Frank Phillips

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Herbie Rides Again

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Herbie Rides Again

On the rare occasions that Walt Disney allowed sequels to his live-action features, they tended to feel less like continuations and more like extensions. Son Of Flubber came about because gags intended for The Absent-Minded Professor were cut during the scripting stage. Davy Crockett and Merlin Jones were both TV productions that ended up on the big screen and they feel like it. But when writer/producer Bill Walsh and director Robert Stevenson decided to bring back The Love Bug in Herbie Rides Again, they were obliged to mix things up a bit.

If there’s a definitive oral history on the making of the Herbie movies out there, I haven’t found it yet. As a result, I’ll be speculating a bit more than I’d like on the background of Herbie Rides Again. I apologize if I’m completely off-base on anything. But I think it’s fair to say that Disney wanted to make a proper sequel to The Love Bug with stars Dean Jones, Buddy Hackett and Michele Lee. I don’t know if Hackett and Lee were approached but Jones evidently was. In an interview with the Herbie fansite Herbiemania, Jones says he didn’t think the script for Herbie Rides Again was up to the standards of the original. He’s not wrong.

With Jones taking a hard pass and Hackett and Lee either turning it down or not even being asked to return, Walsh had to find another thread to connect Herbie Rides Again to The Love Bug. Naturally, he turned to Helen Hayes, the First Lady of American Theatre. This was not her first exposure to Disney. Her son, James MacArthur, had been a Disney star from 1958 to 1960 and Hayes herself made a cameo appearance in his mountain-climbing movie Third Man On The Mountain. Hayes began enjoying a late career resurgence around 1970 when she won an Oscar for her role in Airport. She wouldn’t have been the first person I’d have thought of to star opposite a sentient VW Bug but I guess it works.

Hayes plays Mrs. Steinmetz, the aunt of Buddy Hackett’s Tennessee Steinmetz (again, not the first person I would think of). Tennessee is off in Tibet on some sort of spiritual quest with his guru and Jones’ Jim Douglas has abandoned Herbie to race cars in Europe, leaving Mrs. Steinmetz alone in the old firehouse with Herbie and a couple other pieces of living machinery, an orchestrion and a decommissioned cable car named Old No. 22.

So far, none of this makes much sense. I don’t buy the idea that Jim Douglas would head to Europe without Herbie, especially given what happens in later Herbie movies. The Love Bug spent a lot of time establishing what a sensitive flower Herbie can be. The car tried to commit suicide when he thought Jim didn’t like him anymore. Herbie should probably be in therapy instead of taking a little old lady on weekly trips to the market. But this is Herbie Rides Again, not a Bergman movie. Best to let it go.

Like Jim Douglas and Tennessee Steinmetz, bad guy Peter Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) sits this one out. Instead, Walsh and Stevenson bring back Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn), the Flubber-coveting villain from The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel. Hawk has done well since leaving Medfield for the Bay Area. He’s now a super-rich industrialist with plans to construct the world’s tallest skyscraper. Maybe Hawk should give some pointers to Medfield’s current adversary, A.J. Arno. That’s right, Herbie Rides Again connects to the Flubber movies which themselves connect to the Dexter Riley movies. The shared DisneyVerse is a vast and complicated place.

Walsh and Stevenson still needed a pair of romantic leads to fill in for Jones and Lee. Stefanie Powers from The Boatniks takes leading lady duties. This would be her last Disney movie. After this, she continued as a go-to guest star on dozens of TV shows before landing the role she’d become most famous for on Hart To Hart opposite Robert Wagner in 1979. She still acts from time to time, so it’s possible she could pop up in this column again.

The male lead was Ken Berry, a song-and-dance man who’d become a popular sitcom star on shows like F Troop and Mayberry R.F.D. I had remembered Berry starring in a ton of Disney movies throughout the 1970s but he’ll actually only be in this column once more. But he was all over television during that time, popping up on The Carol Burnett Show, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and lots more.

Herbie Rides Again opens with a montage of stock footage depicting the demolition of various old buildings as Alonso Hawk watches and gleefully participates in their destruction from the safety of his limo. After the opening credits, we find ourselves in Rome where Hawk’s in the back of a taxi (driven by Disney regular Vito Scotti) fantasizing about destroying the Coliseum to make way for a shopping center. You might be thinking, “Oh, so the movie takes place in Italy?” Not at all. It’s literally just one scene with no explanation why we’re there and then Hawk’s right back in San Francisco.

These slapdash opening minutes accurately set the tone for what follows. None of this footage matches. The rear-projection work placing Hawk in Rome is some of the least convincing effects work you’ll ever witness. If you’re feeling charitable, you can take this as a sign that the movie will be more free-wheeling and anachronistic than its predecessor. If not, you can read it as the filmmakers admitting they do not care about this project. Honestly, both interpretations are correct.

Hawk’s plan to dominate the San Francisco skyline has run into a major snag: Mrs. Steinmetz, who refuses to leave the firehouse standing in the way. I love that an employee lifts the enormous model of Hawk’s building to reveal a little firehouse model hiding beneath it. Anyway, none of Hawk’s high-priced lawyers (most of whom are familiar Disney faces) have been able to get Mrs. Steinmetz to play ball. When Hawk’s milquetoast nephew, Willoughby Whitfield (Berry), shows up fresh out of law school, he hires him on the spot and sends him off to deal with the old lady.

Willoughby is pretty sure Mrs. Steinmetz is off her rocker when she starts talking to Herbie and Old No. 22. Just as he’s getting ready to have her committed, a pretty flight attendant named Nicole (Powers) turns up. Nicole was Mrs. Steinmetz’s neighbor until Hawk tore down her apartment building and left her homeless. Mrs. Steinmetz took her in and now Nicole affectionately calls her “Grandma”. Thanks to her history with Hawk, Nicole immediately sizes up Willoughby as an enemy and punches him in the face.

Before Nicole can do any more damage, Willoughby pleads his case. The neighborhood looks like a war zone, the firehouse is falling apart and the crazy old lady talks to her car. Nicole can’t do anything about those first two points but decides to clear up that last one by taking Willoughby for a ride in Herbie. You can probably guess how that goes, except you can’t because Herbie takes them to some kind of Renaissance Fair to participate in a joust/game of chicken. Wait, was Herbie Rides Again the secret inspiration behind George A. Romero’s Knightriders?

The upshot of all this is Willoughby decides he wants nothing to do with his uncle’s shady dealings and Mrs. Steinmetz decides Nicole and Willoughby have crazy-hot chemistry. Willoughby screws up his courage to confront Hawk face-to-face but chickens out when he hears his uncle’s latest apoplectic tirade. Instead, he quits over the phone, dons a fake beard as a disguise and runs to the airport.

Hawk decides to take care of things himself. For whatever reason, he’s figured out that Herbie is the key to this whole thing and steals it (sorry, him…I’m not 100% clear on Herbie’s preferred pronouns). Then he makes the mistake of insulting Herbie and all bets are off. Herbie takes control and creates a huge traffic nightmare before unceremoniously dumping Hawk on the sidewalk outside his office.

Now Hawk tasks his lawyers with getting the car but Herbie has taken Mrs. Steinmetz out shopping. Mrs. Steinmetz calmly reviews her shopping list while Herbie deals with the lawyers, driving through a fancy hotel, climbing to the top of a parking garage and leaping between buildings, even driving straight up the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Once again, Disney weirdly cheaps out on some of the least special special effects on film. The Golden Gate gag is particularly bad. The scale is all wrong and somehow Hawk’s secretary (Elaine Devry) is able to see what’s happening from miles away.

Herbie and Mrs. Steinmetz make it home to find Nicole, who ran into Willoughby at the airport and convinced him to help fight Hawk. Mrs. S. sees an opportunity for a little matchmaking and sends the potential lovebirds off to the store, ordering Herbie to keep them occupied for a little while. They end up at the beach. While love blossoms and Herbie cavorts in the sand like an excited puppy, Hawk’s chauffeur (Ivor Barry) bribes an old-timey fisherman (Arthur Space) to block the only access road. With the young folks and that meddling car out of the picture, Hawk intends on swooping in to pack up all of Mrs. Steinmetz’s possessions.

Hawk’s diversion doesn’t work for long. Finding the road blocked, Herbie simply drives out to the end of a pier, leaps in and navigates back to shore the long way, much to the astonishment of both sharks and surfers. Returning to their empty home, our undaunted heroes decide to retrieve their stolen goods from Hawk’s warehouse. They get everything back and Herbie helps them escape a pair of hapless security guards (including recurring player Norm Grabowski in his final Disney appearance). On the way home, Old No. 22 picks up a drunk but flirtatious passenger, Mr. Judson (John McIntire, last seen in The Light In The Forest, giving the funniest performance in the whole movie).

The next day, Mrs. Steinmetz goes to meet with Hawk face-to-face. Willoughby follows her and arrives just in time to see her drive Herbie onto an enormous window-washers’ platform. They make it to the 28th floor where Hawk is on the phone with a demolition guy named Loostgarten (Chuck McCann, later a very prolific voice actor including Duckworth on the series DuckTales). Hawk’s done messing around and wants Loostgarten to knock the firehouse down tonight, permit or no permit.

Of course you realize there’s a reason Stevenson introduced this comically oversized window-washer, right? Sure enough, an incensed Mrs. Steinmetz hits Hawk full-force with a stream of suds. Once the office is full of bubbles, Herbie drives in and chases Hawk through the halls and out onto the window ledge. Before Herbie can outright murder Hawk, Mrs. Steinmetz threatens to trade him in if he doesn’t calm down.

Back home, Nicole and Willoughby concoct a plan. Willoughby impersonates his uncle and gets Loostgarten on the phone. Telling him there’s been a change of plans, Willoughby gives Loostgarten Hawk’s home address instead. That night, Hawk is understandably having trouble sleeping, suffering PTSD-induced nightmares where he’s chased by Demon-Herbies with razor-sharp teeth or he’s Kong atop the Empire State Building menaced by Flying Herbies trying to shoot him down with motor oil. Loostgarten wakes him up, calling to verify the new address, at which point Hawk gives the OK to demolish his own house.

The next morning, Hawk finally admits defeat and announces he’s turned over a new leaf. Willoughby and Nicole go to Fisherman’s Wharf for a celebratory dinner but Mrs. Steinmetz stays in, partly to give the young folks some space but mostly to entertain her own gentleman caller, Mr. Judson. It’s a good thing they stayed behind. Hawk was, of course, lying through his teeth and has assembled an army of bulldozers and wrecking balls to bring Hell to Mrs. Steinmetz’s front door.

While Mrs. Steinmetz and Judson hold the fort, Herbie manages to break through the front line and fetch Nicole and Willoughby. Speeding back to the firehouse, Herbie uses his psychic Herbie powers or something to mobilize an entire armada of sentient, driverless Volkswagen Beetles. They come from garages, from junkyards, from driveways, from drive-in movies (still carrying the seemingly frozen young lovers in the backseat). The Bugs thwart the bad guys and Hawk runs into the Traffic Commissioner again, who hauls him off to either jail or an insane asylum. Willoughby and Nicole end up getting married because why wouldn’t they and everyone lives happily ever after. Except, perhaps, for San Francisco’s many Volkswagen owners whose cars mysteriously vanished one night and never returned.

So yeah, Herbie Rides Again is not what you could call a good movie. I wouldn’t even say it’s a particularly well-made movie. That being said, I had some fun with it. Without any returning characters from The Love Bug, Stevenson and Walsh couldn’t continue Herbie’s story in any meaningful way. And let’s face it, does anyone really want Herbie’s story continued in a “meaningful” way? So Stevenson and Walsh went another direction and cranked up the zaniness to eleven. On that score, it delivers.

Even so, being weird and goofy can only carry a movie so far. It would be really nice if more of that weirdness was intentional. I don’t think Stevenson intended for the lousy chroma-key effects to be an ironic commentary on the illusion of cinema. They’re just cheap, lazy effects. The relationship between Mrs. Steinmetz and Mr. Judson is genuinely cute and funny. I’d love it if the movie focused more on them or invested Willoughby and Nicole with half as much personality. In the end, I felt like I enjoyed Herbie Rides Again in spite of everyone’s efforts, not because of them.

Despite its shortcomings, audiences were ready to welcome Herbie back. Herbie Rides Again came out in England first before opening in America on June 6, 1974. Most critics seemed to feel the same way I do about the movie. They admitted it wasn’t very good but they weren’t mad about it. It went on to become Disney’s highest-grossing film of the year, just barely missing the top ten. Helen Hayes even got a Golden Globe nomination for the movie, possibly just for emerging with her dignity intact.

It’s hard to say whether or not Walt Disney would have greenlit any sequels to The Love Bug. On the one hand, it was an enormous hit. But that might actually have protected it in Walt’s mind. He might have felt a sequel would cheapen whatever magic made The Love Bug special. But with Walt gone, the studio couldn’t afford to leave money on the table. After Herbie Rides Again proved The Love Bug’s success was no fluke, you knew full well that Herbie would return.

VERDICT: It’s a Disney Plus for the Demon-Herbies alone but it’s not great.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The World’s Greatest Athlete

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The World's Greatest Athlete

When I saw the title The World’s Greatest Athlete pop up in the Disney list, I first thought it was the third entry in the Dexter Riley series. I soon realized I was confusing it with The Strongest Man In The World, a movie we’ll get to soon enough, and that I had no idea what The World’s Greatest Athlete was about. When I read Disney’s official synopsis, my heart sank a little bit. Here it is. See if you can figure out why.

“Discovered in Africa by two U.S. college sports coaches, Nanu, a blond boy raised by natives after the death of his missionary parents, is an incredible athlete. Entered in a Los Angeles NCAA track-and-field competition, he wins all the events despite voodoo magic being used against him.”

Sounds like a recipe for some good old-fashioned casually racist stereotypes, doesn’t it? Well, the good news is that The World’s Greatest Athlete does not sink to that level. In fact, the movie refuses to engage with its complicated racial politics on any level, which is its own problem. But the biggest issue is that apart from a couple of scattered highlights, the movie simply isn’t that funny. Considering some of the talent involved, that’s a real disappointment.

The World’s Greatest Athlete was an original screenplay by comedy veterans Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso. Gardner and Caruso had been head writers on the classic spy spoof Get Smart, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and had written for The Monkees and That Was The Week That Was. They were A-list TV writers but their only other feature credit had been the little-loved Jerry Lewis vehicle Which Way To The Front? This would be their only Disney credit and it seems likely they had little to do with the picture once the studio bought the script.

This would also be the only Disney feature for director Robert Scheerer, although he did have some experience with the studio. Scheerer started his career as a dancer, performing with the group The Jivin’ Jacks and Jills. He moved into directing in the early 1960s, focusing on variety shows and TV specials for acts like Spike Jones, Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire. In 1971, Disney hired him to produce and direct a 90-minute special for the grand opening of Walt Disney World featuring such stars as Julie Andrews, Buddy Hackett, Bob Hope and many others.

The World’s Greatest Athlete would be one of Scheerer’s few theatrical features. He continued to be a prolific television director, including work on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. He briefly returned to Disney in 1988, directing Harry Anderson in a reboot/sequel of The Absent-Minded Professor for the recently retitled Magical World Of Disney.

Perhaps the most surprising name in the opening credits is composer Marvin Hamlisch. When The World’s Greatest Athlete came out in February 1973, Hamlisch was very much on the way up. He’d written some hit songs for artists like Lesley Gore and dabbled a bit in film with scores to movies like The Swimmer and Woody Allen’s Take The Money And Run and Bananas. By the end of 1973, Hamlisch was everywhere thanks to his work on two blockbuster soundtracks: The Sting and The Way We Were. In 1974, he won three Oscars for those two films, setting him on the road to show business’ coveted EGOT hat trick. Hamlisch continued to dominate the 1970s with Broadway shows like A Chorus Line and songs like “Nobody Does It Better” from The Spy Who Loved Me. His only Disney project is now a minor footnote in a huge career.

The star of the show is John Amos as Coach Archer, even though he receives third billing behind Tim Conway and Jan-Michael Vincent. Amos was an eleventh-hour replacement for Godfrey Cambridge, who had appeared in Disney’s The Biscuit Eater a year earlier. Cambridge fell ill during the first week of shooting and was forced to bow out. He never did return to Disney. In 1976, he suffered a heart attack during production of another film, Victory At Entebbe, and died at the age of 43.

Honestly, The World’s Greatest Athlete may have worked better with Cambridge. John Amos was still early in his career, gaining attention as weatherman Gordy Howard on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Around the same time The World’s Greatest Athlete hit theatres, Amos appeared as Esther Rolle’s husband on the sitcom Maude, a role that would soon be spun-off to the series Good Times. Amos has an authority and amiability well-suited to situation comedies but he was not a comedian. An actor like Amos is only as funny as his material, whereas naturally gifted comedians like Cambridge can mine laughs out of a less-than-stellar script.

Given all that, it’s no surprise that most of the laughs in The World’s Greatest Athlete come from top-billed Tim Conway. Conway shot to stardom as the scene-stealing Ensign Parker in McHale’s Navy, which ran from 1962 to 1966 including two feature films. When McHale’s Navy went off the air, Conway starred in a series of television flops: the comedy-western Rango, the self-titled sitcom The Tim Conway Show (costarring Disney regular Joe Flynn) and the similarly titled sketch comedy The Tim Conway Comedy Hour. The World’s Greatest Athlete came along just at the right time for Conway, who really needed a hit.

Golden boy Jan-Michael Vincent stars as the Tarzan-like title character. Vincent started acting in 1967 and he’d been plugging away in movies and TV shows without really breaking through. He began to gain momentum in the early 1970s, first as a hippie draftee trying to make it through boot camp in the TV-movie Tribes, then earning a Golden Globe nomination for his role in the film Going Home. Vincent was still trying to find his screen persona in 1973. Nanu is not the kind of role you take after you’re an established movie star. But he’d go on to star in such cult hits as White Line Fever, Damnation Alley and Big Wednesday.

Sadly, Vincent went through a whole series of rough patches as he became more famous. He struggled with addiction throughout his life and found himself behind bars on more than one occasion. In 1992, he was involved in a near-fatal car accident, the first of three very serious car crashes in the 1990s alone. In 2012, his right leg was amputated after it became infected due to peripheral artery disease. Jan-Michael Vincent died on February 10, 2019, at the age of 74. It’s difficult to reconcile the perfect physical specimen we see in this movie with the drug-and-alcohol ravaged man he became.

Scheerer doesn’t waste much time setting up his movie. Coach Archer presides over the losingest teams in college athletics. All of them, from football to baseball to basketball. I’m no sports nut but perhaps they’d do better with individual coaches with particular specialties? Anyway, fed up after his latest loss, Coach abandons his post at Merrivale College (not to be confused with Dexter Riley’s Medfield College or Merlin Jones’ Midvale College) and goes on safari in Africa to get back to his roots.

When assistant coach Milo (Conway) points out that Archer was born in Cincinnati, Archer clarifies that his great-grandparents came from this part of Africa. And that is the extent of that discussion. It’s a Disney movie, so Archer’s ancestors were just regular old immigrants chasing the American dream like everybody else and let’s speak no more about it.

Archer catches sight of Nanu outrunning a cheetah and can’t believe his eyes. As he admires Nanu from afar, Archer envisions how easily his natural gifts could transfer to the various sports he coaches. He offers the jungle boy a full scholarship but Nanu is perfectly happy right where he is. Not willing to take no for an answer, Coach resolves to get Nanu out of Africa one way or another.

After he learns that tribal custom dictates a man who saves another man’s life becomes beholden to that person, Coach comes up with a scheme to get Nanu to “save” his life. Nothing works and, on one of these attempts, Nanu takes Archer to see the local witch doctor, his godfather Gazenga (Roscoe Lee Browne, a distinguished character actor known for dozens of film and television appearances but will forever be best known to me as the narrator of the album The Story Of Star Wars, a record I played into the ground in the days before VHS). Gazenga sees right through the coach’s ruse but allows Nanu to believe he must go with him anyway. Gazenga studied abroad himself and thinks it’s time for his godson to broaden his horizons.

Back home, Archer and Milo first have to figure out how to move Nanu and his pet tiger, Harri, into their no-pets-allowed boarding house under the nose of their landlady, Mrs. Peterson (TV legend Nancy Walker, who surprisingly did not appear in any Disney features after this one). Fortunately, Mrs. Peterson’s eyesight is so bad that simply dressing Harri in a trenchcoat and a hat is enough to persuade her that he’s just another student.

Next, Archer sets Nanu up with a tutor, comely coed Jane (see what they did there?). Model Dayle Haddon makes her film debut as Jane. When The World’s Greatest Athlete was in theatres, Haddon was also on newsstands on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Later that same year, she posed nude for Playboy, all of which may have something to do with why Haddon didn’t make any more movies at Disney. She hasn’t acted recently, today focusing on philanthropic causes like UNICEF and her own organization, WomenOne. She seems pretty awesome.

Nanu’s burgeoning relationship with Jane catches the jealous eye of the dean’s weaselly son, Leopold (Danny Goldman, whom you may recognize as the weaselly medical student who needles Gene Wilder about his grandfather’s experiments in Young Frankenstein and later went on to become the voice of Brainy Smurf). Leopold vows to get rid of his rival and arranges for Dr. Gazenga to deliver a guest lecture at the college.

Gazenga arrives, acting more like he’s workshopping material for a gig in the Catskills than a visiting scholar. (A typical exchange goes something like this: “We don’t have as many doctors in Africa as we would like but we are currently building new facilities to attract more.” “Oh, more hospitals?” “No, more golf courses.” Gazenga, ladies and germs! He’ll be here all week!) Leopold corners the witch doctor and expresses his concern that Archer and his publicity machine are having a bad influence on poor Nanu.

After temporarily shrinking Milo down to three inches in a hotel bar for reasons so contrived I can barely remember why it happened, Gazenga finally tracks down Nanu and exposes Archer’s lie. Nanu is so disillusioned that he’s ready to walk away from the NCAA Track & Field Championship, where he’s poised to make history competing in every event. But after Archer gives him a pep talk comparing him to Jim Thorpe (someone Nanu definitely has never heard of), Nanu agrees to give it the old college try.

Nanu immediately wins his first few events, with Jane and Harri (in his person disguise) cheering him on from the stands (and Disney regular Vito Scotti throwing popcorn all over the place behind them). But Leopold convinces Gazenga that Nanu must lose if he ever wants him to set foot in Africa again. So Gazenga uses his occult powers to throw some bad juju at Nanu, who begins losing spectacularly.

Archer and Milo realize who must be behind all this and begin searching the grandstand for Gazenga. They’re unable to track him down and things look grim until Milo remembers he’s carrying a voodoo doll Nanu made earlier. Sticking a feather in it to turn it into a mini-Gazenga, they turn the tables on the witch doctor. Free of the curse, Nanu wins the final race, then keeps going to re-do all the other events one right after the other. Nobody is more impressed than the announcers in the booth, Howard Cosell (giving one of the funniest performances in the film as himself) and Buzzer Kozak (played by Joe Kapp, who was a real-life pro football player but evidently not famous enough to play himself).

Nanu and, by association, Coach Archer appear to be set for life. But Nanu doesn’t get what the big deal is. He’s had a taste of fame and found the whole thing hollow and meaningless. He gives Archer a call, letting him know he’s decided to return home to Africa. Archer and Milo race to the airport but Nanu’s mind is made up. He, Jane and Harri leave Merrivale for good, while Archer does what he always does in times of stress: grab Milo and board the first plane that’ll take him the farthest possible distance. This time, they end up in China where Archer spots another young man outrunning another wild animal. Here we go again!

On the one hand, I have to admit that I’m relieved that the fact that The World’s Greatest Athlete blithely ignores the racial dynamics of its story isn’t a bigger issue than it is. There’s a time and a place for everything and I recognize that a G-rated Disney comedy probably isn’t the venue for a nuanced look at the history of slavery or the exploitation of college athletes. There is an interesting and funny movie to be made about a Black man who exploits a promising white athlete he discovered in Africa. This is not that movie and that’s OK.

However, the casting of John Amos or Godfrey Cambridge or any African-American actor in the role of Coach Archer does feel like an attempt to kill any conversation about race rather than start one. It’s easy to imagine how badly a movie about a white coach recruiting a Black player from Africa would go. Actually, you don’t even have to imagine it. Just watch the 1994 Kevin Bacon flop The Air Up There from Disney subsidiary Hollywood Pictures (or, better yet, don’t). The World’s Greatest Athlete presumes that making the coach a Black guy makes everything OK. The movie is so naïve about these issues, it’s almost cute.

As I said at the outset, the bigger issue here is the lack of laughs. If one of the funniest performances in a comedy comes from Howard Cosell, you may have a bit of a problem. Incidentally, Cosell is just one of several real-life sportscasters who appear, including Frank Gifford, Jim McKay, Bud Palmer and Olympian Bill Toomey. The announcers all work for UBC, the chimp-run network from The Barefoot Executive. If this movie had taken place at Medfield College, it would have blown the whole shared Disneyverse wide open.

Considering this is a movie about sports, there’s a surprising lack of actual sportsmanship on display. Scheerer relies heavily on montage, which is standard operating procedure for most sports movies. But they’re all very quick and don’t do a great job selling Nanu as the world’s greatest athlete. It’s even worse during the championship sequence when Nanu starts losing. Scheerer obscures everything with optical effects showing the action in the stands, making it difficult to even figure out what’s happening on the field. Robert Stevenson did a much better job staging his slapstick track meet in Blackbeard’s Ghost.

At least Tim Conway scores some laughs with his deadpan physical comedy. But the elaborate setpiece where Milo is shrunk down is strangely not Conway’s funniest scene. The special effects and oversized props are impressive but they literally overshadow Conway’s performance. He’s funnier in quieter scenes, like when he’s slowly submerged in quicksand or flown around the background of a scene thanks to Nanu’s voodoo doll.

Most critics did not have a good time with The World’s Greatest Athlete but audiences sure seemed to. It went on to become one of the most popular movies of 1973 and the Disney studio’s second highest-grossing film of the year. (We’ll get to their biggest hit of ’73 in a few weeks, which means we’ve got a couple of potential duds to get through first, so hang in there.) In 1974, it was re-released as a double feature with last week’s movie, Snowball Express. Somewhat surprisingly, Disney has never attempted to remake it, even during that window in the 90s when they seemed obsessed with redoing their entire live action catalog for TV. Probably just as well. I do think the right filmmaker could make something smart and funny from this material but I have no faith that Disney would allow it to happen.

Most of the folks involved with The World’s Greatest Athlete were one and done with Disney after this. Even longtime stalwarts like producer Bill Walsh were getting close to the end of their Disney careers. The one exception, of course, was Tim Conway. After several years of flops, Conway had finally landed a hit. In 1975, he cemented his star status when he officially joined the cast of The Carol Burnett Show, a series he’d been a popular guest star on since 1967. That same year, he returned to the Disney lot. We’ll see him again soon.

VERDICT: Three or four laughs do not a Disney Plus make. It’s a Disney Minus but at least not for the reasons I feared it would be.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Snowball Express

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Snowball Express

If Disney’s live action comedies prove anything, it’s that the line between predictability and familiarity lies entirely within the eye of the beholder. To the jaded critic, the studio’s reliance on formulaic stories and a stable of stars that are rarely allowed to venture out of their comfort zones can give the films a cookie-cutter sameness that dulls the senses. But those same qualities can be tremendously comforting to kids and nostalgic adults. The comfort of the familiar goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of Snowball Express.

There has been no shortage of familiar faces in this column. In fact, it’s rare for a Disney movie released between, say, 1960 and 1980 to feature a completely fresh cast of newcomers. Snowball Express is probably the biggest showcase for the Disney Repertory Players so far. Practically every single person on screen has appeared in this column before, many of them on multiple occasions. And since Disney actors were never really required to stretch or challenge themselves, you can rest assured that everyone slides into their roles as easily as a favorite pair of slippers. There’s no confusion or ambiguity in Disney. Dean Jones is always the slightly befuddled good guy. Keenan Wynn is always the corrupt bad guy. So it was written, so it shall be.

Snowball Express is based on a book called Chateau Bon Vivant by Frankie and Johnny O’Rear. The book is actually a memoir about a couple with no experience in the hospitality industry trying to run a Canadian ski lodge. Screenwriters Don Tait, Jim Parker and Arnold Margolin seemingly ignored everything about the book except the most basic premise. More than anything, the movie resembles Monkeys, Go Home!, another movie where Dean Jones inherits a dilapidated property from a relative he never knew and upends his life to pursue a difficult career he’s never attempted before.

By the way, all three of those screenwriters were essentially TV guys. Jim Parker and Arnold Margolin had worked together on such sitcoms as The Andy Griffith Show and they’d adapted Neil Simon’s play Star Spangled Girl into a movie starring Disney alum Sandy Duncan. Don Tait had written a lot of westerns, including Maverick and The Virginian. Tait stayed at Disney through the end of the 1970s. We’ll see his name again soon. Parker and Margolin didn’t continue at Disney or even as a writing team much longer but they both remained active, mostly in television, for years.

Producer Ron Miller brought back director Norman Tokar, who hadn’t made a movie at the studio since The Boatniks in 1970. In the interim, he’d directed a few episodes of The Doris Day Show and Dean Jones’ failed sitcom, The Chicago Teddy Bears, as well as several unsold pilots. Tokar would briefly leave Disney again after Snowball Express to direct the movie version of Wilson Rawls’ Where The Red Fern Grows. But he’d be back at his old stomping grounds soon enough.

In Monkeys, Go Home!, Jones played a bachelor attempting to run his great uncle’s olive grove in France. Here, Jones plays Johnny Baxter, a happily married father of two attempting to run his great uncle’s hotel in Silver Hill, Colorado. Nancy Olson appears as Johnny’s wife, Sue, in the last of her five Disney features (not counting her uncredited cameo in 1997’s Flubber, a nod to her role in the original Flubber pictures). Olson got saddled with a lot of thankless girlfriend/wife/mother roles at Disney and Snowball Express is no exception. She’s around to be a supportive helpmate and her character tends to vanish whenever anything fun is happening.

The Baxter kids, Richard and Chris, are played by red-headed scamp Johnny Whitaker and Kathleen Cody. This was Cody’s first Disney movie, coming off a stint on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, but she’ll be back in this column soon. Whitaker, on the other hand, will not. After his three Disney features, he appeared in one more TV production, The Mystery In Dracula’s Castle. His next non-Disney project was the title role in Tom Sawyer, a big-screen musical with songs by the Sherman brothers and featuring his Napoleon And Samantha costar, Jodie Foster. He went back to TV after that, starring on Sid and Marty Krofft’s mind-warping Sigmund And The Sea Monsters. Whitaker left acting behind in the 1980s to attend college, perform missionary work overseas, and overcome addictions to drugs and alcohol. He’s still around and occasionally pops up on screen, as in Amazon Prime’s 2017 reboot of Sigmund.

Johnny (Baxter, not Whitaker) learns he’s inherited the Grand Imperial Hotel and immediately quits his job at a high-tech New York insurance company. (His boss, Mr. Carruthers, is played by Dick Van Patten in the first of many Disney appearances.) Nobody else in the family seems to think this is such a hot idea but since Johnny has left them no alternative, they begrudgingly pack up and move to Colorado.

Once they’ve arrived, none of the local yokels (led by George Lindsey, the voice of Lafayette in The AristoCats) have any idea where this so-called luxury hotel would be. Eventually they figure out Johnny must mean old Crazy Jake’s place and give him directions out toward the boondocks. The locals’ confusion seems a little disingenuous. Sure, the location is off the beaten path and the building is a bit run down but it’s still recognizably a hotel with its name in stained glass.

Despite the fact that the hotel isn’t the turn-key operation he’d hoped for, Johnny resolves to get rid of the bats and raccoons, clean the place up and open for business. That night, his first “guest” turns up in his kitchen. Jesse McCord (Harry Morgan, having a lot more fun than in either The Barefoot Executive or Scandalous John) is an old coot who was friends with Johnny’s uncle. Crazy Jake would let Jesse stay at the hotel free of charge if it wasn’t busy (and it rarely was). Johnny’s ready to kick Jesse out into the cold but his family asks him to think twice before sending an old man to freeze to death in a blizzard. Since Johnny is all heart, Jesse’s allowed to stay under the condition that he help get the hotel up and running.

In need of a small business loan to cover expenses, Johnny goes to visit local banker Martin Ridgeway (Keenan Wynn, naturally). The hotel is too great a risk for Ridgeway to approve a loan but he is willing to buy the place outright. Ridgeway claims he wants to turn the hotel into a home for orphans, but the eye-rolling of his secretary, Miss Wigginton (Disney veteran and professional eye-roller Mary Wickes, last seen in Napoleon And Samantha), suggests he has a less benevolent purpose in mind.

Johnny and Sue stroll around the property and run into Wally Perkins (played by Dexter Riley’s buddy Schuyler, Michael McGreevey), a young man nursing a crush on the Baxters’ daughter, Chris. Johnny, who apparently doesn’t understand how real estate works, is stunned to learn that not only does he own the hotel, his property extends as far as the eye can see. After thinking about it for way too long, Johnny has the revolutionary idea to open a ski lodge in Colorado. Of course, Johnny doesn’t know the first thing about skiing but figures he can pick it up as he goes along.

To avoid dealing with Ridgeway, he sets a meeting with a banker from the next town over. The banker loves Johnny’s idea but pulls out after Johnny lies about his skiing prowess and makes a disastrous run down Nightmare Alley, one of the area’s most dangerous slopes. When the incident makes the papers, Ridgeway has a change of heart. Claiming that the free publicity might give the Grand Imperial a fighting chance, he agrees to loan Johnny $3,000 to get started.

Johnny has big plans for that money but is forced to cut back when Wally and Jesse blow up the ancient water heater and destroy the kitchen. Instead of installing a new ski lift, Jesse fixes up an old steam engine to rig up a rope-tow. Working together, the crew manages to get the hotel ready for opening night. But despite their efforts, the debut looks like a disaster until an avalanche (inadvertently triggered by Wally) traps a train full of tourists bound for the more established ski resort. Riding to the rescue, the Baxters soon have a full house.

Things go well for awhile until, in time-honored Disney comedy fashion, they go spectacularly wrong. Wally, the newly anointed ski instructor, tumbles off a cliff and ends up hanging to a tree for dear life. Johnny is able to use the rope-tow to save him but a hot log burns through one of the support ropes, sending Jesse, Johnny and several tons of active steam engine careening down the mountain and through the hotel. Somehow nobody gets hurt, except for Wally who broke an arm when he fell off the cliff. Even so, the tourists all decide to spend the rest of their vacation in a hotel with intact walls.

Naturally this leaves Johnny unable to keep up with his payments to Ridgeway. Rather than sell, Johnny pins all his hopes on winning Silver Hill’s annual snowmobile race. The third place prize alone would cover what he owes, so Johnny figures he doesn’t even have to win to save the hotel. That would be a great plan if there were only three entrants. But considering that Johnny has no more experience on a snowmobile than he does in any other winter sport and the fact that he and Jesse are driving a beat-up old machine Wally Frankensteined together from past losers AND the fact that Ridgeway always wins, the odds are not stacked in his favor.

Sure enough, after a lengthy, Love Bug-esque race over, under and through the mountains, Johnny comes in dead last. He’s ready to admit defeat and sell to Ridgeway when Miss Wigginton finally reveals the reason for all her furious eye-rolling. Years ago, Johnny’s great uncle donated hundreds of acres of prime timberland to the local Indians for as long as they occupied the land. Since the last of them either died out or moved on years ago, all that land has reverted to the estate and Ridgeway intends to clearcut the whole thing.

Jesse adds another bit of local history, pointing out that the entire town sits on land donated by Uncle Jacob with a provision in the town charter that the founders would build a church, two hospitals (one for people and one for critters) and a library. Richard points out that, just as there’s no basement at the Alamo, there’s no library in Silver Hill. And while nobody’s 100% sure if that means Johnny now owns the entire town, the mere possibility is enough to get Ridgeway to change his tune. He extends Johnny’s line of credit and vows to do whatever it takes to get the Grand Imperial up and running again.

Needless to say, Snowball Express is not one of Disney’s most intricately plotted narratives. Neither is it a penetrating character examination of a marriage tested by the husband’s impulsive decisions, although what I wouldn’t give to see the Ingmar Bergman version of Snowball Express. No, this is just a silly movie about silly adventures in the snow. Sometimes that’s enough. Here, it’s almost enough.

First the good news. Unlike Monkeys, Go Home!, which took place in France but was shot in Burbank, Tokar actually took his cast and crew to Colorado. The movie was shot in Crested Butte and the Rocky Mountain scenery adds a lot of flavor. It’s the kind of setting you can’t replicate on a backlot, no matter how much fake snow you pump in.

The movie is really built around three main slapstick setpieces: Dean Jones’ out-of-control run down Nightmare Alley, the runaway steam engine, and the snowmobile race. They’re undeniably the highlights of the film and Tokar pulls them off nicely. The winter setting and cold weather gear also helps mask the stunt doubles for Jones, Harry Morgan, Keenan Wynn and George Lindsey, making the action sequences feel a lot more seamless than usual.

But whenever the movie isn’t hurtling down a mountain at breakneck speed, things begin falling apart. The opening scene at Johnny’s office is interminable, taking far too long to introduce a two-sentence premise. Once they get to Colorado, the hotel really doesn’t seem to be in that bad a condition but it still takes a lot of steps to get to opening night. And the less said about estate law, small business loans and town charters the better, right? Not according to Snowball Express, which brings these riveting topics up again and again.

Despite its flaws, Snowball Express was fun and charming enough to receive fairly positive reviews from critics upon its release on December 22, 1972. This was the same day Disney re-released The Sword In The Stone to theatres for the first time since 1963. I’m not sure if they were released together as a double feature or if they were competing against each other. Considering that the original campaign manual for Snowball Express makes no mention of Sword In The Stone, I’m guessing they played separately. The film made over $6 million at the box office. Not a blockbuster but pretty good for a live-action Disney movie at the time.

Snowball Express is a minor entry in the Disney catalog. I don’t think it’s a favorite of many people but it’s likable. It’s the sort of movie you don’t think about unless something actively reminds you of it and you say, “Oh, yeah. I kind of liked that when I was a kid.” Then you go find it on Disney+ and forget all about it again until the next time you need a nostalgic little jolt from your childhood. To borrow a phrase from another Disney movie, it’s the streaming circle of life.

VERDICT: It’s just enough fun to end up on the Disney Plus side but don’t push it. It is what it is.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

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Now You See Him, Now You Don't one-sheet

Walt Disney was not a fan of sequels. He considered them cheap and lazy. When he did approve them, as in Son Of Flubber, it was only because there were leftover gags and ideas from the original film and Walt hated to waste a good joke. After Walt’s death in 1966, Walt Disney Productions tried to abide by the wishes of its founder. But by 1972, the studio needed a hit and that no-sequels rule seemed a little shortsighted. And I think it’s fair to say that Now You See Him, Now You Don’t was not born out of a surplus of ideas from the original Dexter Riley film.

To be fair, Disney had tried to capitalize on the success of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes without making an outright sequel. The Barefoot Executive reunited stars Kurt Russell and Joe Flynn with director Robert Butler and screenwriter Joseph L. McEveety. That movie didn’t lose money but it hadn’t done as well as its predecessor. So in the grand tradition of such collegiate comedies as The Absent-Minded Professor and The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones, producer Ron Miller decided to send Dexter Riley back to Medfield College.

Just about everyone from The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes returned for the sequel. In addition to Russell’s Dexter Riley and Flynn as the beleaguered Dean Higgins, Butler brought back Cesar Romero as evil businessman A.J. Arno, Richard Bakalyan as his chauffeur/henchman Cookie (he was called Chillie last time but continuity has never been Disney’s strong suit), Alan Hewitt as Higgins’ rival Dean Collingsgood, and Michael McGreevey as Dexter’s sidekick, Schuyler. Ed Begley Jr., who made his uncredited film debut in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, got a promotion, receiving both screen credit and a character name as science nerd Druffle.

There were a few new faces. Jim Backus makes his Disney debut as philanthropist and golf aficionado Timothy Forsythe. William Windom takes over the all-purpose science professor role from William Schallert. Dexter’s new girlfriend, Debbie, is played by Joyce Menges, who previously popped up as one of the gnome maidens in The Gnome-Mobile but then left the industry completely after this film. Jack Bender, who made an impression in The Barefoot Executive and The Million Dollar Duck, enrolls at Medfield as the magnificently named Slither Roth.

Two other Medfield students have seemingly switched identities. In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, legendary voice actor Frank Welker played Henry Fathington and Alexander Clarke played Myles Miller. In Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, Welker plays Myles and Mike Evans is Henry. Evans had already guest-starred on All In The Family as Lionel Jefferson, the son of the Bunkers’ neighbors George and Louise Jefferson. In 1974, Evans co-created the sitcom Good Times and the year after that, the Jeffersons moved on up to their own show. You can see why Evans won’t be back in this column. He was a little busy.

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t isn’t exactly a carbon copy of the first Dexter Riley adventure but Butler, Miller and McEveety don’t stray too far from the template they’d created three years earlier. Dexter and his classmates are still bugging Dean Higgins’ office and eavesdropping on budget meetings for increasingly vague reasons. Higgins still holds most of Medfield’s student body in complete contempt, certain they’re all as dumb as a bag of hammers. And new science professor Lufkin is just as desperate for expensive new equipment as his predecessor.

Also, A.J. Arno is back on the streets, his arrest for operating a network of illegal gambling joints dismissed as a mere misunderstanding. Arno has assumed control of Medfield’s mortgage and doesn’t appear to be remotely concerned about when or if Higgins can make payments. Dexter and his pals are understandably suspicious of Arno but the Dean is happy to let bygones be bygones as long as it doesn’t cost anything.

Anyway, Higgins has bigger worries than a known felon taking control of his college under mysterious circumstances. Medfield’s getting ready to compete for the Forsythe Prize, an annual science fair. Higgins and Professor Lufkin have high hopes for Druffle’s groundbreaking bumblebee study and zero hopes for Dexter’s attempt to recreate a Russian experiment in invisibility. But a freak electrical storm not unlike the one that turned Dexter into a human computer zaps Dexter’s gizmo. Before you know it, Dexter’s got a bowlful of invisibility juice. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call it invisible paint, since anything that gets dipped in it or sprayed with it turns invisible and the stuff washes off with water.

Dexter and Schuyler make themselves invisible to sneak into Arno’s office and figure out what he’s up to. Not surprisingly, the guy who gave away his super-computer loaded with incriminating evidence has an enormous floor model of his top-secret plan. Thanks to a loophole in some old zoning laws, gambling is still completely legal on the land Medfield is built on. Once Higgins fails to make a payment, Arno will foreclose and build a gamblers’ paradise. Bad guys are always wanting to build casinos in Disney movies.

Higgins is not thrilled to hear this, especially since he’s also just learned that Medfield isn’t even going to be allowed to compete for the Forsythe Prize this year. Desperate for the $50,000 prize, Higgins calls up Mr. Forsythe himself and pleads his case. Forsythe agrees to meet with him and Dean Collingsgood over a round of golf. Since Higgins doesn’t know the first thing about golf, Schuyler serves as his caddy and Dexter gives him an invisible hand. With Dexter’s help, Higgins plays an astonishing game, sinking repeated holes-in-one and drawing a lot of attention to himself.

Now, I’m no golfer and I’ve never been invisible but I’m not quite sure how Dexter is able to pull this off. It seems to me that he’d have to jump up, catch the golf ball in midair, run with it all the way down the course and slip it into the hole. Even visible, that strikes me as a remarkable feat of athleticism. Sure, it might be considered “cheating” according to your precious “rules” but it would sure make golf a lot more fun to watch.

Higgins’ miracle golf game scores him an invitation to play in a professional tournament against real pro golfers Billy Casper and Dave Hill (and if you don’t recognize their names or faces, that just tells you how few golfers ever become legitimate household names). Unfortunately, Dexter hears about it too late to accompany them on the flight. Forced to rely on his own non-existent skills, Higgins ends up humiliated on national TV with a triple-digit score.

While Higgins and Schuyler are off playing golf (a surprisingly large amount of the movie is just about golf), a couple of other things are going on. Arno spotted Dexter showering off the invisibility serum in the clubhouse and tasks Cookie with figuring out what’s up. And poor Druffle has learned the hard way that he’s allergic to bee stings. Puffed up and wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, he won’t be able to compete for the Forsythe Prize, leaving Medfield’s hopes in Dexter’s hands.

Incidentally, that image of Ed Begley Jr. covered in bandages was featured prominently in promotional materials for Now You See Him, Now You Don’t. Makes sense, since he looks like the classic Universal Monsters version of the Invisible Man. Only trouble is he’s not invisible and it isn’t Kurt Russell, despite how the still is sometimes captioned and tagged. It’s just Ed Begley Jr., hideously swollen up by bees. Years later, Begley would get wrapped up in bandages again for the funniest segment in Amazon Women On The Moon. I guess there’s just something about Begley in bandages that’s inherently funny.

At any rate, Cookie finally discovers what the kids have cooked up in the lab and Arno wants it. Cookie pulls a switcheroo, leaving Dexter and a very visible Schuyler looking like idiots when they try to demonstrate their formula for Forsythe and crew. Dexter is convinced that Arno stole his invention, so the gang pulls the old walkie-talkie-in-a-flower-arrangement gag again to bug Arno’s office.

Meanwhile, Arno’s plans for the spray are a bit more criminal than just cheating at golf. He’s going to turn himself and Cookie invisible, walk into a local bank while they’re making a big transfer, turn the money invisible and stroll out under everyone’s noses. The plan seems a bit hands-on for a white-collar criminal like Arno but otherwise, it’s fairly foolproof. But Arno forgot to reckon with those meddling kids!

Dexter tries to warn the bank president (Edward Andrews, who’s played harried, ineffectual authority figures in everything from The Absent-Minded Professor to The Million Dollar Duck). Surprise surprise, nobody at the bank (including Ted the guard, played by the voice of George Jetson, George O’Hanlon) believes they’re in danger of invisible robbers. So the kids stake out the bank and resolve to stop Arno and Cookie themselves, no matter how long a car chase it takes.

The fact that Now You See Him, Now You Don’t concludes with an epic car chase should come as no surprise at this point. This one feels longer than most but at least this time there’s a seemingly driverless car involved. There’s also a familiar Volkswagen Beetle. Schuyler’s car is our old pal Herbie from The Love Bug, sporting a green paint job and distressed to appear like a college kid’s junker.

Ultimately Arno has the bright idea to turn the car itself invisible. Driving an invisible car in a high-speed chase on crowded city streets turns out to be just as dangerous as it sounds. Arno and Cookie end up crashing into a swimming pool, turning the car, themselves and the money visible again. This seems like a slightly more difficult spot for Arno to talk his way out of but something tells me he won’t be spending much time behind bars.

In some ways, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t feels like a step down for the Dexter Riley saga. On the technical side, it doesn’t feel like anybody cared to put much effort into this one. Most of Disney’s gimmick comedies start with a pop song and/or an animated title sequence. Not this time. The movie starts like a TV show with Dexter joining a scene already in progress. The titles play out over Dean Higgins tearing his office apart to find the kids’ listening device. It’s kind of a funny scene but the credits occasionally get in the way of the action, obscuring Flynn’s performance. We don’t even get a song this time, just Robert F. Brunner’s instrumental score.

Even the movie’s visual effects, usually one of Disney’s strong suits, come across as more than a little half-assed. The optical trickery used whenever Dexter or Schuyler become partially invisible is particularly wobbly. It’s no wonder that Butler decides to take the easy way out in the climactic chase and just completely disappear the car. It’s a whole lot easier to have actors pretend they’re reacting to a car than to show part of the car itself.

But in at least one important regard, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t improves on the Riley formula by simply being a funnier movie. All that golf nonsense seems superfluous and it very much is from a storytelling perspective. But it gives Joe Flynn a chance to take the spotlight, especially in the second game. Flynn’s a genuinely funny actor but being stuck in second banana roles limited his screen time. Here, Butler makes better use of Flynn than any other Disney movie so far.

Kurt Russell is also back in top form after being saddled with a genuinely unlikable character in The Barefoot Executive. Dexter seems slightly more ambitious this time. His abilities in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes were totally the result of a freak accident. He stumbles upon invisibility accidentally as well, but at least this time he was actively trying to learn something. I also wonder if Medfield would have been allowed to keep the prize money, since Dexter really doesn’t know how the invisibility serum works and couldn’t recreate the experiment if he tried. That seems like an important rule for winning an award in science.

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t was released on July 12, 1972, just one week after Napoleon And Samantha hit theatres. It received some surprisingly decent reviews and did fairly well at the box office, falling just a bit short of its predecessor. That was good enough for Disney. The studio wasn’t through with either Kurt Russell or Dexter Riley yet. And it wouldn’t be long before another Disney property got a sequel of its own.

VERDICT: I wouldn’t plan your day around it but it’s kind of fun so sure, it’s a Disney Plus.

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Bedknobs And Broomsticks

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Bedknobs And Broomsticks

When a studio produces a movie that captures lightning in a bottle the way Disney did with Mary Poppins, you can’t blame them for trying to replicate the trick. But Walt’s follow-up musical, The Happiest Millionaire, had been an ambitious and costly misfire. So Bedknobs And Broomsticks would appear to be a take-no-chances attempt to completely recreate the creative alchemy that produced Mary Poppins. That’s sort of true but Bedknobs And Broomsticks isn’t exactly a Mary Poppins clone. It’s more like a fraternal twin.

Walt Disney tried for a long, long time to wrestle the film rights to Mary Poppins out of author P.L. Travers’ clutches. Negotiations were contentious and on more than one occasion, it appeared as though the project was doomed. Walt needed a backup plan in case Mary Poppins fell apart. One idea was a film based on a pair of children’s books by Mary Norton that Disney had acquired the rights to years earlier. The Magic Bed Knob and Bonfires And Broomsticks were Norton’s first published works. By 1957, the two books were collected under the title Bed-Knob And Broomstick. Norton’s most famous work is probably The Borrowers, which I’m frankly stunned Disney never made into a movie.

Walt instructed the Sherman Brothers to start coming up with songs for both Mary Poppins and Bedknobs And Broomsticks. Once Travers finally signed on the dotted line, Bedknobs was scrapped. The Shermans picked it up again in 1966, presumably assuming that it would make an obvious follow-up to Mary Poppins. Unfortunately, it was a little too obvious. Bedknobs And Broomsticks felt so much like Mary Poppins that it was abandoned a second time.

In 1968, the Shermans’ Disney contract was due to expire. The boys had always reported directly to Walt. Since his death in 1966, they’d been making plans to leave the studio. Before they left, producer Bill Walsh had them finish up their work on Bedknobs And Broomsticks. As they’d done on Mary Poppins, the Shermans worked closely with Walsh and cowriter Don DaGradi to crack the story.

Apparently Walsh had no intention of actually making Bedknobs And Broomsticks quite yet. He just wanted to make sure that the Shermans’ work wasn’t left unfinished while they were still on the hook for the studio. Once they had a finished script, the Shermans moved on to other projects elsewhere with an assurance from Walsh that they could come back if Disney ever did decide to make the movie.

Walsh returned to Bedknobs And Broomsticks in late 1969, after the Shermans had gone on to do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This time, he decided to embrace the project’s similarities to Mary Poppins. He brought in that film’s director, Robert Stevenson. Stevenson had become one of the studio’s most reliable filmmakers since Poppins, turning out blockbusters like Blackbeard’s Ghost and The Love Bug. Animator Hamilton Luske, who had been part of Mary Poppins’ Oscar-winning visual effects team, passed away in 1968, so Ward Kimball was put in charge of Bedknobs’ animated sequence.

Walsh’s first choice to play witch-in-training Eglantine Price was Mary Poppins herself, Julie Andrews. Andrews’ career was about to hit a rough patch. Her 1968 musical Star! had been an expensive flop. Her next film, 1970’s Darling Lili directed by her husband Blake Edwards, didn’t fare much better. When she got the call from Disney, Andrews passed on the role, fearing it was too similar to Mary. She later reconsidered, figuring she owed Disney one for igniting her career and probably thinking she could use a hit, but by then it was too late. Walsh had already given the role to Angela Lansbury.

Lansbury had been in Hollywood since the 40s and it seemed as though she’d had to reinvent her career several times already. She’d received three Oscar nominations but studios frequently had no idea what to do with her. Bedknobs And Broomsticks was her first lead role in a movie musical, despite the fact that she was a regular presence on Broadway. Lansbury will be back in this column in vocal form but not for quite some time, so it’s a little surprising how associated she’s become with Disney. Apart from a cameo in Mary Poppins Returns, this is her only live-action Disney appearance.

To star opposite Lansbury, Walsh tried to get Ron Moody, another Broadway veteran who had just starred in the movie version of Oliver! But Moody wanted top billing and refused to budge on that point. So Walsh brought in David Tomlinson, another Mary Poppins star. This would be Tomlinson’s third and final Disney appearance following Poppins and The Love Bug. His last movie, The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu, came out in 1980. After that, he enjoyed a happy retirement until his death in 2000 at the age of 83.

The plot of Bedknobs And Broomsticks is almost a funhouse mirror version of Mary Poppins. Instead of a practically perfect magical nanny coming to the aid of a 1910 family, we have three orphans escaping the German blitz in 1940 being foisted upon a correspondence school witch who doesn’t particularly care for children. Mary has seemingly limitless powers. Eglantine Price is still learning the handful of spells she’s been sent. Mary imparts valuable lessons to the Banks family but it’s the kids who have to teach Miss Price to open up.

The Rawlins children, Charlie, Carrie and Paul, are played by Ian Weighill, Cindy O’Callaghan and Roy Snart. All three had previously appeared in a few commercials but that was about the extent of their acting experience. Only Cindy O’Callaghan continued on in the profession, mostly in British TV shows like EastEnders. Snart evidently became a software entrepreneur, while nobody’s one hundred percent sure whatever happened to Ian Weighill. They’re all natural performers, so I hope that if nothing else, they’ve all led happy, productive, scandal-free lives unlike so many other child stars.

The story kicks into gear when the kids spot Miss Price learning to fly on a broomstick while trying to sneak out. Now that Miss Price seems more interesting, they decide to stick around. Charlie, the oldest and most cynical of the bunch, decides to push back against Miss Price’s strict rules by holding her witchy secret over her head. In exchange for their silence and cooperation, she gives them a transportation spell that only young Paul can operate by twisting an enchanted bedknob.

Miss Price has recently received word that Professor Emelius Browne’s Correspondence College of Witchcraft is closing, just as she was about to receive her final lesson in Substitutiary Locomotion. Determined to get the spell, she packs the kids onto the magic bed and has Paul take them to London. There they discover that “Professor” Browne is nothing more than an ordinary stage magician and not a very good one, at that. He’s thrilled to learn that Miss Price is actually able to make his spells work. Unfortunately, the book he’s been cribbing the spells from is incomplete, so he offers to help her track it down.

A search of the market at Portobello Road turns up nothing but attracts the attention of Bookman (Sam Jaffe) and his enforcer, Swinburne (British TV personality Bruce Forsyth). Bookman also wants the spell and had hoped Browne had it in his half of the book. He also reveals that the spell is engraved on the Star of Astaroth, a sorcerer’s medallion now supposedly kept on the legendary Isle of Naboombu. Naboombu is supposed to be off-limits to humans. But most humans don’t have access to a magical bedknob, so Paul whisks them away to Naboombu.

The bed splashes down in the animated Naboombu Lagoon. Mr. Browne and Miss Price have time to win an underwater dance contest judged by a codfish (voiced by Bob Holt, later the Lorax, Grape Ape and lots of others) before they’re fished out by a bear (Disney regular Dal McKennon). Browne demands to see King Leonidas (Lennie Weinrib, voice of H.R. Pufnstuf and many other favorites of the 1970s and 80s). Both the bear and Leonidas’ secretary (also Weinrib) advise against this. The king is in an even worse mood than usual because he can’t find a referee for his anything-goes soccer match.

Browne, an enthusiastic fan and former footballer himself, volunteers for the job. After a far-from-regulation match, Browne is able to palm the Star of Astaroth medallion. They hot-foot it back to the bed, which transports them safely home. Unfortunately, the medallion doesn’t survive the journey between realms. But that’s OK because Paul has had a picture of it, engraving and all, in his picture book the whole time, rendering about half of the movie up to this point completely pointless.

After a little practice to make sure the Substitutiary Locomotion spell works, the group’s dinner is interrupted by Mrs. Hobday (Tessie O’Shea), the local chairwoman of the War Activities Committee. She’s found a more suitable home for the children. But they’ve been having such a good time that now they want to stay, along with Mr. Browne as their new father. Both Mr. Browne and Miss Price want this, too. But they both freak out a little over how quickly things have happened and Mr. Browne opts to return to London.

He’s spending a cold, uncomfortable night alone on the train platform when the town is invaded by Nazis. The Germans have picked a soft target like Pepperinge Eye as a warmup for a full-scale invasion of London. But between Miss Price’s magic and the village’s Home Guard of old-age pensioners, the Nazis are forced to retreat. In the end, Mr. Browne enlists in the army with a promise to return to Pepperinge Eye when the war is over.

Now, here’s the thing about Bedknobs And Broomsticks. This is, at best, a marginally successful picture, especially when held up against Mary Poppins. It doesn’t have a big emotional catharsis like “Let’s Go Fly A Kite”. Its supporting characters aren’t as colorful and lively. Its animated sequence is completely superfluous. (So is the one in Mary Poppins, by the way, but it has “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” so nobody seems to notice or care.) None of that bothers me one bit. I love this movie.

I am as susceptible to the siren song of nostalgia as the next person. For whatever reason, Bedknobs And Broomsticks pushes every one of those buttons in me. The movie was released in the States on December 13, 1971 (it premiered in England about two months earlier). So if my parents did take me to see it at the time, I would have been two years old. I have no specific memory of that, obviously. I do remember seeing it later, maybe as a children’s matinee or on a re-release. But it feels as though it has always been imprinted on my brain. From the moment it starts, I’m as hooked as a bed on a bear’s fishing pole.

Unlike a lot of other films, Bedknobs And Broomsticks’ biggest problem isn’t overlength. It’s underlength. Disney had not had much success with roadshow-style engagements since Mary Poppins. Radio City Music Hall, New York City’s premiere venue for major movie musicals, felt particularly empowered to request cuts to movies they felt were too long. The studio had already caved to Radio City’s demands for cuts to Follow Me, Boys!, The Happiest Millionaire and The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Disney probably already had scissors in hand before they even started talking to Radio City about Bedknobs And Broomsticks.

Over twenty minutes were eliminated from the picture before it even premiered. This explains why Roddy McDowall, making his first Disney appearance since The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin, is on screen for maybe two minutes despite receiving third billing. It also explains why “Portobello Road”, the movie’s would-be show-stopper, is inelegantly chopped up into a series of vignettes that never builds any real momentum.

In addition, three whole musical numbers were dropped along the way. The cumulative effect of these cuts is a movie that never quite seems to get anywhere with characters whose motivations remain somewhat inscrutable. In 1996, Disney attempted a restoration with the materials that had been salvaged. It was a good-faith effort with some sequences using re-recorded audio and still photos to stand in for lost footage. But that’s not the version most readily available to audiences today. The “restored”, 140-minute cut is only available on a 2009 DVD. The familiar 117-minute cut is the one available on Disney+ and Blu-ray.

That first round of cuts didn’t help the movie with critics or audiences. When it grossed less than half of its original budget on its initial release, Disney chopped even more out of it and sent it back out on the re-release circuit. It never did become a popular favorite but eventually it began developing a cult following, including myself, who were dazzled by the animated sequence, loved the songs, and were charmed by its refreshingly low-key manner. Bedknobs And Broomsticks might not add up to much but its quirky individual parts are a delight.

It also did surprisingly well at the Academy Awards. The movie received five nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects (its only competition in the category was Hammer Films’ When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth). The effects aren’t exactly revolutionary but they’re effective, fun and fit the tone of the film perfectly.

It was also nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, losing both of those to the now mostly-forgotten epic Nicholas And Alexandra. On the music front, it lost Best Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score to Fiddler On The Roof. The song “The Age Of Not Believing,” which is far from my favorite tune in the movie, lost the Best Original Song award to Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft,” which, fair enough.

A lot of the folks who worked on Bedknobs And Broomsticks will be back in this column, including Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall, director Robert Stevenson and producer Bill Walsh. Cowriter Don DaGradi retired after completing his work on the picture. He’d been with Disney since the 1930s, working as a background artist, animator, story developer and art director. He’d started writing live-action screenplays with Son Of Flubber and had been nominated for an Oscar for Mary Poppins. Don DaGradi passed away on August 4, 1991, at the age of 79 and was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend later that same year.

This would also be the last Disney work from Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for quite some time. They’d enjoyed a fruitful association with Disney but they felt it was time to move on. Over the next few years, they’d work on such films as Snoopy, Come Home and Charlotte’s Web and receive Oscar nominations for Tom Sawyer, The Slipper And The Rose and The Magic Of Lassie. Eventually they returned to Disney and, thanks to the studio’s policy of recycling old material into new feature films, we’ll see them again in this column soon enough.

The failure of Bedknobs And Broomsticks caused Disney to abandon the idea of doing big-budget musical spectaculars for a while. Going forward, Disney movies would be more modest in budget and ambition. But for some of us, Bedknobs And Broomsticks holds up as a high point of the Disney style and the Sherman Brothers’ music. If you read the words “Treguna Mekoides Trecorum Satis Dee” in rhythm, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Scandalous John

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Scandalous John

When I told my girlfriend that this week’s Disney movie was called Scandalous John, she laughed. “That doesn’t sound like a Disney movie,” she said. “It sounds like a porno.” She’s not wrong, even though Scandalous John predates the porno chic movement of the 1970s by a couple years. It’s fun to imagine this title on a 42nd Street grindhouse marquee and some very disappointed moviegoers leaving the theatre.

Disney’s Scandalous John was produced by Bill Walsh, who’d been on a bit of a roll lately. His last two films for the studio, Blackbeard’s Ghost and The Love Bug, had both been big hits. Maybe this gave him a little bit of freedom to adapt an obscure 1963 book by Richard Gardner. I haven’t been able to track down anything else by Gardner and the only edition of Scandalous John I’ve found is the movie tie-in.

Walsh cowrote the screenplay with his frequent collaborator, Don DaGradi. The increasingly prolific Robert Butler, fresh off The Barefoot Executive, was assigned to direct. Up till now, Butler’s only features had been Kurt Russell gimmick comedies. But his extensive television credits had amply demonstrated that he could tackle all genres, from westerns to action-adventure to sci-fi.

Scandalous John also marked Brian Keith’s return to the studio after six years. Disney had been very good to Keith. The Parent Trap in particular gave his career a huge boost. But Keith hadn’t made a Disney appearance since Those Calloways in 1965. The year after that film, he was cast as the lead in Family Affair, a sitcom about a confirmed bachelor trying to raise his late brother’s three kids. Another Disney regular, Sebastian Cabot, costarred as Keith’s valet. Family Affair was a big hit, running for five seasons on CBS and cementing Keith’s star status. The show aired its last episode on March 4, 1971. Scandalous John was released about three and a half months later.

Keith stars as John McCanless, an aging, cantankerous eccentric who lives alone on his New Mexico ranch. McCanless’s unpredictable behavior has resulted in a revolving door of ranch hands. The latest poor sucker to get stuck with the job is Francisco Torres Martinez, so newly arrived from Mexico that he’s practically still dripping from the Rio Grande. Alfonso Arau plays Martinez. We’ll see him again in this column but most will immediately recognize him from his role as El Guapo, owner of a plethora of piñatas, in Three Amigos!

Martinez gets dropped off at the ranch by his cousin, who assures him that this is a good job. That seems unlikely when McCanless immediately starts shooting at him, mistaking him for someone from the bank. Martinez is rescued by McCanless’ granddaughter, Amanda (Michele Carey). She persuades him to stay, promising that the old man is really harmless, that the work is minimal and the pay is good. Once introductions are made, she ignores his name and dubs him “Paco”, which sure feels like a racist thing to do. Nevertheless, he accepts it and everyone refers to him as Paco from then on.

McCanless lives in fear of the bank coming to foreclose on his mortgage. Seems there’s a greedy land developer (isn’t there always?) named Whittaker buying up all the ranches to make way for…a new dam, I think? Honestly, it’s never all that clear why Whittaker wants the land. He just does. So Amanda talks to Whittaker’s son, Jimmy (Rick Lenz), to see if he can help. Jimmy unwisely tries to parlay this request into a date. Perhaps surprisingly for a 1971 Disney movie, Amanda doesn’t appreciate that and takes off.

Jimmy rides out to the ranch to meet McCanless. While the old man is none too happy to meet someone named Whittaker, Jimmy comes up with a potential solution. He proposes turning the ranch into a museum that John and Amanda can run together. I’m not sure how that would work if his dad wants to flood the place with his dam. In any case, John’s not buying what Jimmy’s selling. Despite his hostility, Jimmy eventually starts developing a fondness for McCanless.

Meanwhile, McCanless and Paco are bonding over music and the occasional gunfight with imaginary Apache. One night over a couple bottles of whiskey, McCanless fills Paco in on his plan to save the ranch. The two of them are going to go on an old-time cattle drive, bringing the herd north to market. McCanless is sure that they’ll fetch enough to save the ranch and then some. But the next morning, Paco learns that the “herd” consists of one very scraggly-looking old bull. Even though it’s clear that McCanless’s grasp of reality is tenuous at best, Paco humors him and agrees to go on the cattle drive.

First, they head into town for supplies, McCanless on his old horse and Paco riding a semi-cooperative mule. They ride directly into a department store, where Paco gets fitted for some new boots. Paco then heads over to the general store alone for the rest of their supplies. This attracts the attention of Sheriff Pippen (Harry Morgan, returning from The Barefoot Executive…toldja we’d be seeing a lot of him).

Even though he refuses to carry a gun, Pippen is still your typical New Mexico sheriff in that his primary mission is to get rid of illegal immigrants. (The term “wetback” is tossed around a lot in this movie, probably one of the reasons it’s not on Disney+.) McCanless intervenes and they’re able to escape back to the ranch with the cops hot on their trail. Once they show up there, McCanless slashes the sheriff’s tires and the two caballeros embark on their cattle drive.

Their journey takes them past a bar where a biker gang is harassing the owner, Mavis (the always delightful Iris Adrian, who also popped up briefly in The Barefoot Executive). McCanless rides to the rescue, capturing the drunks with his lasso. Rather than thanking him, Mavis complains that he wrecked the place and is driving off good customers. Perplexed, McCanless turns the gang over to a couple of old Indians, assuming the gang is with them. The Indian says his people have taken the blame for a lot over the years but he’s not about to accept responsibility for a bunch of “white weirdos”. Undaunted, McCanless pays him to take the bikers away. The Indians shrug, take the cash and lead the captives off into the desert.

Finally, McCanless and Paco arrive in a little tourist trap town with folks dressed up like Old West characters. In one funny bit, McCanless chases off a woman dressed like a prostitute and is horrified when the bartender says, “Take it easy, they’re all just volunteers. Haven’t you ever heard of civic pride?” When he encounters an actor playing a crooked card dealer, he demands to know if he’s carrying a gun up his sleeve. He’s not but pretends to shoot a finger gun. Insulted, McCanless fires his real gun above the dealer’s head. Not realizing the bullets are real, the pretend sheriff admits that a sleeve gun would be a nice touch and advises the dealer to run over to props and pick one up.

McCanless pursues the hapless dealer, firing wildly into the streets, much to the delight of the tourists. No one is hurt but a private train owned by Barton Whittaker himself is badly damaged. Whittaker has just arrived with a bunch of visiting dignitaries, planning to sell them on whatever it is he wants to do with McCanless’s land.

That’s Simon Oakland as Whittaker, by the way. He’s probably best known as the psychiatrist who turns up at the end of Psycho to explain everything. And John Ritter makes his second and unfortunately last Disney appearance as Wendell, Whittaker’s bodyguard/assistant. Ritter plays a pivotal role at the end of the movie but he has exactly one line of dialogue, which seems like a waste. He seems like a natural fit for Disney’s live-action comedies, so it’s bizarre that the studio didn’t utilize him again after his first two roles.

McCanless and Paco end up in jail, where Whittaker tries and fails to make a deal with him. But Jimmy, who seems to have some unresolved daddy issues, has switched sides and helps Amanda break the pair out of lockup. You’d think Amanda might want to keep her grandfather on a short leash after all they’ve been through. But no, they let them go to ride off and hijack Whittaker’s train.

With Paco more or less serving as engineer, McCanless gets rid of Whittaker’s passengers one by one and forces everyone to listen to mariachi music for a while. As hostage situations go, this one’s not too bad. But sooner or later, people start to realize there’s essentially a runaway train on the loose since nobody on board knows how to stop the thing. The train gets switched to an unused stretch of track leading to an abandoned mine, where it finally derails.

Whittaker realizes this has gone too far and is ready to cut his losses. But just then, Wendell shows up and shoots McCanless in the back. Amanda and Jimmy bury the old man back at the ranch and give the animals to Paco. He decides to head back to Mexico, accompanied by the spirit of his new friend.

Quad poster for Scandalous John

It doesn’t take an English major to realize that Scandalous John is a modernized riff on Don Quixote set in the American West. In case you missed it, the reflection in the poster image above makes the connection explicit. What’s a little surprising is that it mostly works. Almost all the credit for this goes to Brian Keith. His face hidden behind a thick beard, Keith gives a funny, fully committed performance. His muttered dialogue is a little hard to understand at first but you get used to it. Keith has several big moments in the film and he makes the most of them. When McCanless comes across a woman’s shoe in the desert, he delivers a touching, wistful monologue imagining what became of its owner. It’s impressive that Butler allows the movie to move at its own languid pace and take time for moments like this.

Alfonso Arau is a fun Sancho Panza to Keith’s Quixote, although the character heads uncomfortably into caricature territory several times. It would have been nice to learn more about his backstory. It isn’t clear where he came from or what he’s going back to at the end. But the friendship that develops between McCanless and Paco feels genuine and heartfelt. It’s hard not to be moved when McCanless defends him against the racist sheriff who wants to deport him.

Michele Carey and Rick Lenz do the best they can but their characters are weak links in the movie. Their relationship starts poorly and even though they end up together for some reason, they still don’t seem to like each other all that much. Not to mention the fact that Amanda’s concern for her grandfather’s wellbeing comes and goes whenever it suits the narrative.

Butler and cinematographer Frank Phillips capture some beautiful images of the New Mexico landscape. But other technical aspects are less impressive. The train sequence features some of the least convincing miniatures Disney has produced in a long, long time. Walt Disney famously loved model trains but I find it hard to believe these would have made the grade under his watch.

Rather than rely on one of their usual house composers, Disney brought in a bit of a ringer to compose the film’s score. Rod McKuen made a name for himself in the 1950s and 60s as a poet, songwriter and musician. He’d had success translating the songs of Jacques Brel into English and branched into film in the late 60s with movies like The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. In addition to the score for Scandalous John, McKuen also wrote and performed the song “Pastures Green”. It’s not a great song, to be honest, but his score is kind of interesting.

Disney did not seem to have a lot of confidence in Scandalous John. It was barely released in a handful of regional theatres on June 22, 1971, and sank without a trace soon after. That’s kind of a shame. This isn’t a great movie by any stretch but it is unusual for the studio and individual moments have stayed with me. It sort of reminds me of some of Clint Eastwood’s man-out-of-time movies like Bronco Billy and Honkytonk Man. It’d be interesting to see someone like Eastwood take a crack at this material because I do think there’s something of value here.

Sadly, this is the last we’ll be seeing of Brian Keith in this column. He continued to work steadily throughout the 1970s and 80s. His highest-profile gig was probably the show Hardcastle And McCormick, which ran for three seasons starting in 1983. In later years, he was diagnosed with emphysema and lung cancer, battled depression, and suffered some serious financial setbacks. In 1997, his daughter, Daisy, took her own life. Two months later, Keith himself died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 75 years old.

Brian Keith was one of Disney’s best and most reliable stars in the 1960s and he’s too often overlooked. The Parent Trap alone secured his legacy but he was even able to liven up some real duds like Ten Who Dared and Moon Pilot. Scandalous John is by no means a great film but it does allow Brian Keith to go out on a high note. That alone is enough to make this a Disney Plus.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Wild Country

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Wild Country

In their 2021 book The Boys: A Memoir Of Hollywood And Family, brothers Ron and Clint Howard dedicate the better part of an entire chapter to the summer they spent in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, filming The Wild Country. It was a formative experience for them both and their memories of the summer of ’69 are warm and fond. It’s a good book. You should check it out. But I think it’s fair to say that the Howard Brothers have spent more time thinking about The Wild Country over the past 50 years than most of us. It’s not a bad movie. In fact, it’s pretty good. But it’s definitely one of the deeper cuts in this column.

The Wild Country had actually been in development at the studio for quite a while. Disney bought the rights to Ralph Moody’s book Little Britches, the first in a popular series of autobiographical stories, back in the late 1950s. Now this is pure conjecture on my part, so don’t sic Leonard Maltin on me if I’m wrong. But at that time, The Wild Country almost certainly would have been being developed as a vehicle for Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran. The personalities of and dynamic between brothers Virgil and Andy Tanner is exactly like roles played by Kirk and Corcoran in Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog and many others. But Kirk started to be on the outs with the studio around the time he and Corcoran made Bon Voyage! in 1961. Between that and the disappointing reception to the Old Yeller sequel, Savage Sam, it’s little wonder that The Wild Country ended up on the shelf.

Producer Ron Miller dusted off Moody’s book and brought on board a whole bunch of TV people. Screenwriters Calvin Clements Jr. and Paul Savage had both worked on the TV western Gunsmoke, as had director Robert Totten. Of course, Gunsmoke ran for twenty seasons, so odds are everybody involved with The Wild Country worked on Gunsmoke sooner or later in some capacity.

Clements later wrote a few Wonderful World Of Disney episodes, including Justin Morgan Had A Horse and The Flight Of The Grey Wolf. He was later a writer and producer on such series as Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Matt Houston and Walker, Texas Ranger. Savage also continued to work in television on shows like The Dukes Of Hazzard and Murder, She Wrote. He returned to the studio years later writing an installment of the late 80s revival of Davy Crockett for The Magical World Of Disney.

As for Robert Totten, he had directed dozens of TV episodes but few feature films. He’d made an independent war movie in 1963 called The Quick And The Dead that starred Victor French and Star Trek fixture Majel Barrett. His next movie was Death Of A Gunfighter starring Richard Widmark. Widmark hated Totten and had him fired, bringing in Don Siegel to finish the picture. Siegel refused to put his name on it, since Totten only had about a week left to shoot when he was let go. But Totten didn’t want his name on it, either, so Death Of A Gunfighter became the first movie directed by the pseudonymous Allen Smithee.

In The Boys, Ron Howard describes Totten as a Peckinpah-like figure who aspired to make tough, independent movies but never quite got the breaks he needed. For Disney, he’d already made a couple of TV two-parters like Ride A Northbound Horse and he’d do a couple more after The Wild Country, including The Mystery In Dracula’s Castle. He was also a bit of a mentor to young Ronny, who even then wanted to be a director. Totten was encouraging and took the time to explain his methodology to Howard, who was 15 at the time. Howard says Totten was the first director who didn’t treat him like a kid. That’s a lot better legacy than simply being remembered as the original Allen Smithee.

The artist formerly known as Ronny Howard was squarely in the awkward teen years of child stardom in the summer of ’69. In 1967, Howard made his Disney debut in A Boy Called Nuthin’, a two-parter for Wonderful World Of Color. The Andy Griffith Show went off the air in 1968. Since then, he’d popped up in a few guest spots on shows like (surprise, surprise) Gunsmoke and his little brother Clint’s show, Gentle Ben. But The Wild Country was his highest profile project since the Opie days.

Clint Howard first made his way to Disney via animation. He’d been the voice of Roo in the Winnie The Pooh shorts and the young elephant in The Jungle Book. This wasn’t the first time Clint and Ron had worked together but I believe it is the first and possibly only time they played brothers on-screen. Their dad, Rance Howard, also appears in The Wild Country as a cowhand on the bad guy’s ranch.

The boys’ on-screen father was played by Steve Forrest, the thick-haired, mustachioed single father from Rascal. When I wrote that column, I was under the impression that Forrest only made one Disney feature, which just goes to show how far under the radar this film has flown. I’d clocked the title on Forrest’s filmography but had assumed The Wild Country was a TV production. Anyway, I like Forrest, so I’m glad to see him back. I’m pretty sure this really will be Forrest’s only other appearance in this column but I’ve been wrong before.

The Wild Country was Vera Miles’ fourth Disney movie, following A Tiger Walks, Those Calloways and Follow Me, Boys! She’d already appeared as Clint’s mom in Gentle Giant, the 1967 movie that begat Gentle Ben. Miles’ concerned mom roles for Disney were all fairly similar and pretty thankless. Nevertheless, she must have enjoyed working for the studio. We’ll be seeing her a couple more times.

We’ve seen rugged tales of the frontier in this column before and you can rest assured we’ll be seeing them again. In its broad strokes, The Wild Country isn’t too dissimilar from earlier Disney westerns. The Tanner family arrives in Wyoming full of hope for the future, having left Pittsburgh for reasons that are never made entirely clear but are apparently irreversible. Jim Tanner (Forrest) has purchased a farm at a rock-bottom price from his fast-talking cousin Phil (Dub Taylor, last seen here in The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin). The Tanners don’t know a whole lot about farming but they’re determined to make it work.

They’re in for a rude awakening when they arrive at the property to discover that their fixer-upper farm needs a lot more fixer-uppering than Cousin Phil let on. Their second surprise is finding a trapper named Thompson (Jack Elam, making his first Disney western feature after the crime comedy Never A Dull Moment, although he’d appeared on a few episodes of Zorro) and his pet wolf sleeping in their house. Thompson roams the country with his Indian buddy, Two Dog (Frank DeKova, last seen impersonating a Native American in Those Calloways), and they’ll prove helpful in the months ahead.

Thompson warns Jim to head back to Pittsburgh now and save his family the trouble of trying to work this land. The Tanners aren’t the first people to work this farm. The problem is that all the water comes from the land above owned by a real piece of work named Ab Cross (Morgan Woodward, not seen around these parts since making his film debut in The Great Locomotive Chase and Westward Ho, The Wagons!). Even though Jim’s deed plainly states that he’s entitled to all the water above a certain mark on Ab’s dam, he routinely shuts off the supply come summer.

After Ab’s cattle trespasses on to the Tanner farm and destroys Kate’s garden, Jim and Virgil decide to pay a neighborly call on Ab and work things out in a civilized manner. When Jim threatens to get the law involved, Ab and his gang of roughnecks laugh in his face. Seems there ain’t no law in Jackson’s Hole, a fact that local shopkeeper Jensen (Karl Swenson) later backs up. Since the nearest marshal is in Cheyenne, Jim writes him a letter and bides his time.

This was not the outcome Ab was hoping for. When he and the boys run into the Tanners at the general store, Ab tries to get Jim to settle their differences the old-fashioned way. Jim doesn’t want to get sucked into a fight in front of his wife and kids but Ab leaves him no choice. It’s a brutal fight, especially by Disney standards, and even though both men are left reeling, Ab gets the worst of it. Humiliated in front of his men, Ab shuts off the water supply completely.

Jim decides to ride to Cheyenne himself but before he can go, Virgil sneaks up to Ab’s property and tries to unblock the dam. Jim rides after him, preferring to let the law run its slow, natural course. But when Ab finds the Tanners trespassing on his dam, he comes out firing, shooting Jim in the leg.

Temporarily beaten, the Tanners return home so Jim can recover. But it isn’t long before a tornado tears through, devastating the farm and wiping out what little progress the Tanners have made. This is one calamity too many for Kate, who finally decides enough is enough. The family is going back to Pennsylvania. Jim lets her have her say, then quietly but firmly takes her aside to let her know they’re not going anywhere. I’m sure this is meant to come across as a positive message about the resilience of family but given everything that’s happened, it comes across as borderline abusive.

While Jim is reminding Kate who wears the pants, the Marshal finally shows up (and he’s played by Larry D. Mann, probably best known as the voice of Yukon Cornelius in the Christmas classic Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer!). They head on up to Ab’s place, who petulantly agrees to get the water flowing again. That should be the end of it but because Ab Cross is such an unrepentant asshole, you know the Tanners aren’t out of the woods yet, right?

That night, the Tanners are celebrating their victory when Andy goes outside to find their barn in flames. While they scramble to put out the fire, Ab skulks out from the shadows and shoots Jim again! In the back! Kate wallops him with a two by four and does her best to fend him off. But just as Ab is about to finish Jim off, Virgil emerges from the house with a rifle and kills Ab. The next day, Ab’s men come to collect the body and, with much apologetic hand-wringing, admit their boss went a smidge too far. They vow to pitch in and get the Tanners back on their feet.

Alternate theatrical poster for The Wild Country

Considering that The Wild Country evokes memories of several earlier Disney westerns, none of which were all that great to begin with, it’s a little surprising that this movie works as well as it does. Clint Howard’s character, Andy, is very much cut from the Kevin Corcoran cloth. He spends most of the movie attempting to trap various animals, including a skunk, a porcupine and a hawk, to keep as pets, all of which he names Ralph. But Clint’s not as uncontrollably manic as Kevin was and his antics don’t overshadow the rest of the movie. He’s also effective in dramatic scenes, like when he breaks down over the prospect of his mom heading back to Pittsburgh.

The movie’s biggest problem, and it’s far from a deal-breaker, is that it feels more like an extended episode of a TV show than a movie. Maybe it’s the lingering influence of all the Gunsmoke alumni. Part of that is the very episodic story. There’s another subplot about Virgil accidentally shooting at a wild horse that turns out to be pregnant. He misses her but she injures herself in a fall. Thompson and Two Dog are summoned to help deliver the filly (which is actually shown on camera), who Andy of course names Ralph. The whole sequence feels like a Very Special Episode of The Wild Country.

The movie might feel more cinematic if Disney treated it with more respect. The Wild Country is not currently available on Disney+ and the only way you can see it at all is in an old-school TV-friendly 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Cinematographer Frank Phillips seems to do a lovely job capturing the Wyoming landscape. It’d be nice if we could actually see his work the way he intended it to be shown.

Robert Totten may never have become the next Sam Peckinpah but he knows his way around a camera and stacks his cast with great character actors from the golden age of westerns. Dub Taylor is a lot of fun in his small role and it’s always a treat to see Jack Elam. Morgan Woodward is eminently hissable as the bad guy. Whenever one of these old pros is on the screen, which is most of the time, the movie always has something fun to offer.

The weakest link in the cast is probably Ronny Howard. At this point in his career, he had a tendency to go big at the slightest provocation. Totten reels him in when it counts, like in the tense climax, but there are still plenty of moments where you wish he’d dial it back a notch or three. Kurt Russell was a little too old to play Virgil in 1970 but if the movie had been made a few years earlier, he’d have been better suited to the role.

Interestingly enough, Howard admits in The Boys that he was hoping the movie would be a flop before it premiered. He was actively trying to distance himself from his goody-two-shoes Opie Taylor image and he knew that The Wild Country would only cement it. As it happens, Howard got his wish. The Wild Country received some decent reviews but barely made a dent at the box office.

The same year he filmed The Wild Country, Ron Howard also performed a voice on the record The Story And Song From The Haunted Mansion, released to coincide with the opening of the Disneyland attraction. Later in 1970, he appeared in the boy and his dog drama Smoke, a two-parter for The Wonderful World Of Disney. And for a while, that seemed to mark the end of his association with the studio. A few years later, George Lucas cast him in American Graffiti and from there, he went on to Happy Days. Howard would eventually return to Disney as a director and his return launched a whole new era for the studio. But it’s a little surprising we won’t be seeing Ron Howard the actor in this column again. Clint, on the other hand, will be back.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

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Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

The shared cinematic universe is usually considered a relatively recent concept even though studios like Universal and Toho started hosting all-star monster jamborees decades ago. Even Disney dropped some shared universe Easter eggs in their early days, like bringing a live-action Bambi into 1957’s Perri. With The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Disney went back to Medfield College, birthplace of Flubber in The Absent-Minded Professor.

A few things have changed at dear old Medfield since the Flubber days. Fred MacMurray’s Professor Brainard has evidently retired, presumably flush with Flubber cash. The great character actor William Schallert is the new all-purpose teacher, Professor Quigley. (I assume Medfield must have additional faculty but these movies only ever seem to focus on one.) The college also has a new dean, Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn, last seen as David Tomlinson’s flunky in The Love Bug).

But perhaps the biggest difference between The Absent-Minded Professor and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is its protagonist. The Flubber movies treated the student body like an afterthought, nameless bodies to toss around the basketball court and the football field, keeping the focus on Professor Brainard. Computer shares a little DNA with The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones (which surprisingly did not take place at Medfield) by promoting a student to the lead role. But unlike Merlin Jones, Dexter Riley is no brainiac inventor. As played by Kurt Russell, Dexter is the typical all-American underachiever, more interested in having a good (albeit G-rated) time than academics.

Russell had worked steadily since his Disney debut in Follow Me, Boys! three years earlier. In addition to his feature appearances, he’d done plenty of TV including guest shots on non-Disney shows like Daniel Boone with former Davy Crockett, Fess Parker. Now 18, Russell had earned the chance to show what he could do with a starring role.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Medfield’s dire financial straits. Alonzo P. Hawk may not be around anymore to call in the school’s loan but Medfield is still hemorrhaging money. By the way, Keenan Wynn will eventually be back in this column as Alonzo P. Hawk, bringing another Disney franchise into the Medfield-verse.

During a budget meeting with the board of regents, Professor Quigley argues that the school desperately needs to get with the times and buy a computer. Unfortunately, the budget is stretched thin and Dean Higgins shoots down the request. Besides, the regents believe modernization is overrated. Higgins is more concerned with weeding out Medfield’s worst students, a long list that includes Dexter and his friends. Quigley sticks up for them. He believes they’re good kids, just in need of a little extra motivation.

Those troublemaking kids were smart enough to plant a listening device in the conference room and they’ve overheard the whole thing. Wanting to do something nice for Quigley, they decide to go visit Dexter’s old boss, tycoon A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero, who had previously appeared in a few episodes of Disney’s Zorro). He seems to be in possession of the only computer in town and the kids hope to persuade him to donate it to the school.

Arno is surprisingly open to the idea except for one thing. He already donates $20,000 a year to Medfield, so he isn’t about to toss in a $10,000 computer on top of that. But if the school is willing to forego their annual gift, maybe they can work something out. This sounds like a good deal to the kids (obviously not math majors) and they set to work crating up the tons of components that make up a late-60s computer.

It’s surprising that Arno is so willing to part with the computer because we soon find out he keeps it in a secret room behind a hidden panel. The computer’s primary function is keeping track of Arno’s many illegal gambling clubs. Now you might think that Arno would need a valuable piece of equipment like that. At the very least, perhaps he should consider erasing all the incriminating evidence stored in the computer’s memory banks. Nope! Take it away, boys! He just saved 20,000 big ones and he’s a happy man.

Anyway, the computer gets set up at Medfield but Quigley’s demonstration hits a snag when a part shorts out. Dexter volunteers to make the 70-mile drive for a replacement, even though he should really be studying for the upcoming standardized test. Later that night, he gets back to the lab during a torrential rainstorm. He foolishly decides to switch out the part while he’s dripping wet and standing in a small lake of rainwater. As you might expect, Dexter is zapped with about a zillion volts of electricity and instantly dies.

The end.

Quad poster for The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

No, no, of course not. The computer dies but Dexter seems just fine. Sure, he wakes up his roommate later that night, beeping electronically and reciting the coded data about Arno’s gambling joints. And yeah, when his friend asks him about it, Dexter has no idea what he’s talking about. But still, he’s fine.

Dean Higgins and Professor Quigley don’t have much time to be upset about the $20,000 boondoggle because the next day is the big standardized test. Students have an hour to complete the test and, in the opposite of a pep talk, are told that nobody in the history of Medfield has ever finished it. Dexter is surprised to find himself whipping through the whole thing in less than five minutes. Quigley and Higgins are even more surprised to discover that he aced it, getting the first perfect score in the history of the college.

A thorough medical check-up solves the mystery. As so often happens, the accident caused Dexter to absorb the properties of the computer. A quick glimpse inside his ear reveals flashing lights, spinning magnetic tape and all the other hallmarks of a 1969 computer. As long as he doesn’t run out of punch cards, Dexter Riley is the smartest man on Earth.

Quick to capitalize on his human computer, Dean Higgins organizes a nationwide tour for Dexter. As his fame grows, he drifts apart from his girlfriend, Annie (Debbie Paine), and buddies like Pete Oatzel (Frank Webb, who was tragically killed in a car accident just a few years later at the age of 26). He also attracts the attention of Dean Collingsgood (Alan Hewitt, seen most recently in The Horse In The Gray Flannel Suit) who hopes to lure Dexter over to Medfield’s arch-rival, State University.

Dexter’s new celebrity status does not pass unnoticed by Arno, either. He may have lost his computer but thinks having a human computer on his payroll sounds even better, especially after Dexter consistently picks winners in horse races. Arno sends his flunky, Chillie Walsh (Richard Bakalayan, who played a similar gangster role in Never A Dull Moment), to give Dexter a taste of the good life. Unfortunately, the club they visit is raided by the cops and Dexter winds up in jail, along with Walsh and the two Deans, who’d been following him.

When Dexter’s friends pool their money to bail him out, Dexter realizes what a heel he’s become. He turns down Arno’s offer and reaffirms his loyalty to Medfield by captaining a quiz bowl team alongside three of his dimmest friends. Dexter leads them to victory and a championship match against State. One Day At A Time’s future Schneider, Pat Harrington, hosts the quiz bowl and Spinal Tap’s future John “Stumpy” Pepys, Ed Begley Jr., makes his big screen debut as one of the State students. We’ll be seeing Begley again in this column.

On one of his College Knowledge appearances, Dexter correctly answers a question with “Applejack”. That just so happens to be Arno’s code name for his illegal businesses, prompting Dexter to start rattling off information about Arno’s gambling joints on live TV. Arno shuts down the exposed locations and sends Walsh to kidnap Dexter the night before the finals.

Pete and Annie track him down and come up with an elaborate plan to rescue him. Disguised as house painters (Merlin Jones used a similar scheme…it seems house painters were given carte blanche to go wherever they pleased in the 60s), the kids search the building and manage to smuggle him out in a trunk. There’s a big chase back to the TV studio with gallon after gallon of paint thrown at the pursuing gangsters. Dexter rejoins his team but the rough handling in the trunk seems to have knocked a few circuits loose. His answers get slower and slower until he finally crashes completely.

Dexter wakes up in time for the final question about the geographic center of the United States but has no idea what the answer could be. He’s back to being a normal, below-average student. The team has been relying on Dexter for so long that everyone’s shocked when Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) realizes he actually knows the answer. He has family in Lebanon, Kansas, and that is the correct response. Medfield wins the day and Arno and his goons end up in jail.

I vaguely remember watching and enjoying the Dexter Riley movies as a kid, so I was looking forward to revisiting this one. Unfortunately, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was not the comedic powerhouse I remembered. So far, I’ve been making fun of the movie’s leaps of logic and Mariana Trench-sized plot holes but they’re not really the problem. The issue is that most of this just isn’t that funny.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was the first screenplay by longtime Disney employee Joseph L. McEveety. McEveety joined the studio in 1957 as an assistant director, working on movies like Moon Pilot, Mary Poppins and, yes, Merlin Jones. He knew the Disney house style backward and forward but comedy wasn’t exactly in his blood. Previous Disney comedies relied heavily on slapstick but Computer’s story doesn’t allow for any until its madcap finale. As a result, the first half can get pretty dull and repetitive. The movie desperately needs more verbal humor or, at the very least, a few jokes.

Director Robert Butler also made his Disney feature debut with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Butler had directed a ton of TV, including Star Trek’s original pilot, “The Cage”, and multiple episodes of shows like The Untouchables, Batman, The Fugitive, and countless others. For Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color, he and Norman Tokar codirected Kilroy, a four-part serial, in 1965. Earlier in 1969, he directed Kurt Russell in the three-part Secret Of Boyne Castle, released theatrically overseas as Guns In The Heather. He knows exactly what’s expected of him here and keeps the tone light and the story moving as best he can. But even so, the movie gets bogged down often enough that it’s hard to not get impatient.

Like most Disney comedies, the action is preceded by a colorful animated title sequence and a peppy title song. Visual effects artist Alan Maley (who went on to win an Oscar for his work on a movie we’ll be getting to soon) designed the abstract titles and they’re pretty cool. The song, by Robert F. Brunner and Bruce Belland, isn’t quite as successful. To be fair, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is an unwieldy title. Even the Sherman brothers would have a hard time making it work in a song. Brunner’s and Belland’s solution was basically to shout the whole thing as quickly as humanly possible. It’s one of the more aggressively unpleasant Disney songs.

The only reason any of this works on any level is thanks to Kurt Russell. In his earlier Disney appearances, Russell definitely had something but nobody had quite figured out what his strengths were yet. Now we begin to see the charismatic movie star he would become. Russell always brings a little twinkle of fun to every role but here, he’s given his first opportunity to go all in on a broad comedic part. When Dexter’s central processor starts to crash, Russell fully commits to the gag. That’s a genuinely funny scene. I only wish the movie had more like it.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was Disney’s last theatrical release of the 1960s. It was a decently sized hit, particularly in relation to its cost, and most critics gave it a pass. The movie certainly did well enough to inspire Disney to bring Dexter Riley and friends back for more wacky adventures at Medfield.

TV Promo Art for The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1995)

Disney also produced a TV remake in 1995 with Kirk Cameron stepping into Dexter’s tennis shoes (a style of footwear Kurt Russell never dons once, by the by). That version had an interesting supporting cast, including comedian Larry Miller as the Dean, Jeff Garlin and Eddie Deezen as FBI agents, Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson hisownself) and Disney veteran Dean Jones playing against type as Miller’s rival Dean. Peyton Reed, who would eventually return to the Disney fold via Marvel’s Ant-Man, made his feature debut as director.

Revisiting The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was a good lesson in tempering your expectations for childhood favorites. I had high hopes for this one. And while it wasn’t a complete waste of time, it definitely wasn’t as good as I’d remembered. They’ll have plenty more chances to impress us, though. Practically everybody involved will be back in this column in some way, shape or form.

VERDICT: Not quite a Disney Minus but nowhere near a Disney Plus, this is a Disney Neutral.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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