George O'Hanlon

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Charley And The Angel

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Charley And The Angel

Beginning with The Shaggy Dog in 1959, Fred MacMurray and Walt Disney enjoyed a mutually beneficial working relationship. MacMurray’s Disney work gave his career a much-needed jolt. As for Walt, he identified with MacMurray and liked him personally, although I don’t know that they were necessarily close friends. But Walt went to bat for MacMurray more than once, as when he insisted on casting him in The Happiest Millionaire over the objections of the Sherman Brothers.

Because Walt and Fred were so closely connected, it wasn’t surprising when the actor stepped away from the studio after Walt’s death in 1966. Instead, he focused his attention on My Three Sons, the hit sitcom that had been on the air so long that the sons had all grown up, gotten married and had kids of their own. CBS finally decided to cancel the show after its 12th season. The final episode aired April 13, 1972.

The series made Fred MacMurray very rich. MacMurray’s savvy investments and the fact that he was a legendary tightwad made him even richer. So after My Three Sons went off the air, he didn’t really need to work anymore. Nevertheless, producer Bill Anderson was able to lure him back to the studio one last time with Charley And The Angel. Maybe MacMurray felt he owed it to the studio. Or maybe he just wasn’t ready to stop collecting paychecks yet.

Roswell Rogers, the TV writer responsible for the screenplay of The Million Dollar Duck, based his script on The Golden Evenings Of Summer, a nostalgic collection of semiautobiographical stories by humorist Will Stanton. Vincent McEveety is back in the director’s chair for the third time after working on Million Dollar Duck and The Biscuit Eater. We’ll be seeing his name more and more frequently in this column.

MacMurray stars as Charley Appleby, a hardware store owner in “Midwest U.S.A.”. The year is 1933 and Charley is obsessed with keeping the wolves of the Great Depression as far as possible from his business and his family. But he’s so concerned with the almighty dollar that he’s estranged from his wife, Nettie (the great Cloris Leachman in her Disney debut). Charley dismisses her wish for a trip to Chicago to visit the World’s Fair as a frivolous, expensive waste of time and money.

Charley’s relationship with his kids is in even worse shape. He thinks his daughter, Leonora (Kathleen Cody, back from Snowball Express), is engaged to an upstanding young man named Derwood Moseby (a quintessential Ed Begley Jr. character name that is unfortunately wasted on what amounts to a silent cameo). But she’s really attracted to Ray Ferris, an unemployed good-for-nothing proto-slacker played by the king of good-for-nothing proto-slackers, Kurt Russell. Russell, you may recall, made his Disney debut alongside Fred MacMurray in Follow Me, Boys!, so it’s fun to see them reunited seven years later.

As for Charley’s sons, Willie and Rupert, they’ve pretty much given up on their dad taking an active interest in their lives. They don’t even bother asking for help when attempting to assemble a homemade kite based on the rambling instructions of their favorite radio host. Charley finds out how bad things are later when they sing a “Happy Father’s Day” song to the dad of the kid next door and ask to borrow a couple bucks to chip in on a present for him. That’s cold, kids.

Vincent Van Patten and Scott Kolden play Willie and Rupert. Future tennis pro and World Poker Tour commentator Van Patten made a couple more TV appearances for Disney, including The High Flying Spy and The Boy And The Bronc Buster, but this was his only Disney feature. We’ll see a lot more of his dad, Dick Van Patten, who already popped up once in Snowball Express. Kolden’s acting career didn’t last long. He went on to costar in the nightmare factory Sigmund And The Sea Monsters opposite Disney alum Johnny Whitaker, his costar in the Disney TV-movie The Mystery In Dracula’s Castle. Kolden left acting completely in 1979, eventually resurfacing as an Emmy-nominated sound effects editor. I don’t know why but I really love it when child stars decide acting isn’t their bag and find success behind the scenes.

Charley heads to work and doesn’t seem to notice the unusually large number of near-miss accidents he keeps narrowly avoiding. I had a hard time noticing it myself, to be honest. McEveety rushes through this sequence so indifferently that most of the gags fail to register. After he swerves to avoid hitting a truck in a narrow alley, an older gentleman (Harry Morgan) in a white suit and a black bowler hat materializes on the hood of his car. He claims to be an angel sent to escort him to the great beyond. Having seen how little Charley has done with the gift of life, he assumes death will come as a sweet relief.

Naturally, Charley requires a little convincing that this guy, who can’t remember what his name used to be at first but eventually recalls that it’s Roy Zerney, is really an angel. But not too much. Roy just has to levitate in midair clad in the traditional angel’s uniform of white robe and harp to show Charley he’s the real deal. Roy can’t tell Charley how or when it’s going to happen but his time is definitely up.

Charley blows off his usual lodge meeting and goes straight home, determined to be a better husband and father. Nettie is touched by the flowers and the kids are pretty sure something’s wrong but everyone’s pleasantly surprised by the new Charley. But he’s turned over a new leaf just a little too late. When he suggests a family outing to the movies, no one is willing to change their plans for the night. Even Willie and Rupert, who were going to the movies anyway, would rather go with their pal next door and his dad than with Charley.

Everything Charley does to make things right with his family just makes things worse. He decides to sell the store to make sure Nettie has enough money to live on after he’s gone. But since he hasn’t told anyone about his impending demise, Nettie thinks he’s being crazy. Her suspicions deepen after she catches him talking to Roy. Since nobody can see or hear the angel apart from Charley, Nettie thinks he’s really gone off the deep end.

Things go from bad to worse when Leonora elopes with Ray. Charley tries to get some cash to cover his mounting expenses but a run on the banks causes Ernie the banker (Edward Andrews in his final Disney feature) to close his doors and freeze his assets. When he finds out that Nettie has loaned a hundred dollars to Pete the handyman (George “Goober” Lindsey’s third Disney appearance), he begins to worry that he won’t be able to get his affairs in order before it’s too late.

Burdened with financial worries, Charley has a heart-to-heart with his sons about the value of a dollar and the virtues of earning an honest living. Heeding his advice, the boys get jobs at a junk yard. They’re unaware that the owner, Felix (Larry D. Mann, last seen in Scandalous John), has a side hustle as a bootlegger. He acts as a middleman between the mob and local roadhouse owners like Sadie (Barbara Nichols, whose picture should appear in the dictionary next to the word “floozy”).

While the boys are working in the yard, Felix’s driver, Buggs (if there’s a gangster in a Disney movie, you know it’s gotta be Richard Bakalyan), shows up. The cops have seen through his “cooking oil deliveryman” disguise and he needs to stash the hooch. Felix isn’t about to lose a sale, though. He recruits Willie and Rupert to drive an old junker Model T over to Sadie’s place and deliver the “cooking oil”, figuring the cops would never pull over a couple of little kids who are way too young to drive. I’m not sure Felix’s reasoning is altogether sound but it turns out he’s right and the boys embark on a lucrative new career.

The kids find out what they’ve really been delivering when tough guy Frankie Zuto (Mills Watson from The Wild Country) arrives from Chicago. At the same time, the police have let Charley know that they’ve heard a rumor that Willie and Rupert are delivering booze to Sadie. Why is Charley talking to the police? Because he’d heard that Ray had taken Leonora to Sadie’s, gone out there to find her and ended up in jail after the cops raided the joint. I’m getting a lot of this out of order but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a lot of sense while it’s happening, either.

The upshot of all this is that Charley heads to the junk yard to get his kids just as the police are descending on Frankie Zuto. Frankie and Buggs take the boys hostage in the Model T. Charley winds up chasing them in Frankie’s car but gets knocked out, so Roy the angel takes the wheel, giving Disney another excuse to trot out the old self-driving car gag. Charley is arrested a second time when the cops stop the car and figure he must be a bootlegger since he’s in the bootlegger’s car.

With the town closed off by roadblocks, Frankie and Buggs force the kids to bring them home so they can lie low until the heat cools. Meanwhile in jail, Roy lets Charley know that the heavenly committee has reviewed his case and made their decision. They appreciate Charley’s efforts to be a better person but it hasn’t been enough. Tonight’s the night Charley will die.

It isn’t long before everyone has gathered at the Appleby house and I do mean everyone. Charley gets out of jail, Leonora and Ray return home after Ray’s out-of-town job offer falls through, even Pete the handyman pops his head in. Everyone pulls together to defeat the gangsters but in the midst of the scuffle, a shot rings out that seems to narrowly miss Charley. But in the end, the good guys prevail in a big way. The Applebys collect a big cash reward for capturing Frankie Zuto, Pete repays the hundred bucks he owes (with interest), the bank reopens, and the townsfolk even chip in an extra thank-you for some reason: an all-expense paid trip to Chicago and tickets to the World’s Fair. As for that bullet that was meant for Charley, Roy decided to cut him a break and intercept it. Apparently low-level angels are allowed to make their own judgment calls in Disney movies.

Charley And The Angel is an odd duck of a movie. Imagine It’s A Wonderful Life if Clarence was sent to visit Mr. Potter instead of George Bailey, sort of It’s A Miserable Life. Nobody seems to like Charley very much. Even Roy thinks everyone including Charley will be much happier after he’s dead. And this is the guy we’re stuck with for the duration of the picture.

For a time, I thought Charley And The Angel would turn out to be a riff on A Christmas Carol, where the threat of his impending death inspires Charley to be a better person. Sure enough, that’s Charley’s first impulse after hearing the news. But unlike Scrooge, who learns it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf, Charley finds out his ship has sailed and his family has moved on without him. That’s a more realistic life lesson. Sometimes it really is too late. But it’s a little bleak for a Disney movie.

If the movie focused on Charley learning how badly his inattention has damaged his family, it might have been a small gem. Fred MacMurray is just the guy to play a stern, stand-offish husband and father and he expresses some real hurt when his family rebuffs his attempts to reconnect with them. But the earnest, emotional core of the movie is awkwardly surrounded by some of the laziest broad comedy imaginable. After the kids start working for the gangsters, it becomes clear that nobody has the slightest idea what the movie’s even supposed to be about.

Charley And The Angel opens with a groovy new graphic, announcing the film as a 50th Anniversary presentation from Walt Disney Productions. The studio had undeniably come a long way since the Alice Comedies in 1923. But Charley And The Angel is an underwhelming way to celebrate this milestone. Everything about it says it’s just another live-action Disney comedy destined to be forgotten.

That’s pretty much exactly what happened. Charley And The Angel wasn’t a huge success at the box office and critics weren’t enthusiastic. Cloris Leachman somehow managed to snag a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Comedy or Musical) out of it. She’d won an Oscar a couple years earlier for The Last Picture Show, so maybe she was still riding on the collective good will generated by that film. She’s fine but really doesn’t have much to do in Charley And The Angel. In any case, she lost the award to Glenda Jackson, who also won the Oscar that year for A Touch Of Class.

Charley And The Angel marked the end of Fred MacMurray’s long association with Disney. Afterward, MacMurray appeared in two TV-movies and made one last big-screen appearance as part of the all-star ensemble threatened by killer bees in Irwin Allen’s The Swarm. He retired after that film and suffered from various health issues, including throat cancer, leukemia and a stroke. He recovered from most of these scares but eventually passed away from pneumonia on November 5, 1991. He was 83 years old.

Not all of Fred MacMurray’s Disney movies were gems. Even Walt himself didn’t always make the best use of his talents. Follow Me, Boys! and The Happiest Millionaire both would have benefited from a different leading man. But it’s impossible to imagine Disney without him. With movies like The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor, he helped set a tone and style for live-action Disney comedies that the studio would follow for years. It’s too bad that Charley And The Angel couldn’t have been a victory lap for Fred MacMurray. But then again, if it had ventured too far from what audiences had come to expect, it wouldn’t be Disney. In a way, it makes complete sense that Fred MacMurray’s final Disney movie in 1973 feels like it could just as easily have been his first back in 1959.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

Like this post? Help support Disney Plus-Or-Minus and Jahnke’s Electric Theatre on Ko-fi!

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

~ electrictheatre
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.

Like this post? Help support Disney Plus-Or-Minus and Jahnke’s Electric Theatre on Ko-fi!

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Million Dollar Duck

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Million Dollar Duck

There’s a reason there’s not a lot of movies based on Aesop’s Fables and you probably don’t have to be a film major to figure it out. The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs, the fable that provides the jumping off point for The Million Dollar Duck, is all of three paragraphs long. Four if you consider the moral to be its own thing. Not that it really matters in this case, since the folks behind Million Dollar Duck decided to cut the moral and just leave the eggs. As a result, this is a movie that literally has no point.

The Million Dollar Duck was written by Roswell Rogers from a story by Ted Key. Key started his career as a cartoonist, creating the single-panel gag cartoon Hazel for the Saturday Evening Post. He also worked for Jay Ward, creating the Mr. Peabody and Sherman segments for The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show. One of the other segments on that show was Aesop And Son, one of the few sustained adaptations of Aesop’s Fables in pop culture. As far as I know, Aesop And Son never tackled The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs. Did The Million Dollar Duck start off as an unused Rocky And Bullwinkle concept? I don’t know for sure but it would make sense.

Producer Bill Anderson gave the film to director Vincent McEveety. This was the first of a dozen movies McEveety would direct at Disney over the next decade. He’d started out as an assistant director, working on Westward Ho, The Wagons!, Zorro and other TV productions. Since then, he’d built an extensive TV resume, helming multiple episodes of Star Trek, Gunsmoke and many others. Practically the entire McEveety family worked at Disney at one point or another. Vincent’s brother, Joseph L. McEveety, was also an assistant director who turned to screenwriting with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. His other brother, Bernard, will be in this column soon.

This was Dean Jones’s first movie back at Disney since the massive success of The Love Bug in 1968. In the meantime, he’d gone off to Italy to make the gimmick comedy knock-off Mr. Superinvisible. That movie was released in the States by K-Tel, who proved to be better at selling records and Veg-O-Matics than movies. It was an inauspicious attempt at kick starting his non-Disney career. You can see why Jones opted to return to Burbank.

Jones’s leading lady was a rising star named Sandy Duncan. Like a lot of Disney stars, Duncan had made a name for herself on Broadway, winning Tony nominations for her performances in the musicals Canterbury Tales and The Boy Friend. The Million Dollar Duck was only Duncan’s first movie but Hollywood really wanted to make her a big star. That same year, she also starred in the Neil Simon movie Star Spangled Girl and got her own sitcom, Funny Face (which would be retooled and retitled The Sandy Duncan Show for the 1972 season).

But Sandy Duncan also had to deal with her share of hardship in 1971. That fall, she had surgery to remove a brain tumor from behind her left eye. The procedure was successful but left her blind in that eye (contrary to urban legend, she does not have a glass eye). Fortunately, she recovered quickly and went on to more Tony nominations and TV appearances, including the epic “Return Of Bigfoot” crossover episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Well, epic to me in 1976, anyway. At any rate, Sandy Duncan will be back in this column.

Tony Roberts, the other actor making his film debut this week, also costarred with Sandy Duncan in Star Spangled Girl. But he won’t be back in this column. In 1972, he starred alongside Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam. He’d appear in several more films as Woody’s best friend, which probably saved him from spending the 1970s playing Dean Jones’s best friend.

One of the things I’ve consistently enjoyed about Disney’s gimmick comedies are the frequently playful and innovative opening title sequences. Movies like The Shaggy Dog and The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones not only kept the animation department busy, it allowed them to experiment with different styles like stop-motion. The Million Dollar Duck opens with hand-drawn opening credits by Ward Kimball and Ted Berman, which sounds great in theory. The fact that they’re so utterly pedestrian is the first sign that this is not going to be one of the studio’s best efforts.

Playing against a blue background, the titles show an animated duck crossing back and forth along the bottom of the screen, slowly building a row of six eggs. At the end, he adds a dollar sign, a 1 and a couple of commas, transforming the eggs into “$1,000,000”. That’s it. I mean, come on. This is Disney, for Pete’s sake! The best you could come up with was about five seconds of animation flipped and repeated six times? I get the feeling nobody is bringing their A-game to this project.

Jones stars as Albert Dooley, a professor and researcher in animal behavior at an unnamed university that might just as well be Medfield College. Dooley was once voted most likely to succeed by his graduating class but now he’s struggling to make ends meet. His finances are so bad that he has to deny his son Jimmy’s request to adopt a puppy. Lee Montgomery also makes his film debut as Jimmy. A year later, he’d be best friends with a rat in Ben, the sequel to Willard. And in a 1974 Easter Egg that probably meant very little to audiences at the time, he played a kid named Steve Spelberg in an episode of Colombo.

Dooley’s wife, Katie (Duncan), is doing her part to help out by making her own homemade applesauce. Katie’s too dim to realize that you shouldn’t put garlic, curry powder and mustard in applesauce and Albert’s too polite to mention it tastes like garbage, so he’s sent off to work with a tub full of the toxic sludge. This applesauce is actually a plot point later on, so I hope you’re paying attention.

Albert arrives at the lab, where a chimp tries to steal his lunch. Even the chimp won’t eat the applesauce, so he pawns it off on his neighbor, the duck. The duck happily scarfs it down, just before failing another battery of simple tests designed by Albert’s boss, Dr. Gottlieb (Jack Kruschen). Gottlieb’s had it up to here with this furshlugginer duck and orders it out of the lab for good. The duck wanders into the radiation lab across the hall where it’s bombarded with science rays. Albert retrieves the bird and decides to take the radioactive idiot duck home to his son.

Now a duck’s not the same as a puppy but Jimmy is so desperate for a pet of any kind that he names his new friend Charlie. (Like Clint Howard in The Wild Country, Jimmy’s one of those kids that give every animal the same name for whatever reason.) Albert’s not too thrilled about that. He had planned on giving the duck to a local farmer or something. But Katie cautions him against widening the “generation gap” on the whole pet issue. Gotta love it when Disney tries using zeitgeisty buzz words.

While Albert and Katie are hashing this out, Charlie gets into the next-door neighbor’s pool. Joe Flynn plays the neighbor, Finlay Hooper, adding uptight treasury agent to his repertoire of uptight deans and uptight network executives. Hooper’s dog barks repeatedly at the duck, causing Charlie to lay an egg every time. Katie’s ready to whip up an omelet but Albert, briefly remembering that the duck is radioactive, puts the kibosh on that idea. He tells her he’ll bury the eggs in the backyard under cover of darkness. As one does, I suppose.

That night, Albert accidentally cracks one of the eggs and discovers what appears to be a solid gold yolk. The next day, he has the yolk analyzed and sure enough, it is gold, albeit with some peculiar imperfections like pectin from apple peels. A quick consult with Dr. Gottlieb provides all the pseudo-science Albert needs to go into the golden egg business with his best friend, lawyer Fred Hines (Roberts).

Albert and Fred want to go about this the right way, setting up a corporation and making sure not to spend so much that they’d call attention to themselves. But a call from the bank about some bounced checks rattles Katie. When Charlie lays another egg, she takes it straight to the bank and tries to deposit it. The bank manager advises her to take it to a refinery instead. She cashes in the egg, squares her account at the bank, and buys herself a swell new hat as a reward.

At first, Albert’s mad that Katie just waltzed into a bank with a hunk of gold. But Fred thinks she may be on to something. Basically, Katie is such a guileless idiot that she can go anywhere with a pocketful of golden egg yolks and cash them in. Even if she’s questioned, she can just tell the truth and nobody’s going to believe her anyway. It’s the “don’t ask me, I’m just a girl” theory of scams, crimes and petty larcenies.

Fred’s plan doesn’t work quite as well as he’d hoped, however. Even though Katie spreads the gold around town, people do start wondering where all these egg-shaped gold nuggets are coming from. The Treasury Department, under pressure from President Nixon himself (or at least a guy who vaguely resembles him from behind), launches an investigation. Unfortunately, their only lead is the list of aliases Katie’s used at the different refineries. Except they’re not aliases. They’re all variations of her actual name. But that’s too tough a nut for the T-Men to crack. All except Hooper, of course, who lives right next door to the perpetrators. He decides to engage in a little old-fashioned snooping to figure out what’s going on.

But all is not well at the Dooley household. Albert’s been so obsessed with egg production that he’s failing as a father. Things are so bad that Jimmy and Charlie have started hanging out with dune buggy-driving slackers Arvin and Orlo (Jack Bender from The Barefoot Executive and Billy Bowles). The egg scheme isn’t going according to plan, either. So far, Albert has resisted the temptation to spend money but Fred has swooped in and picked up a sporty yellow convertible. The very car Albert had his eye on, of course.

Hooper finally tricks Jimmy into showing him how Charlie lays golden eggs. Even though Katie manages to snatch the egg away from him, Hooper still reports what he’s learned to his boss, Mr. Rutledge (James Gregory). Rutledge leads a raid on the Dooleys but Jimmy runs away with Charlie and we all know what that means, don’t we? Yep, it’s time for the Wacky Disney Car Chase of the Week (sponsored by Big Al’s Auto Body of Burbank). This one involves a garbage truck, the convertible, Arvin’s dune buggy, a cherry picker, a parking garage and, as always, wet paint. Albert saves Jimmy from falling to his death and realizes that his family is more important than mutant duck gold.

Albert is arrested for violating the Gold Reserve Act. But when Hooper tries to get Charlie to lay an egg on the stand, he’s unable to duplicate the trick. Albert volunteers to show the court how it’s done, even though he could have done nothing and let everyone believe Hooper was crazy. When Charlie lays a perfectly ordinary egg (evidently all the radiation and applesauce has worn off), the case is dismissed for lack of evidence. Hooper points out that the defendants have thousands and thousands of unexplained dollars in the bank but the judge says there’s no law against getting rich, as long as you pay your taxes.

Alternate poster for Million Dollar Duck

For the record, the moral of Aesop’s fable is, “Those who have plenty want more and so lose all they have.” The moral of The Million Dollar Duck appears to be, “There’s no law against getting rich, as long as you pay your taxes.” Personally, I think the original is more universally applicable but there’s nothing like that here. Albert doesn’t lose the duck out of hubris or because he’s trying to get more than the duck can produce. It just stops working. Plus, he gets to keep everything he made up to that point and fix his relationship with his son. Sounds like Albert came out ahead all around on this deal.

Gene Siskel admitted to walking out on a screening of The Million Dollar Duck, one of only three movies he couldn’t make it through in his professional career. His future partner, Roger Ebert, presumably made it to the end but referred to it as “one of the most profoundly stupid movies I’ve ever seen.” He wasn’t wrong but let’s face it. A lot of these Disney gimmick comedies are pretty dumb. That can be forgiven if they’re also funny. This one ain’t.

Throughout his Disney career, Dean Jones was frequently stuck with animal costars. Cats, dogs, monkeys, horses, you name it. He could be a lot of fun in these movies but it seems as though the stars had to align perfectly for them to work. If he’s just a little too arrogant or too dense, you get something like The Ugly Dachshund or Monkeys, Go Home! or this movie. Albert doesn’t seem smart enough to be a scientist and his rocky relationship with his wife and son makes him tough to root for on a personal level. You know a character is unlikable when you hope that he’ll lose his battle with the IRS.

As for Sandy Duncan, she’s saddled with the unenviable task of playing a character so pathologically stupid that it’s a wonder she’s able to make it through the day. It would be one thing if she was simply ditzy or scatterbrained but Katie appears to be a genuine moron. She’s really difficult to take but I can’t entirely blame Duncan for that. I’m hard-pressed to think of any actress who would have fared better with this material.

The Million Dollar Duck came out June 30, 1971, and most critics seemed to agree with Siskel and Ebert. The movie was not well-loved and it did so-so business at the box office. It did somehow manage to snag a couple of Golden Globe nominations. Sandy Duncan was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer – Female, which kind of makes sense if you take the rest of her work that year into consideration. Ironically, she lost to Twiggy in Ken Russell’s film of The Boy Friend, one of the shows that brought Sandy to prominence in the first place. (Incidentally, the other nominees were Cybill Shepherd for The Last Picture Show, Janet Suzman for Nicholas And Alexandra, and Delores Taylor for Billy Jack. What a weird year.)

Dean Jones, on the other hand, was nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. He was up against Bud Cort in Harold And Maude, Walter Matthau in Kotch, Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, and the eventual winner, Topol in Fiddler On The Roof. In a career full of silly Disney comedies, this was the one Dean Jones performance singled out by the Hollywood Foreign Press as worthy of a Golden Globe nomination. I don’t know, maybe there just weren’t a lot of comedies and musicals in 1971.

In any event, Dean Jones’s return to Disney gave him a little bit more freedom to pursue outside projects. Later in 1971, he produced and starred in a Prohibition-era sitcom called The Chicago Teddy Bears. It only ran three months before CBS yanked the low-rated show off the air. Naturally, Jones bounced back from that by heading back to the House of Mouse. Dean Jones will return.  

VERDICT: Disney Minus

Like this post? Help support the Electric Theatre on Ko-fi!