Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Never A Dull Moment

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Never A Dull Moment

The Dick Van Dyke Show aired its final episode on June 1, 1966, just about one month before Van Dyke’s second Disney movie, Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., hit theatres. Since then, Van Dyke had made two more movies at other studios: Divorce American Style, which had done OK and earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, and Fitzwilly, which had not. Considering that both of Van Dyke’s Disney movies had been hits, despite the vast disparity in the quality of the two films, it’s little wonder that he decided to return to the studio one more time for Never A Dull Moment.

Never A Dull Moment was produced by Ron Miller, the former football player who was married to Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney. Since going to work for his father-in-law, Miller had specialized in broad comedies like the Merlin Jones pictures. He’d worked with Dick Van Dyke on Lt. Robin Crusoe. There’s not a lot of behind-the-scenes information about this movie out there (shocking, I know) so I’m not entirely sure where the idea to make this film came from. But my assumption is that Miller found the original novel and felt it would make a good vehicle for Dick Van Dyke.

About that novel…it was published in 1967 as an Inner Sanctum Mystery called A Thrill A Minute With Jack Albany by John Godey. Godey, the pen name of Morton Freedgood, wrote a number of crime novels including The Three Worlds Of Johnny Handsome (later filmed by Walter Hill) and The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, the basis for the classic 1974 thriller starring Walter Matthau. So I’m assuming (doing a lot of that this week) that Godey’s novel is a bit more adult-oriented than the movie.

A.J. Carothers wrote the screenplay, his last work for Disney after such films as The Happiest Millionaire and Emil And The Detectives. Carothers went on to create the TV show Nanny And The Professor. He also wrote quite a few made-for-TV movies and the feature films Hero At Large and The Secret Of My Success. Carothers seems to have retired after that last film and he passed away in 2007 at the age of 75.

As with Lt. Robin Crusoe, Van Dyke appears to have used some of his clout to bring aboard a director he was familiar with but new to Disney. Jerry Paris had been Van Dyke’s costar on The Dick Van Dyke Show, appearing as the Petries’ neighbor, Jerry Helper. He started directing the show in 1963, winning an Emmy in the process. He eventually phased acting out to focus entirely on directing. Never A Dull Moment would be his only Disney gig. He continued to direct a lot of TV, including the majority of Happy Days episodes, and the occasional feature like Police Academy 2 and 3. Like Carothers, he also made a lot of made-for-TV movies including one of my favorites, the cult classic Evil Roy Slade.

Theatrical release poster for Never A Dull Moment

At first glance, Never A Dull Moment looks promising. Van Dyke is well cast as Jack Albany, an egotistical C-list actor still waiting for his big break. He’s the kind of actor who quotes reviews of his triumphant performance in Twelfth Night whenever he gets the chance. After appearing as a gangster on a TV show, Jack heads home, still in costume. But when he suspects he’s being followed, he ducks into a warehouse and runs into a low-level mob flunky named Florian (Tony Bill, who would win an Oscar a few years later for co-producing The Sting). Florian has been sent to collect a hired killer named Ace Williams and naturally assumes that Jack is Ace. Jack tries to explain the misunderstanding but once he realizes that Florian will kill him if he isn’t Ace, he decides to play along.

Florian brings Jack/Ace to the country house of powerful gangster Leo Joseph Smooth (Edward G. Robinson in one of his last gangster roles). Smooth may be a high-ranking mafioso but he’s neither famous nor infamous. In an attempt to secure his place in history, he’s planned an art heist. His crew will steal the 40-foot-long painting “Field of Sunflowers” after a museum benefit. He then intends to give the masterpiece back to the museum in his will, along with a sizable donation if they agree to name the museum after him.

To pull the job, Smooth has assembled a crack team of professional criminals, including communications expert Bobby Macoon (Richard Bakalyan, who had an uncredited appearance as an umpire in Follow Me, Boys! and is about to become a very familiar face in this column), Cowboy Schaeffer (Slim Pickens, making his first Disney appearance since Savage Sam), and stone-faced killer Frank Boley (the awesome Henry Silva who unfortunately did not become a Disney regular). Frank’s the only one who doesn’t believe Jack is the real Ace Williams, which automatically makes him the sharpest tool in a dull shed.

To make sure nothing goes wrong, Smooth informs everyone that they’ll all be staying at the house until it’s time for the benefit the next day. This ends up including Smooth’s art instructor, a civilian named Sally Inwood (Dorothy Provine, returning to the Disney fold for the first time since That Darn Cat!). Jack thinks he and Sally might be able to help each other out of this mess but has a hard time getting alone with her. Part of the problem is Jack is continually waylaid by Smooth’s wife, Melanie (Joanna Moore, last seen in Son Of Flubber), a lonely ex-burlesque dancer eager to share memories of the stage with Jack.

Eventually, the real Ace Williams (played by the wonderful Jack Elam and he’ll be back in this column, too) turns up at the house. Turns out that Ace was mugged on his way to the meet-up, so he doesn’t have anything to prove he’s the real McCoy. Neither does Jack, so the crew decides that the only way to find the real Ace Williams is to lock them both in a room and have it out. Two men enter, one man leaves and that man must be the real killer. Fortunately for Jack, Sally just happens to be hiding out in the room chosen for the fight. She knocks Ace unconscious and agrees to work with Jack to figure a way out of this mess. Ace is locked in the basement and Jack has no choice but to go along with the heist.

The next day, Jack heads out with the crew to infiltrate the museum disguised as caterers. Meanwhile, Sally is left alone with Ace in the basement and Joe Smooth’s tough-guy valet, Francis (Mickey Shaughnessy), guarding her. As Sally tries to outwit the bad guys, Jack is forced to go into action and play his part. He tries explaining to the guard what’s going on in a whisper but, for reasons that are literally never explained, the guard suddenly collapses in a heap, dead as a doornail.

The rest of the crew is very impressed by this but Jack suddenly decides he’s had enough. He refuses to steal the painting and leads the crew on a chase through the museum. Along the way, Jack finds the second guard, who ALSO dies the second Jack touches him. The chase doesn’t climax so much as peter out when the police suddenly turn up. Seems that Sally was able to escape and call the cops after all. They all go round up Smooth at the rendezvous point and Jack and Sally, who think they’ve fallen in love for some reason, live happily ever after.

Theatrical re-release poster for Never A Dull Moment

So, there are a whole lot of problems with Never A Dull Moment but my biggest question when I was finished with all this was, “How did the author of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three come up with such a boring heist?” It turns out he didn’t. In the book, the bad guys are planning to kidnap the mayor of New York City. That certainly sounds a whole lot more interesting than stealing one painting from a museum, no matter how oversized the canvas.

The title Never A Dull Moment is clearly a suggestion, not a guarantee. The movie is often shockingly, staggeringly dull. Over half of the movie takes place in that house. While we’re there, Dick Van Dyke spends a lot of time pretending to be drunk (which is one of those gags that’s funny the first time but gets old quick), Edward G. Robinson goes on and on about art and legacy and overexplains the logistics of this very basic heist, Dorothy Provine behaves as though this threat against her life is a mid-level inconvenience, and Slim Pickens mangles the pronunciation of “horse doovers”.

Things don’t improve much at the museum. The climactic chase goes through various wings of the museum, which seems ripe for comedy. But for the most part, those opportunities are squandered. Even potentially dated and problematic humor is largely absent. I was ready to cringe when they entered the “Primitive Art” wing but, apart from referring to it as “primitive”, the sequence mostly avoids outdated stereotypes.

The “Pop Art” wing primarily just goes for the low-hanging fruit of “isn’t modern art weird?” At one point, the chase passes an oversized Roy Lichtenstein-like mural that was actually done by longtime Mickey Mouse cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson. You don’t get to see much of it in the movie but I thought it was cool. However, I don’t want you to have to sit through this whole movie just to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Gottfredson piece, so here it is:

Floyd Gottfredson's Astro Pooch comic strip as seen in Never A Dull Moment

Whatever else you might say about Never A Dull Moment, the cast really isn’t to blame. Dick Van Dyke has a plum role here, it just needed to be drastically rewritten. He does the best he can with what he’s got to work with. The same goes for Robinson, Provine, Moore and that murderers’ row of killer character actors. But you can’t make something from nothing and Never A Dull Moment surrounds its cast with a whole lot of nothing.

The movie was released on June 26, 1968. Reviews were middling to negative and it ended up earning considerably less money than Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. Dick Van Dyke’s next feature would be more successful. Released in December of 1968, it was a family-fantasy-musical set in England, not unlike Mary Poppins, that reunited him with the Sherman Brothers. But Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was not a Disney movie, although trailers sure tried to make it look like one. Within a few years, Dick Van Dyke would decide he was through with movies for awhile and return to television for most of the 1970s and 80s. It’ll be quite some time before he returns to this column.

Even though Never A Dull Moment wasn’t a home run by any definition, it still served its purpose. It helped establish the heist comedy as another go-to genre for Disney. The studio played on the fringes of this sandbox in earlier films like That Darn Cat! and Emil And The Detectives. But this time, there were no kids, no animals and no gimmicks. Just a relatively straight-forward case of mistaken identity and some crooks doing a job. It wouldn’t be long before Disney found its way back to this well.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Happiest Millionaire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theatrical release poster for The Happiest Millionaire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comic book adaptation of The Happiest Millionaire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Emil And The Detectives

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Emil And The Detectives

On paper, Emil And The Detectives makes total sense as a Disney film. It’s based on a perennially popular young adult novel. It features an ensemble of kids taking on a trio of over-the-top, cartoony bad guys. And later in the decade, these kinds of lightweight mystery/heist/caper pictures would become the studio’s bread and butter. But in practice, Emil And The Detectives is a sluggish affair that never fully delivers the fun promised by its animated opening title sequence.

Author Erich Kästner was no stranger to the Disney studio. His novel Lottie And Lisa formed the basis for the Hayley Mills blockbuster The Parent Trap. Emil And The Detectives was published in 1929 and had already been adapted to film in Germany, England and Japan. The 1931 German version was an early screenwriting credit for Billy Wilder. Walt’s version would be written by A.J. Carothers, who had previously handled the script for Miracle Of The White Stallions.

Director Peter Tewksbury was new to Disney, although he’d worked with Disney Legend Fred MacMurray on his sitcom, My Three Sons. Emil And The Detectives would turn out to be his only Disney credit. After this, he worked primarily in TV and directed a couple of Elvis Presley’s later movies.

The story is pretty simple. Young Emil (Bryan Russell) is sent to visit his grandmother in Berlin. His mother gives him 400 marks to deliver to Grandma, pinning it to the inside of his coat so he won’t lose it. Unfortunately, she does this in full view of Grundeis (Heinz Schubert), a “skrink” in a loud checkered suit and a bowler hat.

What, you may well ask, is a skrink? According to the film (which represents the only recorded use of the term, as near as I can tell), it’s a low, dishonest, disreputable person, often a criminal although not necessarily. Variations of the expression get used throughout the movie, as in “my skrinky sister”. By the end, you’ll wish you had a time machine to go prevent A.J. Carothers from trying to make “skrink” happen.

Anyway, Grundeis hops on board the bus and finagles his way into the seat next to Emil. He pulls out a pocket watch and hypnotizes Emil into falling asleep. Once that’s done, he picks Emil’s pocket and hops off the bus. If he’d been a better hypnotist, he probably would have gotten away with it. But Emil wakes up the second the door closes, so he gets off the bus and follows Grundeis to a nearby café.

While he’s spying on Grundeis, Emil meets Gustav (Roger Mobley), a street kid who seems to have a hustle for all occasions. When Emil explains the situation, Gustav whips out a business card introducing himself as a private detective. Since Emil has no proof that Grundeis stole his money, the police are useless. So Emil hires Gustav and his team of boy detectives to take the case.

Their one clue is a note Grundeis tried to destroy setting a time and place for a meeting that evening. Gustav saved most of it but the part with the name of the hotel got away (it went “skrinking off down the gutter”), so they split up to stake out all the hotels in the area. While this is going on, Emil sends a note to his grandmother, assuring her that he’s okay. But the message is intercepted by Emil’s cousin, Pony (Cindy Cassell), a cub reporter for her school newspaper. Sensing there’s a story in this, Pony trails the messenger boy back to Emil.

Grundeis meets two other skrinks, The Baron (Walter Slezak) and Müller (Peter Ehrlich). The three skrinks have hatched a plan to rob a bank by tunneling into it from the ruins of an old building nearby. Emil and Gustav spend the night at the ruins but the next morning, Emil is discovered and taken prisoner by the Baron. With their client missing, the detectives decide it’s finally time to call in the police. The cops show them a number of mug shots, one of which bears the name “Albert Jahnke”, which just so happens to be my grandfather’s name. I had no idea I had skrinks in my family tree.

The Baron ends up finding a use for Emil after all when Müller blows a hole through the wall that’s too small for any of the skrinks to fit through. Emil squeezes into the vault and passes as much cash as possible back to the thieves. But the Baron had always planned on double-crossing Grundeis. As soon as he and Müller get to safety, he rigs a dynamite charge to trap Grundeis and Emil underground.

While Gustav tries to rescue Emil, the rest of the detectives stay on the Baron and Müller’s trail. As they try to escape on foot, the detectives spread a rumor that they’re carrying a bagful of money and stopping every few blocks to give it away. Before long, every kid in the neighborhood is hot on their heels looking for a handout. The police arrive, the skrinks are carted off to jail and everyone agrees to never use the term “skrink” again.

Emil And The Detectives certainly has a lot of potential. The idea of a bunch of kids forming a private detective club is pretty irresistible. Erich Kästner’s book went on to inspire everything from The Famous Five to Encyclopedia Brown to the late Richard Donner’s movie The Goonies. But part of the trouble is not a whole lot actually happens in this movie. Especially in the first half, there’s way too much sitting around and waiting. Staking out hotel lobbies may be a realistic part of detective work but it isn’t much fun to watch. Things pick up considerably when Emil gets captured and Tewksbury instills those scenes with a sense of real danger. But it all happens too late to save the picture.

The other problem is the kids themselves. They’re pretty interchangeable and don’t have the most dynamic personalities in the world. Apart from the Professor (Brian Richardson), who likes to show off his ten-dollar vocabulary, and the twins (Ron and Rick Johnson), who are twins, I couldn’t tell you much about these kids. Say what you will about The Goonies but those kids had very distinct, colorful personalities. The detectives just seem like average, ordinary kids.

Walt may have agreed with that assessment because almost none of the young actors ever appeared in another movie, much less another Disney project. The two exceptions were Emil and Gustav. Bryan Russell had already been in one Disney movie, an uncredited appearance in Babes In Toyland. He’ll be back in this column but he’d also go on to appear in a couple of productions for Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color, including Kilroy, a comedy about an ex-Marine who has a big effect on his best friend’s hometown.  

Roger Mobley will also return to this column but he had an even bigger impact on TV. In 1965, Walt gave him the title role in The Adventures Of Gallegher. As an ambitious copyboy determined to make a name for himself as a reporter at the turn of the century, Mobley snooped his way through four series of Gallegher over the next three years. Walt seemed to be grooming Mobley for bigger things. His name was one of four jotted down (along with another actor we’ll be seeing soon enough, Kurt Russell) on Walt’s cryptic last memo before his death in 1966. But Mobley’s acting career was interrupted in 1968 when he was drafted into the Army. After a tour of duty with the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne) in Vietnam, Mobley never quite picked up the threads of his former career. We’ll see him again but it appears that he was quite content to leave acting behind.

We won’t be seeing any of the adult actors again, which is a bit surprising. Walter Slezak is certainly the best known of the three. He’d been in the industry since the silent days and had become a reliable character actor in movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. He’s a lot of fun as the pretentious Baron, hauling an ornate table setting, caviar and fine wine down into an underground tunnel. He’d have made a fine addition to the Disney roster of cosmopolitan villains.

Heinz Schubert and Peter Ehrlich were both German actors who never made much of a dent outside their home country but were particularly prolific on German television. They both acquit themselves well here. Schubert especially has an amusing physicality that draws you to him whenever he’s on screen. He has dialogue but the way he moves is reminiscent of silent film comedians. Maybe if the movie had been a bigger hit, Schubert would have had more opportunity to break through in America.

As it happened, Emil And The Detectives wasn’t a hit. It was positioned as the studio’s big Christmas release for 1964. And to be fair, Disney’s previous film, Mary Poppins, was continuing to cast a very long shadow. Any movie would have struggled to live up to the expectations set by that juggernaut. Despite some favorable reviews, Emil And The Detectives pulled in less than $2 million at the box office. By 1966, Walt had relegated it to TV status.

One other thing I should add about Emil And The Detectives. Despite its relative obscurity, Disney has elected to include it on Disney+. However, that version opens with a disclaimer stating the film has been edited for content. I can find no information about what exactly that edited content might be. There’s nothing that stands out as an obvious trim. Maybe the original version was a bit more violent? I really don’t know, so if anyone can shed some light on this mystery, I’d love to hear it.

VERDICT: It isn’t the skrinkiest movie you’ll ever see but anything this inconsequential has to be considered a Disney Minus.  

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Miracle Of The White Stallions

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Miracle Of The White Stallions

Walt Disney’s name had been synonymous with family entertainment practically from the very beginning of his career. But that doesn’t mean that all he made were children’s films. Every so often, he’d become interested in a story that held very little appeal for the small fry and was geared, more or less, toward adults. Walt being Walt, they were still suitable for viewing by audiences of all ages. It’s just that younger audiences would likely be bored stiff by them.

Miracle Of The White Stallions appears to be one of Walt’s grown-up passion projects brought on by his life-long love of horses. It’s inspired by the true story of Colonel Alois Podhajsky, an Olympic equestrian and director of the world-famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna, and his efforts to save the school’s one-of-a-kind Lipizzaner horses from the ravages of World War II. In a way, it’s a spiritual cousin to two very different earlier films: the World War II documentary Victory Through Air Power and Almost Angels, the behind-the-curtain look at the school that houses the Vienna Boys’ Choir.

Podhajsky himself served as a consultant on the film and choreographed the performance sequences, much as Alexander P. de Seversky consulted on the adaptation of his book, Victory Through Air Power. Podhajsky can be spotted in the final performance, riding close behind Robert Taylor, the actor who portrays him. AJ Carothers adapted Podhajsky’s book into screenplay form. Prior to this, Carothers worked primarily in television including a stint on Fred MacMurray’s sitcom, My Three Sons. Miracle Of The White Stallions was Carothers’ first job at Disney but it won’t be his last.

The director was another newcomer to the Disney studio. Arthur Hiller also got his start in TV, first in his native Canada, then in the US where he helmed multiple episodes of such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Route 66. Miracle Of The White Stallions was his second feature, following the teen drama The Careless Years in 1957. This would be Hiller’s only Disney film. In 1970, his film Love Story would turn into a phenomenon that catapulted him to the A-list. He’d later direct such comedy classics as Silver Streak and The In-Laws, as well as a handful of projects for the Disney-adjacent Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures beginning with 1987’s Outrageous Fortune. There is absolutely nothing in Miracle Of The White Stallions that foreshadows his future career.

When it came time to assemble the cast, Walt again looked outside of the usual suspects. Robert Taylor had been a popular leading man since the 30s, starring in such films as Magnificent Obsession and Quo Vadis. In 1959, he crossed over to television, starring in the popular crime drama The Detectives. He had just finished his stint on that show when he made Miracle Of The White Stallions, his only Disney appearance.

Podhajsky’s wife was played by Lilli Palmer. She’d become a star in Hollywood in films like Cloak And Dagger and Body And Soul. But she also had an active career in European productions such as the 1958 remake of Mädchen In Uniform. Palmer too was one and done with Disney. She’d continue to bounce back and forth between Europe and Hollywood, film and TV, right up until her death in 1986.

Eddie Albert costars as Podhajsky’s right-hand man, Otto. Albert was already an Oscar-nominated character actor when he made his Disney debut, having received a Best Supporting Actor nod for Roman Holiday. He’d also costarred in Frank Capra’s Our Mr. Sun, the first of the Bell System Science Series, which a lot of people think was made by Disney but wasn’t. Eddie Albert will eventually find his way back to this column but not for awhile. A couple of years after Miracle Of The White Stallions, he landed the lead in the long-running sitcom Green Acres. In 1973, he’d get his second Oscar nomination for The Heartbreak Kid. By the time he gets back to Disney in 1975, he’ll have become a beloved fixture of film and television.

As the film opens, World War II has entered a critical phase. Colonel Podhajsky has been ordered by the Nazis to keep the Spanish Riding School open as a symbol to Austrians that life is continuing as normal. But the war is getting closer to Vienna. Podhajsky has already removed a number of priceless works of art and relocated the Lipizzaner mares to Czechoslovakia for their safety. After an aerial attack comes perilously close to destroying the school, Podhajsky again seeks permission to move the stallions to safety. And once again, he is denied.

But one Nazi officer remains sympathetic to Podhajsky’s request. General Tellheim (Curd Jürgens or, in the Americanized spelling, Curt Jurgens) reminds Podhajsky that his order to protect the school’s most precious artifacts remains in effect. And what is the Spanish Riding School’s most precious artifact if not the lineage of the Lipizzaners?

Podhajsky, his wife and staff load up their remaining wagons and flee Vienna at night. After a perilous train journey, they arrive at the estate of Countess Arco-Valley (Brigitte Horney), a resistance sympathizer who has opened the grounds of her home to refugees after her husband was placed in a concentration camp. While they’re at the estate, the war ends and American troops arrive, using the estate as a base of operations.

American Major Hoffman (James Franciscus) recognizes Podhajsky from his victories at the Olympics. So Podhajsky asks for one more favor. He needs to retrieve his mares from Russian-occupied Czechoslovakia. Without them, the ultra-rare Lipizzaner breed will die out. There’s nothing Hoffman can do but he has an idea. The troops are about to receive a visit from noted horse-fancier General George S. Patton (John Larch). If Podhajsky can throw together an impromptu performance that impresses Patton, he might be able to help.

Miracle Of The White Stallions is an interesting, surprisingly mature film. It’s essentially a war movie but most of the action takes place off-screen. There are a couple of well-staged fighting sequences and some suspense but it’s overall a very talky film. That’s not necessarily a negative. The cast is uniformly excellent and the dialogue is good. But it’s not a movie for the easily bored. The movie’s reliance on conversation was probably a necessity brought on by budget restrictions. This is one of those rare cases where the real-life incidents were actually more action-packed than the cinematic depiction. The Disney version pares things down to the bare minimum.

Podhajsky is an unusual choice for a leading man. He’s a strict taskmaster devoted to duty and tradition and Robert Taylor does nothing to soften his rough edges. The support of the folksier and more likable Eddie Albert is essential in making Podhajsky more relatable. Curd Jürgens also gets a terrific scene where he comes to terms with the fact that he’s now a Nazi war criminal. He’s not proud of what he did during the war but refuses to hide behind the excuse of just following orders. The sympathetic Nazi can be a tough character to swallow but Jürgens does some nice work shading in General Tellheim.

Of course, the stallions are the real stars of the movie. Classical dressage is an extremely specialized skill and Hiller uses it sparingly, treating it almost like a special effect. The film builds up to an extended performance and it’s genuinely impressive. If you had any doubts that these horses and traditions were worth preserving, this sequence alone dispels them. The film probably could have benefited from including a bit more of the stallions, particularly early on. It’s one thing to be told what makes the Lipizzaners unique and the movie’s opening voice-over narrator does exactly that. But it’s something else to see them in action. Giving the audience a taste up-front could have saved some time later on.

Released in March 1963, Miracle Of The White Stallions was greeted with a collective shrug by critics and audiences. This unfortunately seemed to be a fairly common reaction whenever Disney strayed too far outside his comfort zone. It’s too bad because this is actually a pretty good little movie. If this or other atypical Disney productions had received a more positive response, maybe Walt would have felt emboldened to take more risks with his movies. As it is, this remains an interesting curiosity, another orphaned Disney film you won’t find on Disney+ or on Blu-ray. It’s worth a look if you can track it down, especially if you love horses.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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