Jodie Foster

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: One Little Indian

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's One Little Indian

James Garner’s first screen appearance was on the debut episode of the TV western Cheyenne in 1955. By 1973, less than twenty years later, his career had already been a rollercoaster ride. He shot to stardom in 1957 when he landed the lead on Maverick. But his big break came back to bite him just three years later. After a writers’ strike halted production on the series, Warner Bros. put their newest star on suspension. Garner sued the studio for breach of contract and won but, needless to say, wasn’t the most popular guy around Hollywood after that.

After leaving Maverick, Garner transitioned into movies. It took a little while but he eventually broke through as a popular and charming leading man. In 1963, he starred in two very different but equally successful hits: the classic adventure movie The Great Escape with Steve McQueen and the Doris Day rom-com The Thrill Of It All. Once again, James Garner’s career appeared to be back on track.

Wanting to exercise more control over his projects, Garner started his own production company, Cherokee Productions. But his next several projects failed to connect with audiences. When the expensive 1966 racing drama Grand Prix made less money than its studio had hoped, director John Frankenheimer threw Garner under the bus, claiming the movie would have done better if he’d been able to cast his first choice, Garner’s old costar McQueen, or even his second, Robert Redford.

With his movie career moving in fits and starts, Garner went back to television in 1971 with the sorta-western Nichols. Audiences expecting another Maverick were disappointed and the series was canceled after a single season. Shortly after Nichols went off the air, Garner signed a two-picture deal with Disney. This says a lot about both the state of James Garner’s career at the time and the state of Walt Disney Productions.

At the time, A-list movie stars were not lining up to sign contracts with Disney. Garner was by far the biggest name to set up shop at the studio in a long time. But he’d once again become a bigger draw after his Disney contract expired. At the moment, he was a fading leading man in his mid-40s whose best days might have been behind him. Garner lent Disney a bit of credibility at a time when talent was giving the studio a wide berth. In return, Disney gave Garner a gig while he regrouped and figured out his next move.

One Little Indian, Garner’s first Disney project, finds the actor squarely in his comfort zone. It’s a western with comedic elements that casts Garner as a possibly roguish but fundamentally decent man of action. True-Life Adventures veteran Winston Hibler produced the film, so if you’re thinking some type of exotic animal will be involved, you’re not wrong. Hibler also brought back Napoleon And Samantha director Bernard McEveety, who had plenty of experience directing episodes of TV westerns.

Unlike a lot of Disney movies, One Little Indian wasn’t based on an existing book or story. The sole credited screenwriter is Harry Spalding. Spalding was a prolific writer of low-budget pictures like Surf Party, Curse Of The Fly and Wild On The Beach. He continued to work for Disney throughout the 1970s and, while most of that was for television, we’ll see him in this column again.

There’s also a new and somewhat surprising name composing the music. Jerry Goldsmith, already a five-time Oscar nominee for his work on such films as Planet Of The Apes and Patton, made his Disney debut on One Little Indian. Disney had a long, long history of relying on its own in-house music department. Seeing Goldsmith’s name pop up so soon after Marvin Hamlisch’s score for The World’s Greatest Athlete makes me suspect the studio was reconsidering the need to keep fulltime songwriters and composers on the payroll.

In One Little Indian, Garner plays Corporal Clint Keyes, a cavalry soldier arrested for desertion. We find out later that he turned against his commanding officer to save the lives of women and children during a raid on an Indian camp. But when we first meet him, he’s handcuffed and riding hellbent for leather across the prairie away from his captors including Sgt. Raines (Morgan Woodward, again reporting for bad guy duty after The Wild Country). Once Raines captures him, he decides Keyes can’t be trusted on horseback, so he forces him to walk, tied to the back of a horse.

After the opening credits, Raines’ party encounters another cavalry unit escorting a ragged band of Cheyenne to the reservation. Raines asks Lieutenant Cummins (the first of several Disney movies for veteran character actor Robert Pine, who you have definitely seen in something if you’ve watched any movies or TV shows over the past few decades) if he can spare an extra man to help with his unruly prisoner. Cummins refuses the request but is pretty sure Raines will meet up with the rest of his unit in a day or two.

Raines rides off with Keyes and the movie decides to follow Cummins and his party back to their fort where Captain Stewart (hey, it’s Pat Hingle!) has been expecting them. Stewart takes stock of his new captives…uh, I mean, guests…and orders the doc to give them a once-over. I probably don’t need to point out that the movie makes zero effort to place any of this business with the Cheyenne into the broader context of the Trail of Tears. These Natives are just part of the background like the mountains and trees.

While the white folks are distracted with the medical exam, a 10-year-old Cheyenne boy sees his chance to escape. He puts up a good fight but is eventually yanked down from a fence, exposing his pale white backside. Yes, it turns out that it’s a white boy, captured by the Cheyenne and raised as one of their own. It’s James MacArthur in The Light In The Forest all over again. I don’t know why Disney decided to go back to this particular well but I’m really hoping this is the last white-child-raised-by-Indians movie I’ll have to sit through. Disney wasn’t equipped to handle this kind of story in 1958 and they still weren’t in 1973.

As in The Light In The Forest, the cavalry is obliged to rip this kid away from the only family he’s ever known and find some well-meaning but misguided stranger to raise him. Here, the fort’s chaplain (Andrew Prine) is that stranger and he’s only too eager to volunteer his services as foster parent. He wastes no time in baptizing the kid and renaming him Mark.

That’s young Clay O’Brien as Mark, by the way. O’Brien made his film debut in the 1972 John Wayne picture The Cowboys. He appeared in a lot of westerns in the 70s, including another one for Disney, before leaving Hollywood to become a cowboy for real. In 1997, he was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. You just never know where these Disney kids are going to end up.

Mark bides his time for a bit and finally manages to sneak away while most of the fort is attending the Christmas Eve service. He sets off in search of his Cheyenne mother, Blue Feather, but the elements take a toll. He’s practically on his last legs when he’s accidentally shot by our old buddy Keyes, who turns out to be a part of this movie after all. He’s had a busy few days himself, escaping from Sgt. Raines and liberating a couple of camels from the military. Really, he just wanted the one but Rosebud (Rosie, for short) wouldn’t leave without her daughter, who Mark names Thirsty.

Keyes douses Mark with carbolic acid and patches him up, offering to travel with him as far as he can before he cuts out to Mexico. A quick stop for a bath reveals Mark’s true identity to Keyes. A couple of points to be made here. First, who decided that showing this kid’s butt was the only way to show he’s not indigenous? Second and more importantly, what difference does it make? It’s not as if the movie has some point it wants to make about Native Americans. It’s like McEveety and Spalding decided the kid had to be an Indian to justify him running into Keyes and he had to be white to justify him speaking English. Neither of those things are true. They’re just lazy.

In any event, Sgt. Raines and his team (which now includes tracker Jimmy Wolf, played by Jay Silverheels, last seen in Smith!) catches up to the pair at the watering hole but Keyes turns the tables on them. His plan does encounter a rather significant hitch. Instead of taking their horses for themselves, they end up scaring them away. But at least their pursuers end up on foot while Keyes and Mark still have their camels.

Next there’s some goofy business with Garner trying to sneak into a cowboys’ camp to steal some food only to have Rosie crash the party and spook the cattle. But the next significant thing to happen story-wise is an encounter with a middle-aged widow (Vera Miles of The Wild Country and a surprisingly large number of other Disney films) and her daughter (Disney appearance #2 for Jodie Foster). Doris McIver recently lost her husband and she plans on taking young Martha back to Colorado in just a few days. That suits Keyes fine, since he just wants to rest up, shave and maybe scrounge a hot meal or two for himself and Mark.

Martha is delighted by the camels and tries her best to befriend Mark, while Doris is delighted by Keyes, especially after he shaves. Keyes explains their situation to the widow and confesses that he really doesn’t know what to do with Mark. He can’t bring him to Mexico but he also can’t escort him back to the reservation without putting his own neck in a noose. Doris sympathizes with the fugitives and can’t ignore the spark between her and Keyes, so after thinking it over for all of thirty seconds, she agrees to bring Mark to Colorado with them. Mr. McIver must have been a real catch for his wife to agree to adopt a kid who thinks he’s an Indian on the off-chance it might eventually help her land a new man.

Satisfied that Mark’s in good hands, Keyes sneaks off in the middle of the night. The next morning, Mark is understandably upset. But he can’t pout for long because that mean old Sgt. Raines requisitioned some new horses off the cowboys Keyes tried to steal from earlier and he shows up demanding satisfaction. Mark runs away and soon, both he and Raines are tracking Keyes. As for Doris and Martha, they pack up and head for Colorado as scheduled. This might be the only normal human behavior depicted in the entire film.

Mark turns out to be a better tracker than Raines and Jimmy Wolf. Keyes had grabbed his gear and sent Rosie off alone, so while the bad guys were following a riderless camel, Mark picks up the scent of carbolic acid and catches up to Keyes. Mark is plenty pissed off and Keyes’ explanation that Blue Feather and the rest of the Cheyenne would reject Mark even if he could find them doesn’t help. The dynamic duo is about to split up again when Raines finally shows up. Mark escapes with the camels but Keyes is captured and taken to the nearest cavalry outpost, which happens to be the same one Mark escaped from, which means the chaplain absolutely could have found Mark if he’d put any effort into it.

Captain Stewart returns to the fort and is not amused by the freshly constructed gallows in his courtyard. He demands to see both Raines and Keyes and wastes no time in sizing up Raines as an enormous asshole. Still, orders are orders. Stewart allows Raines to continue with the hanging with the understanding that none of his men will have anything to do with it and Raines had better be on his way the second the deed is done.

As his last request, Keyes asks the chaplain to find Mark and see him safely brought to the McIvers in Colorado. The chaplain agrees, probably just relieved to be off the hook from his impulsive decision to adopt the kid himself, and escorts Keyes to the gallows. Raines slips the noose around Keyes’ neck and is ready to drop him when Mark and Rosie come to the rescue. Keyes drops but the scaffold is destroyed before he’s hung. In the ensuing melee, Keyes is able to escape with Rosie but Mark is recaptured.

Raines takes off in hot pursuit but eventually is forced back to the fort for reinforcements. However, Captain Stewart informs him that the case is officially closed. Raines’ orders were to hang Keyes and Keyes has now been hung. Whether or not he died is irrelevant. Stewart’s not going to hang a man for the same crime twice. The chaplain rides out to let Keyes know he’s a free man and deliver Mark. Sadly, Rosie was fatally wounded in the getaway. After a proper funeral, Keyes, Mark and Thirsty saddle up and head north for what they hope will be a happy reunion in Colorado.

In his memoir The Garner Files, James Garner is pretty harsh on One Little Indian. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of,” he writes. “This is one of them.” Part of me wants to push back against that sentiment and say it’s not that bad. But I appreciate Garner’s candor and far be it from me to disagree with someone who always seemed to possess a healthy and accurate degree of self-evaluation. He’s right. One Little Indian sucks.

In its meager defense, Garner himself is always a pleasure to watch. I’m not going to say he’s doing his best because I don’t think he was and frankly, the material didn’t deserve his best. Even so, you can’t help but like him no matter how weak the movie. James Garner made Polaroid commercials fun to watch. Of course he elevates this.

The same is true of Pat Hingle, who gets probably the most purely satisfying scene in the movie when he chews out Sgt. Raines. And it’s still fun watching Jodie Foster grow up on screen. In the year between this and Napoleon And Samantha, she’d had a smallish role in the Raquel Welch roller derby movie Kansas City Bomber, starred as Becky Thatcher opposite Johnny Whitaker in the Sherman Brothers non-Disney musical Tom Sawyer, and done a bunch of live-action and animated TV work. One Little Indian would be her last Disney movie for a little while. The next time we see her in this column, her career will be in a very different place.

Unfortunately, everything else about One Little Indian is bottom-of-the-barrel Disney at its worst. The comedic hijinks of the camels aren’t that funny and they’re shoehorned in between mawkish melodrama about Mark’s quest for a real family. As in The Light In The Forest, McEveety and Spalding are either unwilling or unable to admit that Mark’s family was the Cheyenne who raised him. But James MacArthur’s character in The Light In The Forest was older than Mark, so that movie was a bit more interesting in its depiction of the tension between his two sides. Mark’s ten years old. As far as we know, he doesn’t remember his birth parents at all. So if you’re not prepared to address his relationship with the Cheyenne, and Spalding and McEveety most definitely are not, you’re just not engaging with this material in any meaningful way.

Mark doesn’t display much personality at all. He keeps saying he wants to get back to Blue Feather but he doesn’t show it. And we get absolutely no indication what Blue Feather thinks about him. So it’s really difficult to care what happens to this kid, even after the chaplain, Keyes, Doris, Martha and half the camp go on about how much they want to help him. I feel worse for the camels than I do for Mark.

At the end of the day, James Garner wasn’t the only one who didn’t care for One Little Indian. The movie was released June 20, 1973. It ended up making about $2 million which, even in 1973, was not a lot. It came and went quickly, leaving barely a ripple to mark its passing. And yet, Garner still owed the studio another picture. Something tells me he hoped to knock it out and get it over with as quickly as possible.

VERDICT: Disney Minus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Napoleon And Samantha

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Napoleon And Samantha

In 1988, Michael Douglas won his first Academy Award for acting in the Oliver Stone film Wall Street (he’d already won one as a producer on One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest). A year later, Jodie Foster won her first Oscar for her work in the movie The Accused. So if you’d asked me a week ago if Michael Douglas and Jodie Foster had ever appeared in a film together, I’d have said sure, probably. They were both A-list stars who hit the upper echelons of their profession around the same time and continue to be huge to this day. I would not have guessed their paths crossed only once and very early on in the bizarro nature movie Napoleon And Samantha.

Napoleon And Samantha appears to be the brainchild of screenwriter Stewart Raffill. Raffill started his career as an animal supervisor. In that capacity, we’ve seen his work in this column before in movies like Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. and Monkeys, Go Home! In 1971, Raffill made his writing and directing debut with The Tender Warrior, an independently made animal adventure starring a pre-Grizzly Adams Dan Haggerty. It’s pretty lousy but Haggerty’s later fame ensured that it hung around kiddie matinees, school auditoriums and gymnasiums, and church basements for much of the 1970s.

Raffill was able to interest Disney and producer Winston Hibler in his script but evidently couldn’t convince them to let him direct (although he did get an associate producer credit). That job went to Bernard McEveety, whose younger brothers Joseph and Vincent have already appeared in this column a few times. Bernard was mainly a TV guy and always would be. He directed episodes of Gunsmoke, Combat, Trapper John M.D., Knight Rider and countless others. But for a few years in the early 70s, he followed his brothers into a brief theatrical detour at Disney. We’ll see his work again.

The Disney Machine has always worked in mysterious ways, so it’s difficult to retrace all the steps a relatively obscure movie like this made on its way to the screen. But Vincent McEveety had just directed The Biscuit Eater starring Johnny Whitaker. Whitaker probably had a three-picture contract at Disney. His next movie just so happened to be Napoleon And Samantha, directed by Bernard McEveety. If I had to guess, I’d assume Johnny was assigned to the picture first. Maybe Hibler tried to get Vincent to direct and he recommended his brother. I don’t know the exact chain of events but I’d be shocked if it was a coincidence. It’s a small world but it ain’t that small.

Regardless of how it worked out, Winston Hibler and Bernard McEveety were able to assemble an impressive cast for this oddity. Michael Douglas was obviously born into show business but he hadn’t been acting all that long when he was cast in Napoleon And Samantha and movies like Hail, Hero!, Adam At 6 A.M. and Summertree weren’t exactly setting the world on fire. Napoleon And Samantha probably didn’t do a whole lot for his career, either. His breakthrough role came a few months later on the hit cop show The Streets Of San Francisco. Douglas also would have been in the early stages of putting Cuckoo’s Nest together around this time, which is kind of fun to imagine.

Jodie Foster would have been about 9 years old when she made Napoleon And Samantha and she’d already been in the business for more than half her life. She made her Disney debut in Menace On The Mountain, a 1970 two-parter on The Wonderful World Of Disney directed by Vincent McEveety. Napoleon And Samantha was her first feature film after amassing a lengthy resume of TV and commercial credits. She’ll be back in this column several times.

Johnny Whitaker and Jodie Foster play the title characters but they’re billed beneath Douglas and Will Geer. Geer had a long, fascinating career dating back to the 1930s when he was on tour with folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and fellow Disney alum Burl Ives. His activism made him a target for the House Committee on Un-American Activities and he was blacklisted for a time in the ‘50s. Like Michael Douglas, Geer also found fame on a TV show that premiered in September 1972, starring as Grandpa Walton on The Waltons, a role he’d play until his death in 1978.

Coincidentally, Grandma Walton also appears in Napoleon And Samantha. Ellen Corby was a familiar character actress who’d been Oscar nominated for her role in 1948’s I Remember Mama. Since then, she’d turned up in dozens and dozens of movies and TV shows including Disney’s The Gnome-Mobile. The Waltons became one of those transformative shows that overshadow everything else the cast has ever done. Corby suffered a stroke in 1976 but recovered and returned to the show just before Geer’s death. She’d continue to play Grandma Walton until her own death in 1999.

Napoleon and Samantha are best friends who live in an idyllic small town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Napoleon lives with his grandfather (Geer), who regales him with tall tales of his adventures. Samantha’s parents are frequently absent, so she’s cared for by the family’s housekeeper, Gertrude (Corby). They spend their afternoons stealing empty bottles from the general store that they immediately return to the shopkeeper (Henry Jones from Rascal) for the deposit money.

One evening, Napoleon and his grandfather go to the movies (Disney’s Treasure Island is playing, naturally). On their way home, they encounter an aging clown camped out with the remnants of his circus. (That’s Vito Scotti, last heard from as Italian Cat in The AristoCats, as Dimitri the clown.) The circus has closed and Dimitri plans on going home to the old country but can’t take Major the lion with him.

Napoleon remembers that Grandpa once told him that he used to be a lion tamer and volunteers to take Major off Dimitri’s hands. Grandpa tries to get out of it (without actually admitting that he made the whole thing up) but Dimitri assures him that Major is tame as a kitten. Besides, he won’t cost much to feed since his teeth are so bad that he only drinks milk. Unable to think of a single reason why they shouldn’t accept a full-grown lion from a random clown they just met in the woods, Grandpa and Napoleon bring Major home and set him up in the chicken coop.

Things are OK for a little while until Grandpa reveals that he’s dying. He writes a letter to Napoleon’s only other living relative, an uncle in New York, and prepares the boy as best he can. But before you know it, the old man has passed away. Worse yet, his letter has been returned as undeliverable. Faced with the prospect of being sent to an orphanage and having Major taken away, Napoleon decides to keep his grandfather’s death a secret.

At this point, you might want to grab yourself a drink because from here on, things get weird. That’s right, stumbling across a clown and a lion in the middle of nowhere is not the weird part of this movie.

Napoleon wants to bury his grandfather up on the hill where they used to watch the sunset. But Samantha points out there’s no way two small children will be able to drag a six-foot corpse all the way up a hill, much less bury him. She suggests Napoleon go down to the employment office and hire somebody to help. That’s our Samantha. A real problem-solver, that one.

Down at the employment office, Napoleon meets Danny (Douglas), a freedom-loving poli-sci major who isn’t interested in steady work. He really just wants to earn enough to buy a five-dollar textbook. Napoleon’s got that much, so the two of them strike a bargain. Danny doesn’t seem too phased by having to bury an old man and hold a funeral for a couple of kids and a lion. But he’s not totally irresponsible because he doesn’t want to leave until he knows Napoleon will be taken care of. Samantha says he can come stay at her place and that’s good enough for Danny! He’s out the door and back up to his remote cabin in the woods with a “Hey, stop by if you’re ever in the area!”

Fooled ya, Danny! Napoleon has no intention of staying at Samantha’s house. He keeps on keeping on until old Amos the shopkeeper grows suspicious of the copious amounts of milk and candy Napoleon’s been buying. When Amos promises to stop by and check on his grandfather, Napoleon resolves to join Danny up at his cabin, taking the long way across the mountains. Samantha wants to make sure they’re OK, so she joins the perilous cross-country trek. The journey also gives Raffill a chance to show off a few more of his animals, including a mountain lion and a bear to wrestle with Major.

After a few days, Napoleon, Samantha and Major finally stumble across Danny sitting in the middle of a field reading a book, surrounded by goats. Danny is thrilled to see his new friends again. Really, words cannot express how happy he is. I wish someone would make a gif that really shows the sheer elation he’s feeling in this moment. Oh, wait! Somebody did!

Yeah, so anyway…after the initial thrill wears off, Danny’s a little mad that Napoleon lied to him. He tries to persuade him that the orphanage won’t be such a bad place and says that if he goes, Major can stay at the cabin with Danny. While Napoleon is mulling it over, Danny drives to town to let Gertrude know Samantha’s safe and sound. Of course, it wouldn’t be safe to leave the kids alone in the cabin (or just take them home, it seems) but not to worry. Danny’s new friend Mark the drifter (Rex Holman, presciently cosplaying as Jeffrey Dahmer) can take care of things!

The next day, Danny blithely knocks on Gertrude’s front door. Naturally, she calls the cops the second she sees who it is. The police haul Danny off to jail and Gertrude leads a mini-mob of gossiping locals after them. Between this and A Tiger Walks, there’s just something about big cats that brings out the worst in Disney townies. Danny, who is weirdly confident that this is all just a big misunderstanding for a guy who helped get rid of a body only a week ago, loses his cool when he spots Mark the drifter’s face on a wanted poster. Turns out, Mark is an escapee from a nearby insane asylum, which is something most people probably would have guessed the second they caught him creeping around outside their cabin peering in the window.

Danny is unable to convince the police chief (Arch Johnson) that he asked an escaped lunatic to babysit the kids. So he busts out of jail, steals a motorcycle and leads the cops on a chase back to the cabin. They arrive in the nick of time and even though Napoleon and Samantha are sad their little tie-up game was interrupted, they understand that the doctors have come to help Mark the drifter get better. Thanks, helicopter doctors!

All would seem to be well that ends well. Except that Napoleon’s thought things over and decided he and Major will be better off going to find a tribe of Indians to live with. Danny points out that they’ll be in for quite a hike since there aren’t any Indians left in the area (I mean, I’m sure there are but not in the romanticized sense Napoleon means, so point taken, Danny). After one more speech about the importance of family and more reassurance that Major can live with Danny in the cabin (and hopefully protect him from any more escaped mental patients), Napoleon agrees to go back home with Samantha.

Since I started this project, there have been a handful of movies that just kind of left me gobsmacked, wondering what the hell I had just watched. A Tiger Walks, Moon Pilot, even to some extent Perri and Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North have all been head-scratchers to some degree. Napoleon And Samantha may have them all beat. There just aren’t that many movies, Disney or otherwise, that have an adult hippie aiding and abetting two children in the disposal of a dead body in front of an ex-circus lion. Add in Michael Douglas, a preteen Jodie Foster, two Waltons and a probable child molester and you’ve got a recipe for wackiness.

It’s hard to even say what McEveety and Raffill were going for with this movie. Raffill’s background would suggest that the focus should be on Major the lion and their incredible journey across country. But a relatively small portion of the film is dedicated to the trek. And there’s no reaction to a boy with an unusual pet the way there is in Rascal. Most people never even find out there is a lion. They’re only concerned about the alleged child abductions.

That said, Major (or Zamba, the lion who plays Major) is an impressive beast. He wrestles a bear, allows chickens to crawl all over him, drinks gallon after gallon of milk and even gives rides to Johnny and Jodie. He’s a huge, magnificent cat and every single time he was on screen, I tensed up a little bit, even though I knew this was a Disney movie and nothing was really going to happen.

As a matter of fact, something did happen. After one take, Zamba turned on Jodie and grabbed her, shaking her around like a rag doll. The animal supervisor, presumably Raffill, got Zamba to “drop it” and she was rushed to the hospital. Jodie Foster has lion scars on her back and stomach to this day thanks to Zamba. Nevertheless, she was right back at work as soon as she was able. Nobody has ever accused Jodie Foster of not being a true professional.

Napoleon And Samantha ended up being Stewart Raffill’s last Disney picture, though not necessarily because one of his lions almost killed Jodie Foster. He went back to independent pictures and, in 1975, wrote and directed The Adventures Of The Wilderness Family. That movie was a surprise hit and he followed it with the very similar Across The Great Divide. In the 1980s, Raffill directed The Ice Pirates, The Philadelphia Experiment and Paul Rudd’s favorite movie, the E.T. ripoff/McDonald’s commercial Mac And Me. In 1998, he made the Disney-adjacent The New Swiss Family Robinson, which I might cover in an upcoming installment of Disney Plus-Or-Minus+.

Released on July 5, 1972, Napoleon And Samantha wasn’t a huge hit with either critics or audiences. And yet, it still managed to snag an Oscar nomination for Buddy Baker’s original score. It was a peculiar year for that category and not just because Baker’s pleasant but forgettable music was in the mix. One of the five nominations, Nino Rota’s The Godfather, was withdrawn after the score was ruled ineligible. It was replaced by John Addison’s Sleuth, which is a better score than Napoleon And Samantha, if you ask me. In the end, Baker, Addison, and John Williams (nominated for both Images and The Poseidon Adventure) all lost to Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight, a film that had been made 20 years earlier but was able to compete because it had never played theatrically in Los Angeles until its 1972 re-release. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how Napoleon And Samantha stood out enough to get a nomination in this crowded and confusing landscape.

Napoleon And Samantha is a weird little movie and I know full well that things are only going to get stranger as Disney plunges deeper into the 1970s. The studio didn’t want to stray far from the established genres they were known for: gimmick comedies, the occasional animated effort, and nature movies were all forms they knew inside and out. But their attempts at making something the same but different occasionally resulted in flailing, misguided efforts like this one. It might not be a very good movie but hey, at least nobody got hurt. Except for Jodie Foster, of course, but hey, she’s fine.

VERDICT: Disney WTF?

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