Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Savage Sam

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Savage Sam

For years, Walt Disney had been an outspoken opponent to the very idea of sequels. But apparently pulling the trigger on Son Of Flubber, the follow-up to The Absent-Minded Professor, convinced Walt that sequels weren’t such a bad idea after all. Within six months of Flubber’s release, Walt had another sequel in theaters. Perversely, he decided to make a sequel to the one movie that seemed uniquely resistant to continuation.

From a dollars-and-cents perspective, a sequel to Old Yeller makes perfect sense. Fred Gipson’s novel was an award-winning modern classic. Walt’s movie adaptation had been even bigger, an indelible cinematic experience that marked a generation. So when Gipson published his sequel, Savage Sam, Walt understandably snatched up the movie rights immediately.

But narratively, you really have to question the need to continue this story. Setting aside the fact that the title character is shot dead by the end of the picture, Old Yeller is fundamentally a coming-of-age story about young Travis Coates (played in both films by Tommy Kirk). By the movie’s end, Travis does in fact appear to have come of age. His character arc has reached its natural conclusion. How many more dogs does this kid have to shoot before he can be considered a man?

Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker couldn’t be persuaded to return to their roles as Katie and Jim Coates. In Parker’s case, I’d wager that Walt didn’t even bother to try. The two men hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms when Parker left the studio. McGuire, on the other hand, had recently starred in Swiss Family Robinson and will soon be back in this column. Without Parker, they probably just figured it made more sense to eliminate both parents altogether.

Jim and Katie are in San Francisco, tending to a sick grandmother, leaving the boys at home to tend to the Coates homestead. Travis is in charge and it’s going about as well as you’d expect, since younger brother Arliss (Kevin Corcoran, of course) is still an obnoxious little hellion. If anything, he’s even worse now, pouting and whining and throwing rocks at his brother whenever things don’t go his way. The boys have a new dog, Sam, the son of Old Yeller although he doesn’t look anything like the puppy we were introduced to at the end of the first film. Sam is almost as uncontrollable as Arliss but at least he’s got a more pleasant personality.

The boys haven’t been left completely on their own. Their previously unmentioned Uncle Beck (Brian Keith, making his fourth appearance in this column) stops by now and again to look in on them. And their neighbor, professional mooch Bud Searcy (Jeff York, his sixth) is on hand to help himself to a plate of beans. Meanwhile, Bud’s tagalong daughter, Lisbeth, still seems to be nursing a mostly unrequited crush on Travis.

Marta Kristen steps into the role of Lisbeth, replacing Beverly Washburn. Kristen was just starting out in the business. A few years after Savage Sam, she’d be cast as Judy Robinson in Lost In Space, starring Disney’s former Zorro, Guy Williams, as her father. Beverly Washburn would also become a cult star with roles on the original Star Trek and in the unhinged drive-in classic Spider Baby. Apparently the role of Lisbeth Searcy is a young actress’ ticket to cult stardom.

The story doesn’t really kick in until Sam and Arliss chase after a pesky bobcat that’s been sneaking around the homestead. Travis and Lisbeth go looking for them, finding them still harassing the now cornered and harmless cat. Travis tries dragging Arliss away and while they’re squabbling, a riding party of Apache horse thieves happens by. They capture the kids and knock Sam unconscious, leaving him for dead.

The Apache admire Arliss’ spirit and decide to make him one of their own. Lisbeth is presumably meant to be turned into an “Indian squaw”. As for Travis…well, he’s kind of useless, so when he falls off a horse, the Indians don’t bother going back to pick him up. Fortunately, Uncle Beck and Bud have rounded up a posse (including Dewey Martin, who had starred in Disney’s Daniel Boone TV show, Slim Pickens and Royal Dano, his granite face sculpted into a permanent scowl) to rescue the kids. Sam has also recovered, so the posse follow his lead as he tracks Arliss’ scent across country.

You can probably see where all this is headed. The posse stays on the trail, despite some hardships and bickering. Dano’s character is presented as the most virulent Indian hater of the group. And while Keith patiently explains that he’s got a good reason to hate (Indians slaughtered his entire family), he’s also quick to cut him off after they rescue the kids and Dano’s still out for blood. So you see, not everybody is down to start indiscriminately murdering every Indian they meet. Just those who have a really, really good excuse.

Look, there are obviously many stories of Native Americans capturing white women and kids and either raping and killing them or raising them on their own. Those tales form the basis of one of the best Westerns of all time, John Ford’s The Searchers. Walt himself already explored the subject with more nuance and sensitivity five years earlier with The Light In The Forest. The thing is, The Light In The Forest is not a particularly nuanced or sensitive film. But compared to Savage Sam, it’s downright enlightened.

Savage Sam simply takes a handful of characters the audience is theoretically fond of and plunks them down into a standard issue Cowboys & Injuns picture. And I say “Injuns” because these are not Indigenous Peoples or Native Americans or even “Indians”. These are cartoon characters, presented with zero subtlety or respect, and played primarily by actors without a drop of Native ancestry. One notable exception was Pat Hogan, a member of the Oneida Nation who had previously appeared in Davy Crockett and Ten Who Dared.

The only halfway sympathetic Indian is a peace-loving Comanche who rides along with the Apache played by Dean Fredericks. Fredericks had the sort of ambiguously ethnic look that led to him playing a wide range of inappropriate roles. His most famous part came when he dyed his hair blond to play the title role in the TV adaptation of Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon. The Comanche helps the kids out a little bit, even if that usually just means he’s not actively participating in their abuse. He certainly doesn’t factor into their rescue all that much.

Theatrical release poster for Savage Sam

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of Old Yeller. But I can appreciate what others see in it, even if I don’t personally enjoy it. The same can’t be said for Savage Sam. This is a coarse, ugly movie that has virtually nothing in common with its predecessor. Director Robert Stevenson had at least been able to instill Old Yeller with some charm and pathos. Norman Tokar, who had previously demonstrated his ability to work with dogs and kids in Big Red, focuses instead on rote action sequences. He isn’t able to give Sam the same winning personality as Yeller. If there’s any kind of silver lining to it at all, at least Sam’s still alive at the end of the picture.

Sadly, the same can’t be said of the real-life inspiration for Sam and maybe some of the film’s unpleasantness can be explained by the events surrounding its creation. Walt hired author Fred Gipson to write the screenplay for Savage Sam in collaboration with William Tunberg, just as he’d done with Old Yeller. But Gipson was fighting a losing battle against alcoholism by this time. One weekend while working on Savage Sam, Gipson’s son, Mike, came home from college. He found their dog, who Sam was based on, chained up in the backyard and beaten to death. Mike went back to school and committed suicide. Not long after that, Gipson’s wife filed for divorce.

Savage Sam would be the last book Fred Gipson published in his lifetime, although he continued writing up to his death in 1973. A third Coates family adventure, Little Arliss, was published posthumously in 1978 and was turned into a 1984 TV special, although not by Disney.

Critics and audiences agreed that Savage Sam was one of Disney’s weaker efforts when it premiered in June 1963. It earned less than half of Old Yeller’s box office take. Compared to Son Of Flubber, which made nearly as much as The Absent-Minded Professor, it had to be considered a major disappointment. The fallout obviously hit Fred Gipson hardest but the movie’s failure also had repercussions for Tommy Kirk. This would be his last dramatic role at Disney. We’ll see him in this column again but when he returns, it’ll be back to comedies. And for Tommy Kirk, it’ll also be the beginning of the end.  

VERDICT: Disney Minus  

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Old Yeller

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Old Yeller

Let’s get this out of the way up front. Spoiler alert: the dog dies. You probably already knew that. Even if you’ve never seen Old Yeller, you probably knew that the dog dies. Bill Murray uses it to rally the troops in Stripes. An entire episode of Friends is built around Phoebe’s discovery of how the movie really ends. It’s one of those pop culture moments that transcends itself and enters into our collective subconscious.

Old Yeller started life as a novel by Fred Gipson published in 1956. It received a Newbery Honor, the runner-up prize to the award won by Johnny Tremain. Walt Disney must have snapped up the movie rights to the book almost immediately to get it into theaters for Christmas 1957. Gipson is credited as co-writer of the screenplay with William Tunberg and as near as I can tell, the film remains extremely faithful to the book.

This makes sense because the story doesn’t exactly have a lot of twists and turns. The Coates family are homesteaders trying to make ends meet in 1860s Texas. Patriarch Jim Coates (Fess Parker) is embarking on a cattle drive that’ll take him out of state for a few months, so oldest son Travis (Tommy Kirk) is appointed Man of the House. Pa’s gone less than 24 hours when a big yellow dog (Spike) comes tearing through the Coates’ cornfield, destroying crops, scaring the plow-mule and ripping up a couple lengths of fence.

That old yeller dog keeps showing up, stealing food and making himself comfortable. Travis is ready to shoot him on sight but his precocious younger brother Arliss (Kevin Corcoran) immediately lays claim to the mutt. The boys’ extraordinarily patient mother, Katie (Dorothy McGuire), thinks this is a fine idea for some reason and lets Arliss keep Yeller, sticking with literally the first name they could think of.

It isn’t long before Yeller stops stealing food and starts earning his keep. He saves Arliss from an angry mother bear (justifiably angry, since Arliss was messing around with her cub). He turns out to be a good herding dog. Even Travis warms up to him, eventually spending more time with him than Arliss does.

A hint of conflict seems to appear when Yeller’s original owner, cowboy Burn Sanderson (Chuck Connors), shows up to claim his dog. But Burn turns out to have a heart of gold. After he sees how the family has bonded with Yeller, he agrees to let them keep the dog (in exchange for a horny toad and a “woman-cooked meal” in an arrangement worked out with Arliss). Before he leaves, Burn takes Travis aside and warns him of a spread of hydrophobia that’s going through the area. This information will come in handy very soon.

Travis and Yeller’s bond is cemented when Yeller is seriously injured saving Travis from a pack of wild hogs. Travis is also badly hurt but makes it back home and brings his mother out to rescue Yeller. They escape the threat of hydrophobia this time but it soon descends on the Coates home. First, Travis has to put a rabid cow out of her misery. Then Yeller saves Katie from a rabid wolf attack. While at first it seems that Yeller might be OK, he eventually starts exhibiting symptoms. And so, Travis has to man up and shoot the best friend he’s ever had.

Re-release poster for Old Yeller

Old Yeller was an enormous hit when it was released in 1957. It was the fifth highest-grossing film of the year and it became a touchstone for multiple generations. It’s one of those movies that people either love or hate for the exact same reason: it’s so incredibly sad. If the death of Bambi’s mother makes kids cry, the death of Old Yeller seems to make men, women, boys and girls of all ages weep.

And yet, this is a film that has never done anything for me. It is not difficult to make me tear up during a movie. But I am resistant to the saccharine manipulation of Old Yeller. Look, nobody likes to see a beloved pet get put down and Yeller seems to be a very good boy indeed. But I just don’t get invested in the relationship between this particular boy and his dog.

Part of the problem is that all of the young performers grate on my nerves to some extent. This worries me because we’re going to be seeing a lot more of both Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran in this column. It isn’t that I think the kids are giving bad performances or are miscast. I believe they’re doing exactly what Walt and director Robert Stevenson asked them to do. I just don’t care for it.

Arliss is particularly hard to take. He’s an exploding little dynamo of energy, splashing around in mud puddles, climbing over the furniture and swinging from the rafters. Corcoran shouts most of his dialogue at the top of his lungs. He’s the kind of kid that makes you grit your teeth in frustration if you saw him at the grocery store or a restaurant, hoping against hope that his mother will actually step in and do something about the little hellion.

Travis is a bit more complicated and Kirk does a good job shading him in. He’s a decent kid, doing his best with probably too much responsibility. He warms up to Yeller slowly and believably, at least at first. But when he does decide he likes the dog, it’s like a switch has been flipped. All of a sudden, it’s his dog, not Arliss’. When neighbor Lisbeth (Beverly Washburn) tries consoling Travis by gifting him a puppy sired by Yeller (and not just any puppy, the pick of the litter), Travis petulantly rejects it, saying he already has a dog. When Lisbeth gives the pup to Arliss instead, I expected him to shout, “Hooray! Now I have two dogs!” I have a hard time feeling bad for Travis at the end since he essentially stole his brother’s dog. And I can’t feel sad for Arliss because he’s Arliss and everything seems to work out for him anyway.

Both Kirk and Corcoran went on to long careers at Disney. Tommy sort of stumbled into acting when he was cast in a bit part in a production of Ah, Wilderness! at the Pasadena Playhouse (also in the cast of that production was troubled former Disney star Bobby Driscoll). Afterward, he became a go-to child guest star on TV shows like Matinee Theatre and The Loretta Young Show.

In 1956, Disney secured the rights to Franklin W. Dixon’s The Hardy Boys, intending to make it their next Mickey Mouse Club serial. Tommy was cast as Joe, opposite Tim Considine from Spin And Marty as Frank. The Hardy Boys was a big hit, so Walt kept Tommy busy hosting remote segments on The Mickey Mouse Club. There was even talk of Tommy appearing as young Davy Crockett before Old Yeller came along. Old Yeller was huge but his next movie for the studio would be even bigger and secure Tommy’s reputation as Disney’s All-American Teenager.

As for Corcoran, he also started out on The Mickey Mouse Club, frequently playing different-but-similar characters called Moochie on serials like Spin And Marty and Moochie Of The Little League. After Old Yeller, he appeared as Tommy’s younger brother a couple more times and eventually moved up to starring roles. After graduating college, Corcoran went back to Disney as an assistant director and producer on movies like Pete’s Dragon and Herbie Goes Bananas. So he’ll continue to be a presence in this column for some time.

Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker both receive above-the-title billing, although Parker probably filmed the entirety of his role over the course of a day and a half. He sports a mustache this time but apart from that, it’s Parker as usual. He was getting very close to the end of his association with Disney by this point, so it’s hardly surprising that his role isn’t much more than a cameo.

McGuire had been Oscar-nominated for her role in Gentleman’s Agreement in 1947 but her career had hit a bit of a rough patch. Now in her 40s, she had begun to transition into “Mom Parts” with William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion, a sizable hit in 1956. Old Yeller cemented the matriarchal image of her career’s second act. She’ll be back in this column before long.

One actor who will not be returning to this column is Chuck Connors. Connors had been working steadily in movies and TV throughout the 50s but hadn’t become a huge star yet. Old Yeller would be his only work for Disney but it proved significant. Shortly after the film came out, Connors was cast as the lead in the television series The Rifleman. He turned the role down, telling the producers they weren’t paying enough. They were ready to move on to another actor when they went to a screening of Old Yeller. Impressed by Connors’ chemistry with Kirk, they agreed to his salary demands and Chuck Connors got the most iconic role of his career.

Old Yeller was a bona fide blockbuster but, perhaps because of the subject matter, Disney showed a fair amount of restraint when it came to tie-in merchandise. It was mostly limited to tie-in books and adaptations for comics and younger readers. There was one bizarre lapse in judgment. In 2005, Disney licensed the name to Kroger for Disney’s Old Yeller dog food. DogFoodAdvisor.com gave the product a one-star rating and it appears to have been bottom-of-the-barrel garbage. It doesn’t look like they make it anymore, which is probably just as well.

Disney's Old Yeller Dog Food

Walt was very proud of Old Yeller and re-released it to theatres a couple of times. The film was so popular that optioning Fred Gipson’s sequel was a no-brainer. So even though Old Yeller himself won’t be back in this column, the Coates family will.

Over the years, Old Yeller has remained critic-proof (except for dog food critics, that is). It’s easy to understand why. You simply cannot argue against the visceral, gut-punch reaction most people have to this movie. Believe me, it is no fun to be the odd man out at the party. Especially when that party’s more like a wake and everybody around you is bawling their eyes out. So if you are one of those people who hold Old Yeller near and dear to your heart, I understand, even if I can’t entirely relate.

VERDICT: Disney Minus. Sorry, it’s just not for me.

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