1962

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternate poster design for In Search Of The Castaways

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search Of The Castaways soundtrack album

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Legend Of Lobo

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Theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Legend Of Lobo

Big Red was released in June of 1962, about a year after Greyfriars Bobby. Besides the adventures of the little Skye Terrier, 1961 also brought us Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North (and One Hundred And One Dalmatians, for that matter). Perhaps fearing that his animal pictures were getting into a bit of a rut, Walt decided to do something different than just another dog movie. His next picture, released in November of 1962, would be a wolf movie. So maybe not all that different.

The Legend Of Lobo was another production from the former True-Life Adventures team led by producer/writer James Algar. Algar cowrote the script with Dwight Hauser (father of cult star Wings Hauser) from a story by Ernest Thompson Seton, a wildlife writer and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America. Dwight Hauser had worked on several documentary shorts for the studio, including the Oscar-winning Ama Girls (part of the People & Places companion series).

Jack Couffer, whose work as field producer and cinematographer had enlivened such films as Secrets Of Life and Nikki, shot the film with Lloyd Beebe, another long-time True-Life Adventure contributor. The editor, Norman Palmer, had also worked on True-Life Adventures dating back to Beaver Valley in 1950. Curiously, The Legend Of Lobo has no credited director. Perhaps the entire team felt they’d all contributed equally. Maybe it was an attempt to save some money on union fees. Whatever the reason, it’s an unusual omission.

The Legend Of Lobo distinguishes itself from previous animal pictures like Perri and Nikki primarily through its narration. Like Perri, the film has no spoken dialogue. But instead of the folksy narration of Winston Hibler, The Legend Of Lobo features a musical voiceover from Rex Allen and the Sons of the Pioneers. The Sons of the Pioneers had previously appeared alongside Roy Rogers in Melody Time, performing “Blue Shadows On The Trail” and “Pecos Bill”, although most of the members of that incarnation of the group had since moved on, replaced by new Sons of the Pioneers.

Rex Allen was never a Son of the Pioneers but he was cut from the same cloth as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. He was a late addition to the Singing Cowboy subgenre, making his film debut with The Arizona Cowboy in 1950. Westerns were on their way out by the 1950s, or at least transitioning over to television, but Allen still managed to become a box-office draw. In 1956, he landed his first Disney gig, narrating the Oscar-nominated short Cow Dog. This started a long association with the studio. In 1961, he narrated the animated short The Saga Of Windwagon Smith. A little later, he’d provide the voice of Father for the Carousel of Progress attraction that debuted at the New York World’s Fair before moving to Disneyland. We’ll be hearing from Rex Allen again in this column.

Allen was also a talented songwriter but he didn’t write The Legend Of Lobo song that recurs throughout the film. That job went to Walt’s new favorite songwriters, Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. The Sherman Brothers had been kept extremely busy since joining the studio in 1961, cranking out tunes for everything from The Parent Trap and Moon Pilot to Disney’s upcoming World’s Fair attractions (including “It’s A Small World”). Allen also performed the Shermans’ “There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” for the Carousel of Progress. “The Legend Of Lobo” is not one of their most memorable numbers. The only reason it gets stuck in your head is that it pops up so frequently.

Narratively, The Legend Of Lobo hews closely to the template established by Perri. We first meet Lobo as a young cub, the independent and headstrong son of El Feroz, mightiest of all wolves. While El Feroz is out hunting, a cougar discovers the wolves’ den. The cougar is ready to pounce when she’s unexpectedly shot by some passing cattlemen. The humans don’t find the den but the wolves decide it’s time to move on anyway.

As the wolf family hits the trail, L’il Lobo allows his curiosity to separate him from the rest of the group. He messes around with a tortoise and an armadillo before getting trapped by a rattlesnake. Fortunately, Lobo’s parents have been looking for him. They hear his plaintive howls and come to the rescue just in the nick of time. Most things in this movie happen just in the nick of time.

Lobo grows up and starts hunting with his family. But El Feroz has set his sights on the cattle being driven through the territory. It isn’t long before the cattlemen begin hunting down the wolfpack. And since this is a Disney movie, Lobo’s parents are soon killed, leaving Lobo in search of a new pack.

The cattlemen, like the other humans in the film, have no dialogue and aren’t credited. But if you look closely, you might recognize them as Walter Pidgeon and Émile Genest, reteamed after their appearances in Big Red. It wouldn’t surprise me if they shot all their footage in a day during a break in production on the earlier film.

Lobo finds a mate and becomes leader of the new pack, continuing to prey on cattle. The cattlemen respond by placing “Wanted” posters all over, offering a reward for the capture or killing of “the wolf known as Lobo”. There are no pictures on the posters, so these raise all sorts of questions. How do they know Lobo’s name? Without a picture, how are people meant to know they’ve got the right wolf? “Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to be Lobo by any chance?” “Nope, my name’s Steve. Lobo lives two dens down.” “Sorry, my mistake!”

At any rate, a hunter eventually turns up and tracks Lobo and Mrs. Lobo back to their den, an abandoned cliff-dwelling accessible by a tree-bridge. The hunter manages to trap Mrs. Lobo but Lobo rounds up the pack to create a cattle stampede. In the chaos that follows, Lobo rescues his mate. But recognizing that the area has become too dangerous, Lobo decides it’s time to move on and leads the pack to pastures new.

As usual, The Legend Of Lobo is a handsome looking film. Couffer and Beebe capture some nice wildlife photography, even if it lacks the wow factor of earlier True-Life Adventures. Couffer would eventually return to Disney to produce a much better movie about wolves, the underrated 1983 drama Never Cry Wolf. But for now, he seems content to just film wolves being wolves.

Hyperbolic title aside, Lobo doesn’t seem like a particularly extraordinary wolf. The Shermans’ song works overtime to sell us on Lobo’s mythic stature among wolves. But we don’t get to see any of the legendary feats that earned him his reputation. On the one hand, that’s fine. Nobody’s going to bring their kids to a movie with multiple sequences of wolves slaughtering cattle. But it also makes you wonder why they decided to film this particular story in the first place. Sure, the wolves are just trying to get along but you can understand why the cattlemen are trying to kill them. And since movies like this don’t deal in moral ambiguities, the wolves are portrayed as the good guys and the humans are the bad guys.

Wolves are beautiful, majestic animals but they’re also apex predators. It’s a whole lot easier to make a movie about a sympathetic squirrel or a sympathetic dog than it is to make one about a sympathetic wolf. The Legend Of Lobo works about as well as it can under the circumstances but there’s still a strain between how the story is told and what we’re actually seeing. Between the tonal whiplash, the ordinariness of the animals’ behavior and the repetitious song, this short feature (it clocks in at barely over an hour) feels about three hours long.

The Legend Of Lobo didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Nevertheless, Algar and Couffer remained committed to the idea of making narrative feature films with animals and as few humans as possible. Their next project would hit theaters in 1963. And this time, they’d make things a lot easier on themselves by focusing on three domestic house pets instead of squirrels or wolves.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Almost Angels

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Almost Angels

As I’ve mentioned before, this column exists to take a look at every theatrical feature film released by Disney in chronological order. The list I’m working from comes from the official D23 website, so I’m not the one making the rules here (well, of course I am but you get the idea). For the most part, the distinctions between a theatrical film and a TV or direct-to-video release are pretty cut and dried. But as we move into the 1960s, those lines get a little blurry. (They’ll get even blurrier when we hit the modern, streaming era.)

Walt had always kept the production values on his television productions extremely high. Episodes of Davy Crockett and Zorro could be stitched together as feature films and they’d look every bit as good as anything else in theatres. As the Disneyland/Walt Disney Presents/Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color productions grew more ambitious, an overseas theatrical run was rolled in as part of the release strategy. Some of these movies, like Dr. Syn, Alias The Scarecrow (a.k.a. The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh), were pretty terrific.

At first, second and third glance, Almost Angels seems like it ought to be one of those TV productions that fall outside of this column’s jurisdiction. It’s a film about the Vienna Boys’ Choir shot entirely on location in Austria. Eurocentric subject matter and locations were always a plus for overseas markets. The director and several cast members had already been involved in TV productions that went theatrical abroad. And even though the film is beautifully shot, its brief running time and focus on character dynamics make it feel right at home on the small screen.

But believe it or not, Almost Angels was released theatrically in the United States, albeit in a somewhat limited fashion. The film came out September 26, 1962, on the bottom-end of a double feature alongside a re-release of Lady And The Tramp. I’m not sure what accounts for this unusual release. This wasn’t the first (or last) time they’d bundle movies together like this. But usually, either both films would be a re-release or the co-feature was more of an extended short subject. Was this a TV project that got bumped up? Or was it a feature that Walt didn’t think could succeed on its own merits?

Theatrical re-release poster featuring Lady And The Tramp and Almost Angels

If it was the latter, Walt needn’t have worried. Almost Angels is no classic but it’s actually pretty darn good. Young Vincent Winter stars as Toni Fiala, a boy who longs to join the legendary choir. His father (Fritz Eckhardt) is a blue-collar railroad worker who wants his son to learn a trade. But his piano-playing mother (Bruni Löbel) believes in Toni’s talent and arranges an audition. When Toni wins one of the coveted spots, Papa reluctantly agrees to let him go under the condition that he keeps his grades up.

Once at the school, choir director Max Heller (Peter Weck) asks his star pupil, Peter (Sean Scully), to take Toni under his wing. Toni idolizes Peter but Peter, jealous of potentially losing his spot as top boy, makes life difficult for him. When Toni is given Peter’s usual solo during a performance at a children’s hospital, Peter locks him in a closet so he misses his cue. But the indomitable Toni escapes through a window, shimmying along the side of the building to make an even more dramatic entrance.

Eventually Peter and Toni become friends. Toni struggles with arithmetic and his grades begin to slip. But after he hears his son perform, Papa has a change of heart, even defending his son’s poor academic performance to the school director (Hans Holt). All systems are go for the choir’s next big international tour when disaster strikes for Peter. His voice begins to change at the worst possible moment.

Toni quickly puts together a scheme that he hopes will allow his despondent friend to come along on the tour. He arranges for another boy to sing Peter’s part from the wings while Peter lip-syncs on stage. Heller and the rest of the audience are suspicious of the half-baked performance from the start. Their suspicions are confirmed when Peter, thoroughly embarrassed, runs from the stage in tears.

Fortunately, Heller is sympathetic to Peter’s dilemma. Peter has also displayed an aptitude for composing and conducting, so Heller proposes bringing the boy along as assistant conductor. The board of directors think this is a swell idea. The movie concludes with Peter triumphantly conducting the Vienna Boys’ Choir as Toni takes the spotlight with a solo.

Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go. If you don’t enjoy listening to boys’ choirs, you’re not going to have a good time with Almost Angels. There are a lot of extended musical sequences in the film. The music, almost entirely German and Austrian pieces by such masters as Johann Strauss II and Schubert, is uniformly lovely if that kind of thing is your jam. But if it isn’t, you may end up watching this on fast forward.

Director Steve Previn and screenwriter Vernon Harris (later an Oscar nominee for the screenplay to Oliver!) base their film on an original story by Robert A. Stemmle, a prolific German screenwriter and director. Neither Stemmle nor Harris had any further association with Disney, so I’m not entirely sure how they became involved. As is the case with so many minor Disney live-action productions, the specific origins of the project remain elusive.

But Previn, who was also born in Germany (and was the brother of musician André Previn), directed a couple of other TV productions that were released theatrically overseas. Part one of the first, Escapade In Florence, aired in the US on September 30, just days after Almost Angels was released. Escapade In Florence starred Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk as students studying abroad who stumble onto an art forgery scam.

Previn’s third and final Disney project was more explicitly tied to Almost Angels. The Waltz King was a full-on Johann Strauss biopic, with Kerwin Mathews as the young composer and Brian Aherne as the father who casts a long shadow. Both Escapade In Florence and The Waltz King were well-received, so I’m at a loss to explain why neither of them received a domestic theatrical release but Almost Angels did.

It’s easy to imagine Walt assigning Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran to star in Almost Angels. It’s also easy to imagine what a bad idea that would have been. Both Sean Scully and Vincent Winter are ideally cast, bringing a natural, easy-going rapport to the screen. Winter had won a juvenile Academy Award for his film debut in The Little Kidnappers back in 1953. He made his Disney debut in a small role in Greyfriars Bobby and would next appear on TV in The Horse Without A Head (which would, of course, be released in overseas cinemas). He’ll be back in this column before too long.

Sean Scully was the real find of the movie, believably conveying teen angst, jealousy and loyalty without ever once becoming overbearing or unlikable. All of Scully’s Disney work falls into that gray area between TV and film. He’d played the title roles in an adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper and would go on to appear in The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh. He’s still acting, primarily on television back in his native Australia. But it’s a shame Disney didn’t use him more extensively.

The adult cast members were Austrian and German actors with limited appearances in American films. Peter Weck certainly seems like he should have become a bigger star. As the sympathetic choir director, Weck develops a warm bond with the boys, casting a wry look at their pranks and mischief-making but never sacrificing his demand for excellence. His only other American film credit came in 1963 with a supporting role in Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal (opposite Moon Pilot star Tom Tryon). Weck is a handsome, charming actor, so I’ve got to assume that it was his own choice not to pursue Hollywood stardom.

Almost Angels is definitely an obscure movie. It’s available on DVD only as a Disney Movie Club Exclusive and has never been released on Blu-ray. But it’s available to stream on Disney Plus, so the studio holds it in higher regard than some other curios like Toby Tyler or Bon Voyage! Maybe it’s just the fact that Almost Angels is completely inoffensive and doesn’t require a disclaimer to justify its inclusion. Regardless of their rationale, it’s a decent little movie that deserves to be remembered.

VERDICT: Maybe it’s just Stockholm Syndrome kicking in after suffering through so many Disney Minuses in a row, but I’m calling this a Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Big Red

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Big Red

Walt Disney certainly did not invent the dog movie. Canine movie stars had been around since the silent era, including such good boys and girls as Jean the Vitagraph Dog, Strongheart and, of course, Rin-Tin-Tin, the Tom Cruise of dogs. But Walt certainly had an affinity for the genre. Once he started making them, he just wouldn’t let them go, sort of like…well, a dog with a bone.

Big Red (not to be confused, as Wikipedia helpfully points out, with Clifford the Big Red Dog, nor with the soft drink, the chewing gum or Sam Fuller’s The Big Red One, for that matter) isn’t a top-shelf dog movie. But it is a kinder, gentler story than some of Walt’s previous forays into the genre. So far, we’ve seen dogs contract rabies and get shot, get lost in the Canadian wilderness and turn into savage killing machines, and keep a mournful vigil at the grave of their deceased master. By comparison, Big Red has it easy.

When we first meet Red, he’s a prize-winning Irish Setter who catches the eye of wealthy sportsman James Haggin (Walter Pidgeon in his Disney debut). Mr. Haggin buys Red for $5,000 with the intention of entering him in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. He no sooner gets Red settled into his estate when a young orphan named Rene (Gilles Payant) stops by looking for work. Haggin hires Rene to assist his dog trainer, Emile (Émile Genest, last seen terrorizing Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North).

Rene quickly bonds with Big Red, getting a little too close for Haggin’s comfort. Once he realizes that Red only responds to Rene, he separates the pair, forbidding Rene from any contact with Red until after the dog show. Rene gets it but sneaks up to the big house for one last goodbye. Overly excited at the scent of his new best friend, Red makes a break for it, leaping through a window and getting slashed to ribbons in the process.

Certain that Red will never be a champion now, Haggin orders Emile to put the dog down (people in Disney movies are always quick to have their dogs put to sleep, for some reason). Before he can do the deed, Rene smuggles Red off the estate to his late uncle’s remote cabin. Once he’s nursed Red back to health, Rene returns the dog to his rightful owner. In an attempt to recoup some of his investment, Haggin decides to sell both Red and his mate, Molly, to another dog breeder. They’re loaded on to a train but escape before they reach their destination.

Rene finds out the dogs have gone missing and tracks them down, finding Molly has given birth to a litter of puppies. Once the little family is able to travel, Rene stuffs a backpack full of puppies and starts leading the dogs back to Haggin’s place. Meanwhile, Haggin himself has ventured into the woods looking for Rene. After an encounter with a mountain lion, he’s thrown from his horse, injuring his leg. Fortunately, Big Red and company find Haggin in the nick of time. Impressed by Rene’s integrity, courage and fortitude, Haggin offers to take the boy in again, not as an employee but as his foster son.

Big Red is another Winston Hibler production. Even though humans are featured more prominently than in his previous outings, Hibler’s True-Life Adventures experience is still very much in evidence. The Canadian landscape is practically another character in the film and Red and Molly have ample opportunities to prove they don’t really need a human scene partner.

The film was based on a novel by Jim Kjelgaard, a prolific writer of young adult novels mostly about dogs and other animals. Big Red was far and away his most successful book, spawning two sequels following the adventures of Red’s sons, Irish Red and Outlaw Red. Sadly, Kjelgaard did not live to see his work adapted to the big screen. He had suffered from a myriad of health problems since childhood, causing chronic, unbearable pain. In 1959, he took his own life at the age of 48.

To adapt the book, Disney brought some new blood into the studio. TV and radio writer Louis Pelletier wrote the screenplay. We’ll see his work again in this column, as Pelletier stuck with the studio for the rest of the decade. Walt also found a new director that had honed his skill in television. Norman Tokar had been directing sitcoms and the occasional drama since the early 50s. Walt had been impressed by his work with kids on Leave It To Beaver, a show he’d directed nearly 100 episodes of.

Once Tokar set up shop on the Disney lot, he never really left. In fact, he only ever directed one feature outside the studio, the 1974 family drama Where The Red Fern Grows. But he was a solid team player for Disney, directing movies across a range of genres well into the 1970s. We’ll be seeing a whole lot more of Norman Tokar in this column.

We’ll also be seeing Walter Pidgeon and Émile Genest again. Pidgeon wasn’t necessarily a big box office draw but he was certainly well-respected in the industry. He was a two-time Oscar nominee and former President of the Screen Actors Guild. Sci-fi nerds like yours truly probably know him best as Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet. Big Red doesn’t present much of an acting challenge to Pidgeon. The role basically requires him to be stern and aloof, which pretty much sums up his entire screen persona. He’s fine but just about anybody could have played the part and done just as well.

As for Genest, this role is the polar opposite of the sadistic dog-fighter he played in Nikki. Shorn of the mountain man beard he sported in that earlier film, he’s almost unrecognizable as the same actor. As loathsome as he was in Nikki, I never wanted to see Genest around dogs again. But he completely redeems himself here, teaching Rene the tricks of the trade and showing himself to be a loving husband and strong father figure.

One actor we won’t be seeing again is Gilles Payant. He never made another film after Big Red and I’m not entirely sure what happened to him between this movie and his death in 2012 (some sources claim he went into real estate). He’s a little bit stiff and his line readings betray the fact that English was not the Quebecois actor’s first language. But he has a solid screen presence and an easy, natural rapport with Red and the other dogs. Given time and the inclination, he probably could have developed into a decent child actor.

The only real problem with Big Red is it’s a bit of a snooze. Tensions never run particularly high, even when Haggin is being threatened by a hungry mountain lion. The movie is pleasant enough and it’s kind of a relief to see a Disney dog movie where the animals remain largely out of harm’s way. But the stakes start out low and seem to get lower and lower as the movie goes on. For a while, it seems like the movie is leading up to the big Westminster dog show but Big Red never even gets a chance to compete.

Big Red debuted in June of 1962 and it reportedly performed fairly well at the box office, outgrossing Lad: A Dog, a competing dog movie released the same day. Scraps, the Irish Setter who starred as Red, was honored by the American Humane Association with a PATSY Award (a trophy previously won by such Disney animals as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog and my favorite, Toby Tyler’s Mr. Stubbs). But Walt never returned to the world of Big Red, despite the fact that there were two sequels just sitting there, waiting to be turned into movies.

There were, however, plenty of other dogs (and wolves and horses and even a cat or two) out there waiting for their moment in the Disney spotlight. Walt would have another animal movie in theatres by the end of 1962. And the year after that, he’d finally produce a sequel to his first and most popular dog movie.

VERDICT: Another one that’s not exactly a Disney Plus but slightly better than a Disney Minus. Let’s call this one a Disney Meh.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Bon Voyage!

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Original theatrical release poster for Bon Voyage!

If it had come from any other producer or studio, Bon Voyage! would be just another innocuous, overlong, not entirely successful comedy. In fact, it bears some surface resemblance to another innocuous family comedy from 1962, Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation starring James Stewart. (Jimmy Stewart, somewhat surprisingly, will not be appearing in this column.) But coming from Walt Disney, Bon Voyage! is a bit of an odd duck, a movie that doesn’t seem to know exactly who its audience is meant to be. Quite simply, it doesn’t feel like a Disney movie.

Oh, it looks like a Disney movie. It reunites Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran, again playing father and sons after The Shaggy Dog. Kirk had also appeared with MacMurray in The Absent-Minded Professor and Kirk and Corcoran had played brothers so often that they probably had false memories of holidays spent together. TV director James Neilson, who had just made his Disney feature debut with Moon Pilot, provides that signature live-action Disney visual style (which is to say essentially none). And the Sherman Brothers churned out another title song that falls somewhere between catchy and grating (this one is weighed heavily toward the latter end of that scale).

The Bon Voyage! project had actually been kicking around Hollywood for a few years before Disney became involved. It was based on a novel written by Joseph Hayes (the author of The Desperate Hours) and his wife, Marrijane, after they’d returned from a European cruise. The film rights were immediately picked up by Universal, who planned to make it with James Cagney. Later on, Bing Crosby became attached to the role. Eventually Universal let its option lapse and Disney picked it up.

Walt gave the property to Bill Walsh, the go-to live-action writer-producer who’d had a couple of big hits with The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor. The other credited producer on the project was Ron Miller, who had also recently worked on Moon Pilot. Miller was married to Walt’s daughter, Diane. He played professional football for the Los Angeles Rams for a little while before Walt, concerned that he’d get seriously hurt, offered him a job. He started out in TV before moving into features with Moon Pilot. Miller would eventually become President of Walt Disney Productions, so he’ll continue to be a big presence in this column.

Our story follows the Willard family of Terre Haute, Indiana: father Harry (MacMurray), mother Katie (Jane Wyman, last seen as Aunt Polly in Pollyanna), daughter Amy (Deborah Walley, hot off her film debut in Gidget Goes Hawaiian), and sons Elliott and Skipper (Kirk and Corcoran). We first meet the Willards in New York City, rushing to catch the ship that will carry them to France for a long-planned European vacation. They haven’t even boarded the ship before Amy has caught the eye of Nick O’Mara (played by Walley’s Gidget costar Michael Callan), a budding architect traveling to visit his mother in Paris.

Meanwhile, broody teen Elliott is peeved at being dragged along on this trip at all. He’d just as soon board the next train back to Terre Haute. Young Skipper, as personified by Moochie Corcoran on another of his signature permanent sugar-highs, tears around the dock looking for mischief. For his part, Harry is just looking forward to some peace and quiet, hopes that are immediately dashed when he discovers that Katie has invited their entire extended family on board for a bon voyage party.

Things don’t calm down much at sea. Amy and Nick continue their courtship, much to Harry’s consternation. Elliott pursues a romance with an Indian girl, their every move watched by her mysterious chaperone. I kept expecting something more to come of this but nothing does. The girl simply dumps Elliott the second they put into port and they’re never referred to again. With the rest of the family pursuing their own agendas, Harry decides to spend some quality time with Skipper, who predictably runs him ragged from dawn to dusk.

Once they arrive in Paris, things more or less continue along this episodic trajectory. Harry and Skipper take a tour of the city’s historic sewer system, resulting in Harry getting hopelessly lost beneath the streets. Elliott bounces from one girl to the next, attempting to appear more continental by outfitting himself with ascots and a pipe. And Skipper essentially runs loose, unsupervised and carefree. I’m no fan of helicopter parenting but allowing your 12-year-old son to come and go as he pleases in a foreign country almost borders on neglect.

Something resembling a plot finally kicks in when Nick invites Harry and Katie to meet his mother, La Contessa DuFresne (Jessie Royce Landis), at a fancy party. Here, Katie catches the eye of Rudolph Hunschak (Ivan Desny), a notorious gigolo well-known for seducing married women. Seething with jealousy, Harry knocks back glass after glass of absinthe. Meanwhile, Amy’s hot-and-cold running romance with Nick hits another rough patch when he starts whining about his overbearing mother. Both Katie and Amy ask Harry to take them back to the hotel but he’s too busy getting petulantly drunk on absinthe. Eventually he passes out, leaving his daughter to drag him back to the hotel.

Not knowing what’s become of her drunken husband, Katie ends up spending the night bar-hopping with Rudolph trying to track him down. Rudolph’s advances are firmly rebuffed but Katie’s still mad that Harry abandoned her at the party. Harry indulges in some classic victim-blaming. He actually says, “It’s very difficult to kiss a girl when she doesn’t want to be kissed.” Katie understandably kicks him out, ending the Paris leg of their trip on a sour note.

Finally, it’s off to the French Riviera. Amy arrives at the beach decked out in a skimpy (not really but, by Disney standards, sure) bikini. All the guys on the beach turn into Tex Avery cartoon wolves at the sight of her, sending Nick (still dogging her every move, for some reason) into a jealous fit. Amy swims out into the ocean to get away from this jerk but Nick can’t take a hint. He steals a boat, goes after her and physically drags her out of the water. To her credit, Amy tells Nick to take a hike before taking some paternal comfort in Harry.

Harry is still trying to smooth things over with Katie. On their last night in France, he arranges for a big night of dinner, dancing and casino gaming in Monaco. But who should they find sleazing up the casino but Rudolph Hunschak? Harry immediately hauls off and decks him, setting off a chain reaction that practically destroys the entire casino with one punch. Harry gets kicked out of the joint, hustled back across the border to France where Nick is waiting to have a heart-to-heart. Nick apologizes, while Harry empathizes with the fact that love can make you do some crazy things. They don’t quite get to the point of Nick asking Harry’s permission to marry his daughter but the door’s left open. Reunited at last, the family celebrates their last night in Europe with an outdoor Bastille Day celebration.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned two of the weirdest sequences in the movie, both involving Tommy Kirk’s Elliott. In the first, Harry orders breakfast at a café where he catches the eye of a young French girl (Françoise Prévost) on the make for rich American tourists. Harry assures the unnamed girl that he’s flattered but completely devoted to his wife and kids. The girl seems moved by this and hopes he enjoys the rest of his trip. A little later, Harry’s on his way to the Louvre when he sees Elliott being charmed by this same girl. Harry seems amused by the fact that she’s trying to con his kid, rather than upset or angry or anything resembling a normal parental response. He bids the sexy con artist a fond farewell and drags an embarrassed Elliott back to the hotel.

Later on at the Riviera, Harry and Elliott are paid a call by Elliott’s latest paramour and her mother. It seems Elliott is responsible for taking the young lady’s “virtue” and mother demands compensation from the rich Americans. Harry gets rid of them by immediately agreeing that the two lovebirds should get married. He paints a horrific picture of rural life in Indiana, up at dawn to milk the cows and what-not, and insists they celebrate the union by smashing a bottle of champagne against the wall. The two Frenchwomen beat a hasty retreat and Elliott presumably gets a stern lecture about premarital sex that we mercifully don’t hear.

If it seems like the Disney folks were working way too hard to present Tommy Kirk as a womanizing horndog, that’s because they probably were. By this point, Tommy Kirk knew he was gay and had known for several years. Back in 1962, this was not exactly a subject that was discussed openly, especially at a conservative studio like Disney. Still, there were undoubtedly those at the studio who either knew or suspected. According to Kirk, one of those people was Jane Wyman. Kirk apparently had a miserable time filming Bon Voyage!, butting heads with both Wyman and MacMurray (although in MacMurray’s case, Tommy admits he was at least partially to blame for causing friction between them). Undoubtedly the strain of pretending to be someone he wasn’t played a part in his unhappiness. Tommy Kirk will make a few more appearances in this column but eventually, his hidden homosexuality will unfortunately result in his dismissal.

At any rate, in addition to being a family romp through Europe, Bon Voyage! turns out to be Disney’s first sex comedy and it’s every bit as awkward and uncomfortable as that description makes it sound. Given the cast and Disney’s recent successes with gimmick comedies, I kept expecting the Willards to run into spies or jewel thieves or a wacky inventor with a talking car or a chimpanzee or some combination of these. But no, Neilson and Walsh try to keep things relatively grounded.

That would be great if they also gave us characters we could care about or funnier situations for them to stumble into. But the Willards are, by and large, not a particularly likable family. Harry earns some dad points here and there but he’s not a great husband. Katie remains a blank slate through most of the film, disappearing for long stretches. Her primary function is to be calm about things that worry Harry and worry about things Harry’s calm about. The relationship between Amy and Nick is on-again off-again so frequently that you quickly decide it’s not worth the emotional investment. There’s the germ of a funny idea in Elliott’s transformation into a suave sophisticate but it remains underdeveloped and Elliott himself doesn’t appear to learn anything from the experience. As for Skipper…please stop.

Despite its confused tone, lack of momentum and overall sleepiness, Bon Voyage! did reasonably well, becoming the 9th highest-grossing film of the year in the U.S., tied with the hospital drama The Interns. Interestingly enough, The Interns also starred Michael Callan. It was directed by David Swift, who had previously directed Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, and costarred former Disney contract players James MacArthur and Buddy Ebsen. Box office records round both films to $5 million but given the number of Disney connections in The Interns, I’ll bet you Walt knew exactly which one made more to the penny.

Bon Voyage! even managed to snag a couple Oscar nominations. Robert O. Cook received a nod for Best Sound, his second nomination after The Parent Trap (the award went to Lawrence Of Arabia instead). In addition, Bill Thomas was nominated for his costume design, his second Disney nomination after Babes In Toyland and not his last (he had already won an Oscar for his work on Spartacus). Thomas lost to Mary Wills for the George Pal production The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm, a lavish fantasy that in some ways out-Disneys anything Disney himself was producing at the time.

After its initial release, Bon Voyage! faded away pretty quickly. The film has never been released on Blu-ray and, as of this writing, isn’t available to stream on Disney+. I wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon. This is unquestionably one of the studio’s weaker efforts, too grown-up for the kids (I believe this is the first Disney film to use profanity, even if it is just a couple of mild “damnations”) and too juvenile for the grown-ups. Some vacations are better left forgotten. And as we’ll see in the weeks ahead, the next time the studio tries its hand at comedy, it’ll quite literally go back to a tried-and-true formula.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Moon Pilot

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Moon Pilot

For all his rose-tinted nostalgia and love of trains and history, Walt Disney was a genuine futurist. He had ambitious plans for his theme park’s Tomorrowland and would soon begin to formulate an even bigger dream called EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The Disneyland TV show produced several acclaimed episodes on the space race, including Man In Space, Man And The Moon and Mars And Beyond. A feature film centered around man’s attempts to reach the stars was all but inevitable. But for whatever reason, Walt’s first movie on the subject was a bizarre comedy clunker.

Moon Pilot was based on an obscure sci-fi novel called Starfire by Robert Buckner, the screenwriter of such classics as Yankee Doodle Dandy. (Give the Disney story department credit for this much, they were adept at finding deep cut books and short stories to base their films on.) Maurice Tombragel was assigned screenwriting duties. Tombragel came from the TV side, where he’d written a ton of Disneyland episodes including Texas John Slaughter and The Nine Lives Of Elfego Baca.

Director James Neilson also came from television, having helmed episodes of Zorro and Texas John Slaughter. Moon Pilot would be his first theatrical credit for Disney but not his last. He’d also continue to work on the TV end and several of those projects would be released theatrically overseas, including the pirate adventure The Mooncussers with Kevin “Moochie” Corcoran and Dr. Syn, Alias The Scarecrow. Neilson will be back in this column very soon.

Our story opens in medias res, as cigar-chomping Air Force Major General John Vanneman (Brian Keith in his third Disney outing) monitors an astronaut named Charlie as he attempts the first manned orbit of the moon. It’s a picture-perfect mission and as the crew recovers the capsule, we discover that Charlie is a chimpanzee, proudly carrying on the lineage of Disney Primates from such films as Toby Tyler.

Everyone is so pleased by the mission’s success that they decide to move up their timetable and launch a human astronaut within the week. For some reason, this seems to be the first time anyone has considered sending a man into space and Vanneman asks for a volunteer. Despite the fact that all these men work for the space program, nobody wants the dangerous honor of being the first man to orbit the moon. The Right Stuff, this ain’t.

Charlie takes matters into his own hands by sticking his klutzy trainer, Captain Richmond Talbot (Tom Tryon), in the butt with a fork. Talbot leaps to his feet and Vanneman mistakes him for an enthusiastic volunteer. Talbot reluctantly agrees but first asks for a few days leave to go home and visit his family. Vanneman signs off on this plan and why not? It’s not like that time could be better spent on details like training and test flights.

On the plane home, Talbot meets a sexy, mysterious young woman named Lyrae (Dany Saval). Lyrae knows all about Talbot’s top-secret mission and when she continues to unexpectedly pop up with warnings that his spacecraft isn’t safe, Talbot reports that he’s being followed by a foreign spy. Vanneman orders him back to the base and a “National Security” agent named McClosky (Edmond O’Brien) is assigned to make sure he does.

Lyrae follows Talbot to San Francisco where she reveals that she’s an alien from the planet Beta Lyrae. Why she has the same name as her home planet remains a mystery. She provides a secret formula to protect Talbot’s spacecraft from the dangerous photon rays that have made Charlie more aggressive and unpredictable. As they explore the city, Talbot falls in love with the space girl.

Vanneman and McClosky arrive and interrogate Talbot at the police station. Unable to find Lyrae, McClosky orders a round-up of young beatnik women in hopes that a witness will be able to pick her out of a lineup. One of these poetry-reciting girls, clad in a baggy sweater and glasses, is played by a young Sally Field making her film debut. Field will eventually make her way back to this column, providing the voice of Sassy the cat in the 1993 remake Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and its sequel, but that’s quite a way down the road.

At any rate, Vanneman gets Talbot back to base and even agrees to coat his spacecraft in Lyrae’s mystery compound if it makes him feel better. The launch proceeds without a hitch until, all of a sudden, Lyrae shows up out of nowhere in the seat next to Talbot. Why are there two seats in a capsule designed for a single astronaut? I don’t know but if that’s the only thing that bugs you about this story, you’re not paying close enough attention. Lyrae and Talbot are in love and she invites him to return with her to Beta Lyrae. Talbot changes course and off they go, blissfully singing the space anthem “The Seven Moons of Beta Lyrae” (one of three original tunes composed by the Sherman Brothers, not exactly bringing their A-game) as a thoroughly confused Vanneman listens over the radio and a thoroughly confused audience rushes for the exits.

So where do we start with Moon Pilot? This is meant to be a wacky comedy and that’s fine. I can certainly appreciate a good wacky comedy. Every so often a gag will land, maybe not as forcefully as it should but enough to provoke a smile or two. Bob Sweeney, last seen as the smarmy concession salesman in Toby Tyler, is fun as a smarmy, glad-handing Senator. The beatnik lineup is kind of cute, although it’s basically the same joke repeated over and over as one group of weirdos and oddballs gets replaced by another.

The biggest problem is leading man Tom Tryon. This was Tryon’s first and only movie for Disney after landing the title role in Texas John Slaughter. Tryon looks like he was well-suited to playing the lead in a western but comedy is not his forte. He just isn’t funny. Talbot is a naïve, bumbling guy who gets in way over his head. The part calls for someone like Jerry Lewis. Tryon is stiff and uncomfortable throughout.

Tryon went on to have a pretty interesting post-Disney career. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal and worked steadily in films and TV through the end of the 1960s. By the end of the decade, he’d become fed up with acting and became a successful horror novelist, writing books like The Other and Harvest Home. He died in 1991 at the age of 65, ostensibly of stomach cancer although it was later revealed that he’d been keeping his HIV-positive diagnosis a secret.

Dany Saval was also one-and-done with Disney. She was a rising star in France when she made her American film debut in Moon Pilot. Saval went right back to France after Moon Pilot’s failure to launch, making a brief return to Hollywood for the Jerry Lewis/Tony Curtis comedy Boeing, Boeing in 1965. She retired from show business in the late 1980s.

In addition to Brian Keith, there is one other familiar Disney face in Moon Pilot. Our old buddy Tommy Kirk, billed as a “special guest star”, turns up as Tryon’s younger brother. It’s a superfluous cameo with Kirk picking Tryon up at the airport and giving him a ride home. I half suspect that Kirk really was just picking Tryon up at the airport and they decided to roll cameras on the spot. Honestly, Kirk would have been a better choice to play the lead here. Granted, he was a little too young to believably pull off being an Air Force captain. But believability did not seem to be of utmost concern anywhere else in this movie, so why should that matter here?

Moon Pilot came and went without making much of a dent in April 1962. It made a little bit of money but not enough to promote it into the big leagues. While many contemporary critics found good things to say about the movie, the FBI was less than enthusiastic. They complained about Edmond O’Brien’s portrayal of a bumbling, incompetent agent, even though they’d already forced Disney to change the name of the agency he works for. The Bureau was clearly being oversensitive, probably because they were still nursing hurt feelings over a Disney/FBI collaboration that had fallen apart a few years earlier.

The FBI’s declassified file on Walt shows that they’d had a somewhat cozy relationship. Walt admired their work and the Bureau believed that Walt could be a very friendly asset if necessary. In the late 50s, Walt plotted out a short series for The Mickey Mouse Club that would follow young cub reporter Dirk Metzger’s journey to Washington. Segments were planned on the treasury, the White House and the Congress and a big chunk would be spent on the FBI. The Bureau became heavily involved with those scripts, demanding a whole laundry list of changes even after seeing the rough cuts. As far as Walt was concerned, nobody had final cut approval on his work except for Walt Disney, not even the FBI. So he canned the whole project. Moon Pilot isn’t exactly Swiftian in its satire of the Bureau but it certainly isn’t the piece of rah-rah propaganda he’d been planning before, either.

While Walt would continue to dabble with science fiction, primarily through his gimmick comedies, it’s a little surprising that he didn’t return to outer space in his lifetime. It’ll be quite some time before we see another rocket or spaceship in this column. That’s kind of a shame. The Disneyland episodes suggest that Walt could have made a very good, serious movie on the subject. Although to be honest, I’d be happy if he’d simply made a more successful comedy.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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