. We never learn the details of what happened between them but it’s enough to tell us that things aren’t always easy between these two.

Those Calloways offers Vera Miles a much better showcase than her largely unnecessary role in A Tiger Walks. She has several terrific moments but the Christmas scene is by far the most moving. Even before she opens her gift, she takes her time admiring the wrapping and speculating what might be inside. When Cam and Bucky try to hurry her up, she refuses to be rushed. She’s not getting another present until next year, so she wants to savor the moment. When she sees the ermine wrap, she breaks down sobbing, overcome with emotion. Is this all a little bit corny? You bet. Does it work anyway? Absolutely. Miles sells it for all she’s worth. She’ll be back in this column before too long.

Brandon De Wilde was a somewhat unusual choice for a Disney star in that he was already famous by the time Walt signed him. He’d been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the movie Shane when he was just 11 years old, making him one of the youngest nominees in a competitive category ever. Since then he’d worked steadily in film and television. Walt hired him to star opposite Brian Keith in The Tenderfoot, a Wonderful World Of Color three-parter released theatrically overseas.

De Wilde’s a good actor and a natural Disney star. He’s good-looking, earnest and capable of handling the physical stuff, even when the just-barely-adequate fight choreography lets him down. But he never made another Disney film after Those Calloways. He stayed busy on stage and television but struggled to establish himself in movies, in part because he looked young for his age even by Disney standards. He harbored aspirations to break into music, becoming close friends with Gram Parsons. But in 1972, Brandon De Wilde was killed in a car accident in Colorado. He was just 30 years old.

De Wilde had also worked with costar Walter Brennan before. Brennan was a three-time Academy Award winner now in the autumn years of his career. Those Calloways marked his first Disney project but it won’t be his last. We’ll also see Ed Wynn again, whose performance as the slightly deaf Ed Parker is downright restrained by Ed Wynn standards.  

One name we won’t be seeing in this column again is composer Max Steiner. Steiner was a Hollywood legend having composed the scores to such classics as King Kong, Gone With The Wind, Casablanca and countless others. He had never worked for Disney before but in a way, his rendezvous with Walt seems inevitable. Critics of Steiner’s old-fashioned style of film music consistently accuse him of “Mickey Mousing”, the overly-precise synchronization of on-screen movement to music. Like a glissando to accompany throwing an object or a descending scale when a character walks down a flight of stairs. Steiner’s Those Calloways score largely avoids those pitfalls. And if it doesn’t rank among his best work, it’s still a fine score. Unfortunately, it would end up being his last before his death in 1971.

Those Calloways struggled to find an audience in 1965 and critics were split. Quite honestly, I don’t blame them one bit. This is a long, imperfect movie that squeezes all of its best stuff into the middle. It takes a little too long to get going and then a lot longer than necessary to wrap things up. But it’s a rewarding picture for those who can meet it halfway with some beautiful cinematography, excellent performances and real heart. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you and I get it. But if you’re on the fence, give it a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised.

VERDICT: Despite its flaws, this is a Disney Plus.  

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