Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The AristoCats

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The AristoCats

When Walt Disney died in December 1966, he left behind a handful of animated and live-action projects in varying stages of production. Four years later, that stockpile was almost gone. The AristoCats, Disney’s twentieth animated feature and first since The Jungle Book in 1967, would be the studio’s first feature-length cartoon produced entirely without Walt’s guiding hand. So perhaps it isn’t too surprising that it feels a lot like some of their earlier work.

Walt was involved in the project’s earliest development. In 1961, he had tasked producer Harry Tytle and director Tom McGowan with finding animal stories for the Wonderful World Of Color TV series. McGowan had made the popular short The Hound That Thought He Was A Raccoon and Walt wanted more stuff like that. Here’s where things get a little tricky. According to some sources, McGowan found a kid’s book about a mother cat and her three kittens set in New York City. Tytle thought New York was boring and suggested transplanting the story to Paris, since One Hundred And One Dalmatians had benefited from its London setting. Others claim that the film is inspired by a true story about a group of cats who really did inherit a fortune left them by their eccentric owner in 1910 Paris.

Now, I don’t know if either one of those stories is true. If it was a book, I don’t know who wrote it, what it was called or when it was published. And presumably Walt would have had to buy the rights to this thing if it existed. As for it being a true story, the internet has tons of stories about rich weirdos bequeathing their money to their pets. But sources that make the claim for The AristoCats are noticeably light on specifics. Could it have happened? Sure, why not. But I wouldn’t swear to it under oath.

Regardless of where the story originated, Tytle, McGowan and cowriter Tom Rowe envisioned it as a live-action production. Boris Karloff was in mind to play the devious butler, which is wild to think about. As usual, the script went through numerous revisions, none of which pleased Rowe. One by one, the original production trio of Tytle, McGowan and Rowe would either quit or be reassigned.

Sometime in 1963, Walt decided the story was better suited to animation. With the animation department fully committed to The Jungle Book, Walt put the project on hold. Shortly before his death, he handed it to longtime employee Ken Anderson. Anderson and Wolfgang Reitherman tossed out most of the old work and came up with a more cat-centric story. Walt approved the new direction and signed off on some early sketches before his death.

Once The Jungle Book was completed, the animation department turned their attention to The AristoCats (the studio has never been entirely consistent with the title stylization but since the official on-screen title has a capital “C”, that’s what I’m going with). A team of seven Disney veterans cracked the story, including Anderson, Larry Clemmons, Vance Gerry, Frank Thomas, Eric Cleworth, Julius Svendsen, and Ralph Wright. Winston Hibler was originally going to produce the picture but it had been a while since he’d worked on the animation side. Most of his 60s work had been in live-action, mostly animal and nature movies like the recent King Of The Grizzlies. When Hibler ran into trouble, Reitherman took over the production.

The version of The AristoCats that hit screens on Christmas Eve, 1970, was markedly different from the one Tytle, McGowan and Rowe had come up with. A secondary human character, a maid named Elvira, was dropped entirely. New animal characters like Roquefort the mouse (voiced by Disney Legend Sterling Holloway) were either added or had their roles expanded. The Parisian atmosphere Tytle felt was so important gradually fell by the wayside. Harry Tytle walked away from animation and returned to live-action. Tom Rowe tried suing the studio but since this had always been a work-for-hire gig, he didn’t get far. It’s a surprisingly bumpy origin for what ended up being a pleasant but innocuous movie.

Quad poster for The AristoCats

I don’t necessarily want to say The AristoCats straight-up borrows elements that worked in earlier Disney movies but it’s impossible not to see the similarities. The family of cats trying to make their way home across the French countryside recalls One Hundred And One Dalmatians. The dynamic between Duchess and O’Malley gives off some serious Lady And The Tramp vibes. And while The AristoCats team reportedly tried to differentiate Phil Harris’s O’Malley from his performance in The Jungle Book, they didn’t try very hard. O’Malley is basically Baloo in cat form.

The story of The AristoCats is one of the simplest in the Disney library. Madame Bonfamille (voiced by Disney regular Hermione Baddeley, last seen in The Happiest Millionaire) is a retired opera star living alone in Paris with her beloved cat, Duchess (Eva Gabor), and her three kittens, Berlioz (Dean Clark), Toulouse (Gary Dubin), and Marie (Liz English). She sends for her ancient lawyer, Georges (Charles Lane, last seen in The Gnome-Mobile), to dictate her will. She wants to leave her entire estate to her cats. Once their nine lives are up, the rest will go to her devoted butler, Edgar (British comedian and performance artist Roddy Maude-Roxby).

Being paid to live in a Parisian mansion with a bunch of cats sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me but it’s not enough for Edgar. He wants to inherit the whole thing right away, so he douses the cats’ cream with sleeping tablets and abandons them far out in the country. He may have had a more insidious plan in mind but his motorcycle ride is interrupted by a couple of farm dogs, Napoleon and Lafayette (voiced by Gabor’s Green Acres costar Pat Buttram and George “Goober” Lindsey from The Andy Griffith Show…don’t bother asking why two French dogs sound like hicks from the American South).

The cats aren’t on their own for long before they meet Abraham de Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley, an easygoing alley cat. O’Malley finagles a ride back to Paris on a milk truck, then ends up going along when Marie falls off and needs rescuing. And in a lot of ways, that’s kind of the whole story. Oh sure, other stuff happens. The cats meet up with a couple of vacationing British geese (Monica Evans and Carole Shelley) and their drunk Uncle Waldo (Bill Thompson in his final role). Edgar has to go back and retrieve some incriminating evidence from Napoleon and Lafayette. And, of course, we meet O’Malley’s jazz-loving friends, led by Scat Cat (the great Scatman Crothers, stepping in to voice a role originally intended for Louis Armstrong). But none of it really advances the story.

Things wrap up when Duchess and the kittens get back home and O’Malley reluctantly says goodbye. But they’re quickly intercepted by Edgar, who locks them in a trunk bound for Timbuktu. Roquefort runs after O’Malley, who sends him off for the other alley cats. The animals all team up to defeat Edgar and O’Malley ends up becoming a stepfather to the kittens. The movie’s practically over before you even realize it got started.

The AristoCats re-release poster

Now, there are a lot of problems with The AristoCats and many of them revolve around Edgar. He is by far the least interesting villain Disney ever came up with. His plan doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially considering Madame Bonfamille seems a long way from kicking the bucket. Even if he had succeeded in getting rid of the cats, what’s to stop her from just going out and adopting more? If your bad guy’s evil plan is essentially to wait patiently, your central conflict might not be as dramatic as you think.

The AristoCats also manages to feel both needlessly padded out and like it’s missing pieces at the same time. Napoleon and Lafayette are fun characters, so I understand the desire to bring them back. But why do they never once interact with the cats themselves? They really feel like they’re in their own movie that has nothing to do with Duchess and O’Malley.

There’s a similar problem with the geese. Practically their entire journey to Paris takes place off-screen. One minute they’re in the middle of nowhere, the next they’re walking up to the café. They’re pretty important characters for a hot second, then they wander off, never to be seen again. Unlike the dogs, the geese aren’t really funny enough to make much impression. They’re just kind of there until they’re not and you forget all about them.

At this point, you’re probably thinking I don’t like The AristoCats all that much. That’s not actually true. It’s a testament to the Disney animation crew that this is still an enjoyable movie despite its familiarity and story problems. In a way, it feels like Walt Disney’s Greatest Hits. There’s nothing remotely new here but the band can still play all your old favorites and that’s just fine.

A big part of what makes The AristoCats work is the music. This isn’t really a musical, in the sense that you could remove every single song and not effect the story one iota. The Sherman Brothers wrote quite a few songs but most of them ended up not being used. Of the few that made the cut, “Scales & Arpeggios” walks a fine line between endearing and annoying. I think it’s cute but I’d understand if someone hated it.

The Shermans also contributed the title song, which is probably the most French thing about the movie. Maurice Chevalier had retired after his appearance in Monkeys, Go Home! back in 1967 but the Shermans were able to coax him back for one last recording session. It ended up being his final work before his death in 1972.

Terry Gilkyson’s Jungle Book song, “The Bare Necessities”, had been nominated for an Oscar, so it makes sense that Disney would want him to come up with another signature song for Phil Harris. “Thomas O’Malley Cat” does not stray far from the “Bare Necessities” formula. It’s an okay song but nowhere near as memorable as Baloo’s big number.

Of course, the song everyone remembers is “Ev’rybody Wants To Be A Cat” by Floyd Huddleston and Al Rinker. Huddleston and Rinker first teamed up in the late 40s, writing hundreds of songs at Decca Records. This would be Rinker’s only work at Disney but we’ll see Huddleston in this column again. Their AristoCats song doesn’t sound much like anything you’d have heard in 1910 but it’s pretty terrific, changing direction repeatedly and building to a show-stopping finale.

The whole sequence is lively and beautifully animated, which makes the lazy ethnic stereotyping of the cats even more unfortunate. Supposedly these cats have names but in the credits, they’re just referred to as Russian Cat (the incomparable Thurl Ravenscroft), Italian Cat (Vito Scotti, who we just saw in The Boatniks), English Cat (Lord Tim Hudson, one of the Beatle Vultures in The Jungle Book) and (sigh) Chinese Cat (Paul Winchell, immediately recognizable as the voice of Tigger). And sure, all four of them are broad, over-the-top exaggerations, so it’s not like anyone was going out of their way to specifically insult Asians. But Chinese Cat is the one everyone singles out because he is objectively terrible.

We’ve already seen plenty of examples of Disney’s…shall we say…checkered history of depicting people (and animals) of color and no doubt we’ll see even more. And yes, it is important to view these films within the context of their times and Disney was by no means alone in perpetuating Asian stereotypes. But it is worth noting that these kinds of Asian characters held on a lot longer than stereotypes of other cultures and ethnicities and movies like The AristoCats are partially to blame.

Obviously, the studio thought whatever Paul Winchell was doing was funny and this was going to be a breakout character. He’s the only member of the band singled out with a character box on the original poster above. That poster actually makes it worse by referring to him as “Oriental Cat”. It also says he’s the leader of the band, which isn’t true. Scat Cat is clearly in charge. The character’s bad enough as it is without calling attention to him and trying to build him up. So while we should be able to look back at The AristoCats and forgive it as a product of less enlightened attitudes, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cringe a little (or a lot) when Chinese Cat pops up.

The AristoCats quad re-release poster

Despite its flaws, The AristoCats was a big hit, winning over audiences and most critics. It did even better overseas, becoming the highest grossing film of 1971 in the UK, Germany and even France. The painted Parisian backgrounds are genuinely lovely. Maybe the movie plays more authentically when it’s dubbed in French.

It’s a little surprising that Disney has yet to return to The AristoCats well, although it’s not for lack of trying. Back in 2000, the studio began developing an animated TV series based on the film that would have followed teenage versions of Toulouse, Marie and Berlioz. Then in 2005, Disneytoon Studios, the direct-to-video branch of the company, announced they’d be making The Aristocats 2. This was going to be a computer-animated feature following the older Marie as she falls in love. Those plans were dropped after John Lasseter took the reins of the studio, realized almost all the Disneytoon movies were garbage that cheapened the brand, and shut the whole thing down. Now the studio is working on a live-action remake because of course they are.

Whether or not the public realized it at the time, the legendary Disney animation studio was in trouble. Without Walt to steer the ship, the department was beginning to cut corners and recycle proven formulas. We’ve already been seeing fewer and fewer animated features in this column. Sad to say, that trend is only going to continue. It’s a shame because The AristoCats proves that even an uninspired Disney cartoon is still pretty darn good.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Gnome-Mobile

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upton Sinclair and Walt Disney discuss The Gnome-Mobile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theatrical re-release poster for The Gnome-Mobile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Ugly Dachshund

When Walt Disney decided to hire Dean Jones, he really went all in. The Ugly Dachshund, Jones’ second film for the studio, opened February 16, 1966, just two months after his first, That Darn Cat! I guess having shown he could work with cats, Walt wanted to make sure Jones could handle dogs as well.

The Ugly Dachshund was based on a book by G.B. Stern, an extremely prolific writer of novels, short stories, plays, biographies, literary criticism and even the occasional screenplay. Not this one, though. Disney assigned the project to Albert Aley, a radio and TV writer who’d written a few animal-oriented shorts for the studio like The Hound That Thought He Was A Raccoon. The Ugly Dachshund would be Aley’s only feature credit and his last Disney credit. He continued to work in television, writing and producing such shows as Ironside and The Paper Chase before retiring and eventually passing away in 1986.

By now, co-producer Winston Hibler and director Norman Tokar were old hands at making dog pictures. They’d made such adventure dramas as Big Red and Savage Sam. Their last film had been the heartfelt Those Calloways. But they hadn’t really taken a crack at comedy before now. This kind of wacky slapstick was usually the work of folks like Robert Stevenson and Bill Walsh. But with comedies rapidly becoming Disney’s most popular and profitable commodity, everybody would have to learn how to stage a pratfall.

Dean Jones stars as Mark Garrison, a commercial artist who lives with his wife, Fran (Suzanne Pleshette), and her prized, pregnant dachshund, Danke. Danke births a litter of three puppies that Fran hopes to train into prize-winning show dogs. But when Mark goes to pick the dogs up from kindly veterinarian Dr. Pruitt (Charlie Ruggles, last seen as the judge in Son Of Flubber), he gets a surprise. Turns out that a Great Dane also gave birth to a big litter of puppies. Too big, as a matter of fact. The mother has rejected the littlest one because she doesn’t have enough milk. Danke, on the other hand, has too much since her litter was too small. Do you think, maybe…?

Well, Mark doesn’t need too much convincing, especially since he’s always wanted a big male dog instead of all these little females. At first, Fran thinks the pup is just an ugly dachshund born after the others and Mark does nothing to dissuade her of this idea. But as the weeks go by, Fran figures out something’s amiss. She’s no dummy. Maybe it’s the fact that the puppy, now named Brutus, is twice as large as the others and looks nothing like a dachshund. Or maybe it’s that Mark is obsessively drawing pictures of Great Danes everywhere. Who can say what subtle clues she picked up on?

The rest of the movie follows a fairly strict pattern. Every so often, Tokar stops everything to stage an elaborate slapstick sequence wherein the three dachshunds are the primary agents of chaos while poor Brutus is an innocent bystander or victim who ends up shouldering the blame. Fran will get fed up, sometimes with good reason and sometimes not, and insist they return Brutus to Doc Pruitt. But a change of heart inevitably brings the big dog back into their lives.

Admittedly, Tokar’s three big setpieces are pretty funny. The first has the dachshunds tearing around the living room with multiple balls of yarn and creating an elaborate maze. The second is even more impressive as the animals completely destroy Mark’s studio, creating a slick, multicolored slide out of one of his commissions and a can of paint thinner. They’re not unlike live-action versions of the animated showdowns between Pluto and Chip and Dale.

The biggest one is also the weakest. Fran decides to throw an elaborate house party for their friends and neighbors because that’s what you did in 1966. The party has an “Oriental” theme and is catered by Mr. Toyama (Robert Kino) and his assistant Kenji (Mako, soon to be Oscar nominated for The Sand Pebbles), two very broad Asian stereotypes. Whenever Brutus appears, they shriek “Rion!” (‘cause, y’know, they think it’s a lion) and Mr. Toyama plays dead, lying flat on the ground and becoming stiff as a board. Sigh. I guess it could be worse. At least they cast actual Japanese actors instead of Mickey Rooney but that’s a super-low bar to cross.

Anyway, things go sideways when Chloe, Fran’s best hope for a show dog, steals a bone from Brutus. He chases after her and wackiness ensues. Kenji gets hit in the face with several cakes and takes a ride on a trolley. Everyone crowds on to a small bridge over a pond and ends up in the drink, including Fran. It’s your garden-variety big dog gets loose at a fancy event sequence you’ve seen a zillion times.

At the party, Doc Pruitt convinces Mark to secretly enter Brutus into the dog show. Mark’s always been somewhat contemptuous of Fran’s interest in dog shows but agrees partly to train the dog but mostly out of spite. As they work with Brutus, Mark realizes that the Great Dane actually believes he’s a dachshund. Whenever he sees one, he’ll try to mimic it by stretching out and walking low to the ground.

This delusion almost costs Brutus a championship when he starts walking like a dachshund in front of the judge. Fortunately, Brutus catches the eye of a female Great Dane. Wanting to impress her, he stands tall and proud, ultimately winning the blue ribbon. Mark hurries off to rub this victory in Fran’s face but has a change of heart when he sees that Chloe only managed to come in second. But Fran’s not jealous. She’s proud and happy that they now have multiple prize-winning show dogs in the family. But the Garrisons agree it’s time to put all this competition behind them. They decide to quit the dog show circuit so Mark can concentrate on his work and Fran can focus on keeping house and being a good wife. Seriously. That’s the compromise they arrive at. Ugh.

There’s one other sort-of subplot worth mentioning, if only because it never amounts to anything. In the opening scene, Mark has a run-in with Officer Carmody (Kelly Thordsen, who appeared in The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones and will be back in this column several times, usually as a cop). Carmody tries to escort the Garrisons to the hospital but ends up citing Mark on a number of traffic violations when he finds out that it was the dog who was pregnant and not Fran.

Carmody shows up again later warning Mark that a cat burglar has been spotted in the neighborhood. Now if you’re thinking that this sounds like an opportunity for Brutus to prove himself by scaring off the cat burglar, you’re half right. What actually happens is Mark gets locked out of the house later that night just as Carmody drives past. Carmody thinks Mark might be the cat burglar, so he gets out to investigate. Then Brutus shows up and scares Carmody off, chasing him up a tree where he spends the night. The actual cat burglar never shows up and Carmody disappears entirely from the story after this. As with most things in The Ugly Dachshund, the stakes couldn’t be lower.

Putting aside the movie’s regressive gender and racial stereotypes (which, I understand, can be a big ask), The Ugly Dachshund’s biggest flaw is simply that it’s uninspired. Which is not to say that it can’t be watchable. Dean Jones continues to demonstrate a knack for physical comedy. But he isn’t quite charming enough to pull off everything required of him. In the birthday scene where Fran surprises him with a dachshund-centric evening at home, he just comes across as petulant, even though he has a right to be pissed off.

Part of the problem is that he’s being mean to Suzanne Pleshette, who has Dean Jones beat in the charm department. Stunningly beautiful and gifted with a smooth bourbon voice, Pleshette had been a theatre actress who made a big impression in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. While The Ugly Dachshund was her first actual Disney project, she’d earlier costarred with Tony Curtis in the 1962 comedy 40 Pounds Of Trouble, the first film to shoot on location in Disneyland. This was such a big deal at the time that Universal advertised the fact on the poster, like Disneyland was a featured actor.

Theatrical release poster for 40 Pounds Of Trouble

The Ugly Dachshund doesn’t provide Pleshette with one of her best roles. Fran alternates between acting selfish and frivolous or turning into a complete doormat who’ll put up with any indignity or inconvenience. The fact that the audience likes her at all is entirely thanks to Pleshette’s winning personality. Suzanne Pleshette, I’m happy to report, will be back in this column several times.

Critics were not enthusiastic about The Ugly Dachshund but audiences ate it up. The movie brought in over $6 million at the box office. Give them credit for this much, Disney knew how to put movies like this together. Cute dogs plus attractive costars plus colorful slapstick comedy equals money in the bank.

Of course, there might have been another reason for the movie’s success. In 1966, Disney was still in the habit of attaching short subjects to their feature presentations and The Ugly Dachshund was no exception. On its original release, moviegoers were treated to an all-new animated short: Winnie The Pooh And The Honey Tree.

Theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Winnie The Pooh And The Honey Tree

This quickly became one of Disney’s most popular cartoons, re-released several times over the next few years. Eventually, Winnie The Pooh And The Honey Tree would be edited into the feature-length film The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh. This column will have a lot more to say about Pooh and his many friends when we get there. For now, let’s just acknowledge that The Ugly Dachshund wasn’t alone when audiences were flocking to see it back in ’66.

Even on its own modest terms, The Ugly Dachshund isn’t much of a movie. At its best, it’s an undemanding sitcom-level comedy that might raise a chuckle or two from kids. At worst, it’s a rambling mess with some stuff that has aged so poorly you’ll get yanked right out of the picture. You might have some fun with it but I guarantee you won’t have enough fun to make it worth your while.    

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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