One of Hayley Mills’ greatest strengths as a young actor was her earnestness. There was no artifice to her performance. What you saw was what you got. When she delivered a line, you felt like she truly believed it. Only someone like Hayley Mills could have taken the reheated corn of Pollyanna and turned it into something palatable, if not exactly fresh.
Her English accent was a key element in that image. Summer Magic marks her fourth appearance in this column and so far, we’ve seen her play a bona fide British citizen exactly once, in the Jules Verne adventure In Search Of The Castaways. Every other character she’s played has been born and bred right here in the good old U S of A. But she never once attempts to hide her accent. The movies themselves make no effort at explaining or justifying it. It just is what it is. She’s not trying to pretend to be something she’s not. And even when playing characters as deeply American as the twins in The Parent Trap, nobody in the audience ever seems to mind.
Summer Magic is the first time that accent sounds out of place. At first glance, there’s no reason it should. The movie finds us squarely back in one of Walt’s favorite genres, the early 20th century nostalgia piece, just like Pollyanna. But this time she’s got a family: widowed mother Margaret (played by Dorothy McGuire, Disney matriarch of Old Yeller and Swiss Family Robinson), brothers Gilly (Eddie Hodges) and Peter (Jimmy Mathers, younger brother of Leave It To Beaver star Jerry Mathers), and cousin Julia (Deborah Walley). Not a one of these people seems like they could be related to the others.
This disconnect starts to make sense when you realize that Summer Magic was never intended to star Hayley Mills in the first place. The movie was based on the 1911 novel Mother Carey’s Chickens (you can see why they changed the name) by Mary Douglas Wiggin and adapted for the screen by Sally Benson, whose semiautobiographical stories had formed the basis of the similarly nostalgic 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St. Louis.
Walt began developing the project as a starring vehicle for his star Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello. But Annette had grown tired of waiting around the Disney lot. She was a huge TV and recording star but Walt had only cast her in two features: a small supporting role in The Shaggy Dog and the big-budget musical boondoggle Babes In Toyland. Sick of waiting for her Disney ship to come in, Annette took a role opposite Frankie Avalon in the American International Pictures teen comedy Beach Party. Miffed that his star had taken another gig, Walt scratched her from Summer Magic and brought in Hayley Mills.
Beach Party came out about a month after Summer Magic and was a surprise hit, so AIP quickly signed Annette up for more. Eventually, she would be joined at AIP by her once and future Disney costar, Tommy Kirk. But for now, both Annette and Tommy were still under contract to Walt, so they’ll be back in this column.
Summer Magic might have worked a little bit better with Annette since it is essentially a musical with seven original songs by the Sherman brothers. It’s not that Hayley Mills couldn’t sing. She certainly proved she could carry a tune in her previous films. But Annette was a more natural musical performer who had already had some success with songs written for her by the Shermans. The movie feels tailor-made to Annette’s strengths a lot more than Hayley’s.
Personality is important here because there isn’t a whole lot of plot driving this story. The movie opens in Boston as the Carey family prepares to move out of their longtime home after the death of the patriarch. But Nancy Carey (Mills) remembers an idyllic vacation the family once spent in the small town of Beulah, Maine, particularly a vacant yellow house that her father loved. Nancy writes to Beulah’s postmaster, exaggerating the direness of their situation, and finds that the owner of the yellow house, Tom Hamilton, has been away in China for years, leaving the local postmaster/chief constable in charge of his affairs. He’s willing to rent the Careys the house for just $60 a year.
Upon arriving in Beulah, the postmaster, Osh Popham (Burl Ives, returning to the Disney fold for the first time since the 1948 nostalgia-fest So Dear To My Heart) immediately discovers that he’s rented the house under false pretenses. But rather than being annoyed, he’s charmed and delighted by the new arrivals and bends over backward to help out. Osh also runs the general store and he sells the Careys whatever supplies they need to fix up the house below cost. He provides free labor just so he can have some folks to chat with. Osh’s son, Digby (amusingly played by Michael J. Pollard, of all people), is getting ready to leave for the Big City, so Osh offers Digby’s job as delivery driver to Gilly. He even volunteers his daughter, Lallie Joy (Wendy Turner), to generally make herself available to help the Careys with whatever they may need. Osh Popham is more generous than Santa Claus.
The only voice of reason in all this is Osh’s disapproving wife (Una Merkel, last seen as Brian Keith’s housekeeper in The Parent Trap). She’s pretty sure that Osh hasn’t bothered to ask for Mr. Hamilton’s permission to rent the house and knows full well that he hasn’t told the Careys about it. But whenever she tries to tell them the truth, old Osh comes up with some distraction to prevent it.
When Osh discovers that the Careys are essentially broke, he claims that Mr. Hamilton is so happy with all the improvements being done that he’s refused to accept any more rent. The only stipulation is that the Careys hang a portrait of Mr. Hamilton’s “mother” in a place of honor. Of course, there is no such picture. Osh rummages around in a storage room and finally finds a portrait of a stern temperance leader to pass off as Mrs. Hamilton.
The Careys plan a big open house/unveiling ceremony for Halloween. But who should arrive back in town the day of the party but Tom Hamilton (Peter Brown), who turns out to be a lot younger and handsomer than we’d thought. Osh confesses everything, telling Tom that both he and Nancy have been writing but Osh never bothered to send the letters, assuming that Tom would never get them anyway. Tom’s not entirely happy about the situation but thinks Nancy is a charming, sweet girl, so at the very least, he won’t ruin her party.
The movie ends with Tom and Nancy dancing and most of the family still in the dark about his real identity. Osh reminds his wife that he knew everything would turn out all right in the end and, in a way, he’s right. I guess every story has a happy ending if you stop telling it before you get to the part where people are forced to deal with the consequences of their actions.
That isn’t quite all there is to Summer Magic but it’s pretty close. The arrival of Nancy’s spoiled cousin, Julia, upsets the family dynamic for a little bit but she eventually comes around and the two girls grow close. That sisterly bond is tested when they’re both smitten by the handsome new schoolteacher, played by James Stacy. Fortunately, the teacher only has eyes for the older Julia and the movie sidesteps any messy hints of romance between him and Nancy.
Even so, Stacy’s own troubled history makes any scenes between he and the girls a little cringey. In 1995, the actor was sentenced to a six-year prison term for molesting an 11-year-old girl. This is not the kind of guy you want to see hanging around our sweet, innocent Hayley Mills. Stacy will actually be back in this column eventually but he’ll look a lot different when he does. A 1973 motorcycle accident cost him an arm and a leg, literally. He made a bit of a comeback after his recovery until his arrest and conviction put an end to his acting career for good. He died in 2016 and later turned up as a character in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, played by Timothy Olyphant.
Compared to James Stacy, the other members of the cast had far less turbulent post-Summer Magic careers. Deborah Walley made her Disney debut in Bon Voyage! (also directed by Summer Magic‘s James Neilson). She would soon join Annette Funicello in defecting to the AIP camp, appearing alongside Frankie and Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo. While Summer Magic would be her last appearance in a Disney feature, she would later do some voice work for Chip ‘N’ Dale Rescue Rangers.
Eddie Hodges, who plays aspiring musician Gilly, became a star on Broadway, originating the role of Winthrop in The Music Man. His first film, A Hole In The Head, saw him perform the song “High Hopes” with Frank Sinatra. He continued to act in movies like The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn and sing, landing a hit record in 1961 with “I’m Gonna Knock On Your Door” when he was 14. Considering Hodges’ musical background, it’s a little surprising that he isn’t given his own song in Summer Magic instead of being relegated to Mills’ duet partner. Hodges’ show-business career was essentially over by the end of the decade but he’ll be back in this column before he retires.
As for the songs themselves, they aren’t exactly peak Sherman Brothers. Some of them, like “Pink of Perfection” and “Femininity”, are kind of fun and they all have that same trademark lilting bounce that the Shermans did so well. But with very few exceptions, they don’t grow organically out of the story. They’re just a bunch of random songs that the movie occasionally stops in its tracks to accommodate.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in “The Ugly Bug Ball”. Burl Ives sings this nonsense ditty to young Jimmy Mathers, accompanied by what appears to be stock footage of insects left over from the True-Life Adventures series. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything and overstays its welcome by a solid minute-and-a-half.
Summer Magic was released in July 1963 to mixed revies and indifferent audiences. Its box office take was a fraction of what Mills’ previous Disney vehicles had brought in. Hayley Mills herself would later say it was the worst of her six Disney films. And yeah, it’s not great. But it’s such a harmless, innocuous little trifle that it’s hard to call it a bad movie. I could certainly understand if some people have a soft spot in their heart for it. On the other hand, I would find it very hard to believe that Summer Magic is anybody’s favorite Disney movie.
VERDICT: Who am I to argue with Hayley Mills? It’s a Disney Minus.
