Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Charley And The Angel

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

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Scandalous John

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Scandalous John

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quad poster for Scandalous John

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Wild Country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternate theatrical poster for The Wild Country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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