Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Savage Sam

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Savage Sam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theatrical release poster for Savage Sam

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

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

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

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

VERDICT: Disney Minus  

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Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Littlest Outlaw

Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Littlest Outlaw

The Littlest Outlaw is a minor entry in the Disney canon. It’s rarely allowed out of the Disney Vault. The studio released it on VHS back in 1987 and as a Disney Movie Club Exclusive DVD in 2011. It has not been released on Blu-ray and isn’t currently available on Disney+, although a high-def version is available to rent or buy digitally on platforms like Vudu and iTunes. And while I’m not going to make the case that this is some kind of neglected masterpiece, The Littlest Outlaw is a better movie than its low profile would suggest.

The movie was the brainchild of producer Larry Lansburgh. Lansburgh started out as a stuntman before a fall from a horse broke his leg and ended his on-camera career. In 1938, he took an entry-level job at Disney, eventually making his way into editing. In 1941, he was part of El Grupo, the South American goodwill tour of Disney artists sponsored by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. Lansburgh shot some of the 16mm footage that later appeared in Saludos Amigos and was an associate producer on The Three Caballeros.

Throughout his career, Lansburgh’s first love remained animals, horses in particular. In 1954, he produced and directed Stormy, The Thoroughbred, a 45-minute featurette about a racehorse who’s bought by a champion polo player. Lansburgh next pitched Walt the idea for The Littlest Outlaw. Walt, who was also an avid polo player and horse-lover himself, liked the idea.

With Lansburgh producing, Walt gave the story to Bill Walsh to flesh out into a screenplay. Walsh had started out writing various Disney comic strips like Mickey Mouse and Uncle Remus. Recently, he’d been put in charge of television, producing major hits like Davy Crockett and The Adventures Of Spin And Marty. The Littlest Outlaw would be his first feature film but it was far from his last. We’ll see plenty more of Bill Walsh’s work in this column.

Lansburgh’s south-of-the-border trip evidently made quite an impact on him. There’s no real reason why Lansburgh couldn’t have simply hired a local crew, driven half an hour in any direction from the Burbank studio and made The Littlest Outlaw there. But Lansburgh wanted his film to have authenticity. To direct, he hired Roberto Gavaldón, one of Mexico’s leading filmmakers. The film was shot entirely on location in Mexico by a bilingual cast and crew.

Contemporary critics are all too eager to condemn movies of the past for whitewashing or indulging in outdated and offensive cultural stereotypes. So it’s disappointing when a movie like this gets it right and doesn’t receive the credit it deserves. Representation does matter and Disney and Lansburgh deserve to be acknowledged for engaging so many Hispanic artists in front of and behind the cameras.

In fact, Gavaldón actually shot the movie twice, once in English and again in Spanish. The Spanish version, El pequeño proscrito, makes a few changes. Most notably, Mexican actor and singer Pedro Vargas appears as Padre, a role played by Joseph Calleia in the English-language version. This version is difficult if not downright impossible to see these days, which is too bad. I’d love to see how the Spanish version differs from the English.

Lobby card for the Spanish language version of The Littlest Outlaw

The movie itself is a pleasant if unsurprising story of friendship between a boy, Pablito (Andrés Velázquez), and a horse. The horse, Conquistador, is owned by General Torres (played by John Ford regular Pedro Armendáriz). Torres plans on riding Conquistador to victory in an upcoming show but the horse refuses to make the high jump. Pablito’s stepfather is the horse’s trainer but his abusive methods only make the horse even more afraid to jump. When Conquistador’s skittishness causes the General’s young daughter to be thrown off, Torres orders the animal killed. But Pablito knows it isn’t Conquistador’s fault, so he runs away with the horse, encountering outlaws, gypsies and a kind-hearted priest (Calleia).

Again, none of this is exactly groundbreaking. You’ve seen variations of this story before. Unfortunately, the weakest link is young Velázquez, who seems stiff and uncomfortable throughout. Maybe he gives a more relaxed, natural performance in the Spanish-language version. The grownups, on the other hand, are a lot of fun, especially Calleia as the Padre. Calleia enjoyed a long Hollywood career, often playing bad guys and dark, shadowy figures. The Littlest Outlaw is the opposite of that. Calleia seems to be having a good time as the friendly, easy-going Padre who offers sanctuary to Pablito and Conquistador.

While the locations are lovely and the performances are generally solid, the film could use a little more Mexican flavor to spice things up. It makes a move in the right direction in its final act as Pablito’s journey takes him into the bullfighting arena where he encounters legendary matador Pepe Ortiz, played by none other than Pepe Ortiz himself. We get to see some authentic bullfighting action and while it isn’t as graphic or violent as some I’ve seen, it’s still plenty real. Bullfighting has become a controversial sport in the West, especially among animal rights activists. It could be this aspect of the film that prevents Disney from making it more readily available. None of the footage is particularly disturbing, unless you’re simply against the very idea of bullfighting at all. But Disney tends to react (or overreact) on the side of caution when it comes to potentially touchy subjects.

The Littlest Outlaw was Disney’s Christmas release for 1955, a big year for Walt in virtually every respect. His television presence was firmly established thanks to both the weekly Disneyland anthology series and the daily Mickey Mouse Club. Disneyland, the theme park, opened in July and after a fairly disastrous opening day, was rapidly turning into one of Southern California’s must-see attractions. And at the movies, Lady And The Tramp had become Walt’s biggest animated hit in years, while the first theatrical compilation of Davy Crockett episodes was essentially a license to print money.

But The Littlest Outlaw ended 1955 with a bit of a whimper. Critics dismissed it and, after its original theatrical release, it didn’t leave much of a cultural footprint. The studio did release a record, The Story Of The Littlest Outlaw, narrated by Jiminy Cricket for whatever reason. The record stayed in print well into the 1960s, periodically getting re-released alongside other stories like Bongo and The Three Little Pigs. It seems possible that more kids ended up becoming familiar with Jiminy Cricket’s telling of the story than the original film.

Album cover artwork for The Story Of The Littlest Outlaw

There’s no real reason for Disney to keep The Littlest Outlaw under wraps. It’s a fine little movie. Nothing you haven’t seen before but it’s a perfectly agreeable rainy afternoon movie. They’ve certainly shined a spotlight on far worse. Ideally, they should release both the English and Spanish-language versions on Disney+. They could use more multilingual programming and it would be fascinating to compare the two versions. Honestly, a Disney en español collection would be a nice addition to the service. Give me a call, Disney+ Folks! I’m available for consulting both on a freelance or a more permanent basis.  

VERDICT: Not quite a Disney Plus but better than a Disney Minus, so I guess that makes it just Plain Disney.

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