Ward Kimball

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Bedknobs And Broomsticks

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Bedknobs And Broomsticks

When a studio produces a movie that captures lightning in a bottle the way Disney did with Mary Poppins, you can’t blame them for trying to replicate the trick. But Walt’s follow-up musical, The Happiest Millionaire, had been an ambitious and costly misfire. So Bedknobs And Broomsticks would appear to be a take-no-chances attempt to completely recreate the creative alchemy that produced Mary Poppins. That’s sort of true but Bedknobs And Broomsticks isn’t exactly a Mary Poppins clone. It’s more like a fraternal twin.

Walt Disney tried for a long, long time to wrestle the film rights to Mary Poppins out of author P.L. Travers’ clutches. Negotiations were contentious and on more than one occasion, it appeared as though the project was doomed. Walt needed a backup plan in case Mary Poppins fell apart. One idea was a film based on a pair of children’s books by Mary Norton that Disney had acquired the rights to years earlier. The Magic Bed Knob and Bonfires And Broomsticks were Norton’s first published works. By 1957, the two books were collected under the title Bed-Knob And Broomstick. Norton’s most famous work is probably The Borrowers, which I’m frankly stunned Disney never made into a movie.

Walt instructed the Sherman Brothers to start coming up with songs for both Mary Poppins and Bedknobs And Broomsticks. Once Travers finally signed on the dotted line, Bedknobs was scrapped. The Shermans picked it up again in 1966, presumably assuming that it would make an obvious follow-up to Mary Poppins. Unfortunately, it was a little too obvious. Bedknobs And Broomsticks felt so much like Mary Poppins that it was abandoned a second time.

In 1968, the Shermans’ Disney contract was due to expire. The boys had always reported directly to Walt. Since his death in 1966, they’d been making plans to leave the studio. Before they left, producer Bill Walsh had them finish up their work on Bedknobs And Broomsticks. As they’d done on Mary Poppins, the Shermans worked closely with Walsh and cowriter Don DaGradi to crack the story.

Apparently Walsh had no intention of actually making Bedknobs And Broomsticks quite yet. He just wanted to make sure that the Shermans’ work wasn’t left unfinished while they were still on the hook for the studio. Once they had a finished script, the Shermans moved on to other projects elsewhere with an assurance from Walsh that they could come back if Disney ever did decide to make the movie.

Walsh returned to Bedknobs And Broomsticks in late 1969, after the Shermans had gone on to do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This time, he decided to embrace the project’s similarities to Mary Poppins. He brought in that film’s director, Robert Stevenson. Stevenson had become one of the studio’s most reliable filmmakers since Poppins, turning out blockbusters like Blackbeard’s Ghost and The Love Bug. Animator Hamilton Luske, who had been part of Mary Poppins’ Oscar-winning visual effects team, passed away in 1968, so Ward Kimball was put in charge of Bedknobs’ animated sequence.

Walsh’s first choice to play witch-in-training Eglantine Price was Mary Poppins herself, Julie Andrews. Andrews’ career was about to hit a rough patch. Her 1968 musical Star! had been an expensive flop. Her next film, 1970’s Darling Lili directed by her husband Blake Edwards, didn’t fare much better. When she got the call from Disney, Andrews passed on the role, fearing it was too similar to Mary. She later reconsidered, figuring she owed Disney one for igniting her career and probably thinking she could use a hit, but by then it was too late. Walsh had already given the role to Angela Lansbury.

Lansbury had been in Hollywood since the 40s and it seemed as though she’d had to reinvent her career several times already. She’d received three Oscar nominations but studios frequently had no idea what to do with her. Bedknobs And Broomsticks was her first lead role in a movie musical, despite the fact that she was a regular presence on Broadway. Lansbury will be back in this column in vocal form but not for quite some time, so it’s a little surprising how associated she’s become with Disney. Apart from a cameo in Mary Poppins Returns, this is her only live-action Disney appearance.

To star opposite Lansbury, Walsh tried to get Ron Moody, another Broadway veteran who had just starred in the movie version of Oliver! But Moody wanted top billing and refused to budge on that point. So Walsh brought in David Tomlinson, another Mary Poppins star. This would be Tomlinson’s third and final Disney appearance following Poppins and The Love Bug. His last movie, The Fiendish Plot Of Dr. Fu Manchu, came out in 1980. After that, he enjoyed a happy retirement until his death in 2000 at the age of 83.

The plot of Bedknobs And Broomsticks is almost a funhouse mirror version of Mary Poppins. Instead of a practically perfect magical nanny coming to the aid of a 1910 family, we have three orphans escaping the German blitz in 1940 being foisted upon a correspondence school witch who doesn’t particularly care for children. Mary has seemingly limitless powers. Eglantine Price is still learning the handful of spells she’s been sent. Mary imparts valuable lessons to the Banks family but it’s the kids who have to teach Miss Price to open up.

The Rawlins children, Charlie, Carrie and Paul, are played by Ian Weighill, Cindy O’Callaghan and Roy Snart. All three had previously appeared in a few commercials but that was about the extent of their acting experience. Only Cindy O’Callaghan continued on in the profession, mostly in British TV shows like EastEnders. Snart evidently became a software entrepreneur, while nobody’s one hundred percent sure whatever happened to Ian Weighill. They’re all natural performers, so I hope that if nothing else, they’ve all led happy, productive, scandal-free lives unlike so many other child stars.

The story kicks into gear when the kids spot Miss Price learning to fly on a broomstick while trying to sneak out. Now that Miss Price seems more interesting, they decide to stick around. Charlie, the oldest and most cynical of the bunch, decides to push back against Miss Price’s strict rules by holding her witchy secret over her head. In exchange for their silence and cooperation, she gives them a transportation spell that only young Paul can operate by twisting an enchanted bedknob.

Miss Price has recently received word that Professor Emelius Browne’s Correspondence College of Witchcraft is closing, just as she was about to receive her final lesson in Substitutiary Locomotion. Determined to get the spell, she packs the kids onto the magic bed and has Paul take them to London. There they discover that “Professor” Browne is nothing more than an ordinary stage magician and not a very good one, at that. He’s thrilled to learn that Miss Price is actually able to make his spells work. Unfortunately, the book he’s been cribbing the spells from is incomplete, so he offers to help her track it down.

A search of the market at Portobello Road turns up nothing but attracts the attention of Bookman (Sam Jaffe) and his enforcer, Swinburne (British TV personality Bruce Forsyth). Bookman also wants the spell and had hoped Browne had it in his half of the book. He also reveals that the spell is engraved on the Star of Astaroth, a sorcerer’s medallion now supposedly kept on the legendary Isle of Naboombu. Naboombu is supposed to be off-limits to humans. But most humans don’t have access to a magical bedknob, so Paul whisks them away to Naboombu.

The bed splashes down in the animated Naboombu Lagoon. Mr. Browne and Miss Price have time to win an underwater dance contest judged by a codfish (voiced by Bob Holt, later the Lorax, Grape Ape and lots of others) before they’re fished out by a bear (Disney regular Dal McKennon). Browne demands to see King Leonidas (Lennie Weinrib, voice of H.R. Pufnstuf and many other favorites of the 1970s and 80s). Both the bear and Leonidas’ secretary (also Weinrib) advise against this. The king is in an even worse mood than usual because he can’t find a referee for his anything-goes soccer match.

Browne, an enthusiastic fan and former footballer himself, volunteers for the job. After a far-from-regulation match, Browne is able to palm the Star of Astaroth medallion. They hot-foot it back to the bed, which transports them safely home. Unfortunately, the medallion doesn’t survive the journey between realms. But that’s OK because Paul has had a picture of it, engraving and all, in his picture book the whole time, rendering about half of the movie up to this point completely pointless.

After a little practice to make sure the Substitutiary Locomotion spell works, the group’s dinner is interrupted by Mrs. Hobday (Tessie O’Shea), the local chairwoman of the War Activities Committee. She’s found a more suitable home for the children. But they’ve been having such a good time that now they want to stay, along with Mr. Browne as their new father. Both Mr. Browne and Miss Price want this, too. But they both freak out a little over how quickly things have happened and Mr. Browne opts to return to London.

He’s spending a cold, uncomfortable night alone on the train platform when the town is invaded by Nazis. The Germans have picked a soft target like Pepperinge Eye as a warmup for a full-scale invasion of London. But between Miss Price’s magic and the village’s Home Guard of old-age pensioners, the Nazis are forced to retreat. In the end, Mr. Browne enlists in the army with a promise to return to Pepperinge Eye when the war is over.

Now, here’s the thing about Bedknobs And Broomsticks. This is, at best, a marginally successful picture, especially when held up against Mary Poppins. It doesn’t have a big emotional catharsis like “Let’s Go Fly A Kite”. Its supporting characters aren’t as colorful and lively. Its animated sequence is completely superfluous. (So is the one in Mary Poppins, by the way, but it has “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” so nobody seems to notice or care.) None of that bothers me one bit. I love this movie.

I am as susceptible to the siren song of nostalgia as the next person. For whatever reason, Bedknobs And Broomsticks pushes every one of those buttons in me. The movie was released in the States on December 13, 1971 (it premiered in England about two months earlier). So if my parents did take me to see it at the time, I would have been two years old. I have no specific memory of that, obviously. I do remember seeing it later, maybe as a children’s matinee or on a re-release. But it feels as though it has always been imprinted on my brain. From the moment it starts, I’m as hooked as a bed on a bear’s fishing pole.

Unlike a lot of other films, Bedknobs And Broomsticks’ biggest problem isn’t overlength. It’s underlength. Disney had not had much success with roadshow-style engagements since Mary Poppins. Radio City Music Hall, New York City’s premiere venue for major movie musicals, felt particularly empowered to request cuts to movies they felt were too long. The studio had already caved to Radio City’s demands for cuts to Follow Me, Boys!, The Happiest Millionaire and The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Disney probably already had scissors in hand before they even started talking to Radio City about Bedknobs And Broomsticks.

Over twenty minutes were eliminated from the picture before it even premiered. This explains why Roddy McDowall, making his first Disney appearance since The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin, is on screen for maybe two minutes despite receiving third billing. It also explains why “Portobello Road”, the movie’s would-be show-stopper, is inelegantly chopped up into a series of vignettes that never builds any real momentum.

In addition, three whole musical numbers were dropped along the way. The cumulative effect of these cuts is a movie that never quite seems to get anywhere with characters whose motivations remain somewhat inscrutable. In 1996, Disney attempted a restoration with the materials that had been salvaged. It was a good-faith effort with some sequences using re-recorded audio and still photos to stand in for lost footage. But that’s not the version most readily available to audiences today. The “restored”, 140-minute cut is only available on a 2009 DVD. The familiar 117-minute cut is the one available on Disney+ and Blu-ray.

That first round of cuts didn’t help the movie with critics or audiences. When it grossed less than half of its original budget on its initial release, Disney chopped even more out of it and sent it back out on the re-release circuit. It never did become a popular favorite but eventually it began developing a cult following, including myself, who were dazzled by the animated sequence, loved the songs, and were charmed by its refreshingly low-key manner. Bedknobs And Broomsticks might not add up to much but its quirky individual parts are a delight.

It also did surprisingly well at the Academy Awards. The movie received five nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects (its only competition in the category was Hammer Films’ When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth). The effects aren’t exactly revolutionary but they’re effective, fun and fit the tone of the film perfectly.

It was also nominated for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, losing both of those to the now mostly-forgotten epic Nicholas And Alexandra. On the music front, it lost Best Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score to Fiddler On The Roof. The song “The Age Of Not Believing,” which is far from my favorite tune in the movie, lost the Best Original Song award to Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft,” which, fair enough.

A lot of the folks who worked on Bedknobs And Broomsticks will be back in this column, including Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall, director Robert Stevenson and producer Bill Walsh. Cowriter Don DaGradi retired after completing his work on the picture. He’d been with Disney since the 1930s, working as a background artist, animator, story developer and art director. He’d started writing live-action screenplays with Son Of Flubber and had been nominated for an Oscar for Mary Poppins. Don DaGradi passed away on August 4, 1991, at the age of 79 and was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend later that same year.

This would also be the last Disney work from Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for quite some time. They’d enjoyed a fruitful association with Disney but they felt it was time to move on. Over the next few years, they’d work on such films as Snoopy, Come Home and Charlotte’s Web and receive Oscar nominations for Tom Sawyer, The Slipper And The Rose and The Magic Of Lassie. Eventually they returned to Disney and, thanks to the studio’s policy of recycling old material into new feature films, we’ll see them again in this column soon enough.

The failure of Bedknobs And Broomsticks caused Disney to abandon the idea of doing big-budget musical spectaculars for a while. Going forward, Disney movies would be more modest in budget and ambition. But for some of us, Bedknobs And Broomsticks holds up as a high point of the Disney style and the Sherman Brothers’ music. If you read the words “Treguna Mekoides Trecorum Satis Dee” in rhythm, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

VERDICT: Disney Plus

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

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin

In the pantheon of Disney stars, Roddy McDowall’s name does not loom as large as Fred MacMurray or Dean Jones. Beginning with That Darn Cat!, McDowall appeared in four Disney pictures and lent his voice to a couple more. But unlike MacMurray or Jones, Roddy McDowall was always more of a character actor than a leading man. The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin suggests that maybe the studio should have given him more starring roles.

Roddy McDowall was nine years old when he received his first screen credit on the 1938 British mystery Murder In The Family (Glynis Johns, another future Disney star, played his sister). His family came to America in the early days of World War II. He was cast almost immediately upon his arrival in John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. That Oscar-winning film turned McDowall from a child actor into a child star. Throughout the 1940s, he starred in such films as My Friend Flicka and Lassie Come Home.

As McDowall grew older, he evaded the pitfalls of most child stars by taking control of his career. By 1948, he began producing some of his own films including an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, another future Disney project. He moved to New York to take acting classes and focus on the stage. His performances in shows like Compulsion, based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, erased the child star image.

By the time Disney cast him in That Darn Cat!, McDowall had gone back to Hollywood. In addition to regular TV appearances, he joined the ensembles of such big-budget epics as Cleopatra and The Longest Day. In 1967 alone, the year The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin was released, he also starred in the films The Cool Ones and It!, had a supporting role in a TV production of the play Saint Joan, guest starred on an episode of The Invaders, and voiced the cricket in the Rankin/Bass holiday cartoon Cricket On The Hearth. And that was pretty much the pace he kept up for the rest of his life. Nobody ever accused Roddy McDowall of resting on his laurels.

Like a lot of these lesser-known live-action entries, there’s not a whole lot out there about the making of The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin. I can’t say if the project was developed specifically with McDowall in mind or if he was cast later. Either way, the role suits the actor perfectly. It isn’t exactly a challenging role and no doubt other actors could have done well with it. But it’s hard to imagine anyone else having as much fun as McDowall appears to be having here.

Lowell S. Hawley, whose last Disney film had been the odd but still kind of enjoyable A Tiger Walks, based his screenplay on the excellently titled book By The Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman. Fleischman was a former journalist who started out writing novels inspired by his own experiences in the Navy stationed in the Pacific. One of those books provided the basis for the John Wayne movie Blood Alley, with a script by Fleischman himself. In 1962, he turned his attention to children’s books, many of which incorporate stage magic, a childhood passion of his. Fleischman went on to write countless books for young readers, including the Bloodhound Gang adventures from the PBS series 3-2-1 Contact.

This would be the last Disney feature for director James Neilson. Neilson’s time at the studio showed him to be a pretty schizophrenic director. He was capable of terrific work, like the TV production Dr. Syn, Alias The Scarecrow. But he was also responsible for two of the studio’s worst, the sci-fi misfire Moon Pilot and the strained European shenanigans of Bon Voyage! Based on those two duds, I was prepared to say that comedy just wasn’t his forte. But The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin is genuinely funny, so either he was keeping this talent a secret or even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Theatrical release poster for The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin

Our story opens in 1848 Boston as Arabella Flagg (Suzanne Pleshette) and her younger brother, Jack (Bryan Russell, last seen in Emil And The Detectives), discover that their late father has left them flat broke. Determined to rebuild the family fortune, Jack stows away on a ship bound for San Francisco. The family butler, Griffin (McDowall), tries to bring him home but the ship departs before they can get back ashore.

En route to San Francisco, Griffin and Jack meet Quentin Bartlett (Richard Haydn, the voice of the Caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland). Bartlett has a map to a gold mine and agrees to partner up with the two newcomers. But before they even make it to port, the map is stolen by wily crook Judge Higgins (Karl Malden, light years away from his role as the kindly Reverend Ford in Pollyanna).

The west proves to be as wild wild as promised and the gold hunters soon run afoul of a burly thug named Mountain Ox (perennial Hollywood tough guy Mike Mazurki, not seen in this column since Davy Crockett). Griffin knocks him out with a slug from a glove filled with gold nuggets, earning him the nickname “Bullwhip”. Sam Trimble (Harry Guardino), the owner of the local saloon, offers Griffin a big payday to go head-to-head with the Ox in the boxing ring. Not wanting to risk a rematch, the team hits the road to pursue Judge Higgins.

What follows is not a plot so much as an extremely episodic and convoluted series of events. Our heroes find the map, then lose the map, then find the map’s been damaged. They find gold, then lose it all to Judge Higgins, who then loses it himself. Higgins dons an array of disguises and almost ends up getting hung but manages to escape. Transitions between scenes are accomplished through charming, old-timey animations by Ward Kimball. It all feels pretty random but it’s never less than amusing.

Bullwhip and Jack eventually make their way back to San Francisco, where they find Arabella has taken a job dancing (and singing some mildly saucy Sherman Brothers songs) at Sam Trimble’s saloon. Sam reminds Griffin that his offer to fight Mountain Ox still stands. Broke and wanting to protect Arabella’s virtue, Griffin agrees. While Bullwhip and Ox essentially turn into live-action cartoons for the fight, Judge Higgins disguises himself yet again to rob the saloon. Bullwhip manages to eke out a victory but a fire breaks out when someone tries to apprehend Higgins. The money is recovered, Griffin and Arabella fall in love and all is right with the world.

Needless to say, The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin is absolutely, 100%, top-to-bottom ridiculous. If you’re looking for a compelling, historically accurate look at the California Gold Rush, keep on moving. If you want a movie that’s completely devoid of racial stereotypes, it ain’t this one. Its portrayal of Mexicans and especially Chinese is indefensible. The version currently available on Disney+ notes that it has been edited for content, so apparently this is the less offensive version. But the tone is so light and James Neilson does such a good job keeping the story bouncing along, none of that really matters.

This is the kind of movie that lives or dies on the strength of its cast. Neilson assembled a top-notch group more than capable of putting this over. Roddy McDowall is first-rate. He’s very funny as the straightlaced, exceedingly proper English butler. Somehow, he manages to keep that reserve throughout the movie. Even when he’s literally bouncing around the boxing ring, he never seems to be overacting or mugging for the camera. He strikes just the right balance.

Karl Malden appears to be having a real hoot as the villainous Judge Higgins. Growing up, I always had this image of Malden as a very serious actor known for playing working-class stiffs and making American Express sound like the only thing standing between you and chaos. It’s always a pleasure to see him let loose and have some fun. Unfortunately, this will be his last appearance in this column. Karl Malden was a terrific actor but his two Disney performances tend to be dismissed as silly trifles. They were but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. They show different sides of his personality than he was usually asked to deliver and shouldn’t be overshadowed by the rest of his impressive body of work.

My biggest complaint with The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin is that it could have used more Suzanne Pleshette. Arabella gives her a bit more to do than her role in The Ugly Dachschund. She gets to sing and dance and assert her independence a little (not a lot, this is still 1967 Disney we’re talking about). But she’s basically absent for the movie’s long middle stretch. Bullwhip’s adventures would have been a lot more fun if Arabella had been part of them. Not to worry, though. We’ll be seeing Pleshette back in this column again real soon.

Neilson fills out his cast with plenty of familiar, reliable Disney faces including Hermione Baddeley (Mary Poppins), Cecil Kellaway (The Shaggy Dog), Alan Carney (Monkeys, Go Home!), Parley Baer (Follow Me, Boys!), and Arthur Hunnicutt (A Tiger Walks). Unfortunately, the weakest link is young Bryan Russell. He isn’t bad or actively annoying like some Disney child stars. He just doesn’t pop on screen the way somebody like Kurt Russell (no relation) might have. Half the time, I forgot he was even there.

Evidently, Bryan Russell’s heart wasn’t really in show business anyway. The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin was his last film, not just for Disney but for anyone. I’m not sure what exactly became of him after that. I know he got married, had a couple kids, and passed away in 2016 but that’s about it. If anybody has more information, I’d love to hear it.

Honestly, I’m a little surprised that The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin is on Disney+ even in what I’m guessing is a mildly censored form. Critics weren’t crazy about it, although a few liked it, including a young Roger Ebert who had just started writing for the Chicago Sun-Times. It wasn’t a hit at the box office, either. But it does seem to have a little bit of a cult following, which I suppose I would now consider myself a part of. This is a fun, goofy movie that’s hard to dislike. It should have made Roddy McDowall as big a Disney star as Dean Jones.    

VERDICT: An unexpected but very welcome Disney Plus.  

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

Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Babes In Toyland

~ electrictheatre
Original theatrical release poster for Walt Disney's Babes In Toyland

Music played an integral role at the Disney studio practically from its inception. From “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?” to “Someday My Prince Will Come” to “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”, Disney films made (and continue to make) invaluable contributions to the Great American Songbook. But by 1961, even though the studio had been producing live-action features for over a decade, they still had not attempted a full-on, big-budget live-action musical. With Babes In Toyland, Walt made his first attempt at rectifying that oversight.

Not that there weren’t still plenty of original tunes flowing out of the Disney recording studio. Everything from Ten Who Dared to The Parent Trap had managed to shoehorn an original song or two. But these songs weren’t as seamlessly integrated into their productions as the songs in Disney’s animated classics. It’s impossible to imagine Snow White or Pinocchio without the songs. The only people who would miss “A Whale Of A Tale” if it had been cut from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea would be the theatre owners who probably enjoyed a boost in concession sales during the scene.

For a while, it appeared that Walt’s first live-action musical would be an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. The rights to The Wizard Of Oz were tightly controlled by MGM. But in 1954, Walt was able to secure the rights to the other thirteen books in the series. He began developing a project called The Rainbow Road To Oz as a showcase for the Mickey Mouse Club’s Mouseketeers. Darlene Gillespie was to play Dorothy. Annette Funicello was Ozma. Walt originally thought of it as a television production but as work went on, he began to think it might work as a feature.

Eventually, Walt decided to abandon the Oz project. No one’s exactly sure why, although one can assume that the MGM movie cast a huge shadow. There’s no way that Walt would have gone ahead with Rainbow Road To Oz unless he was absolutely sure that it could live up to or surpass the gold standard set by Judy Garland and friends. Judging by the segments that aired on Disneyland’s fourth-anniversary show, Rainbow Road To Oz did not. Check it out for yourself. It’s pretty weird.

(The Disney studio did eventually return to Oz with Return To Oz in 1985, a genuinely bizarre film that proved deeply upsetting for an entire generation of young people. I love it with all of me and can’t wait to include it in this column.)

At around the same time that The Rainbow Road To Oz was falling apart, Walt announced his intentions to make an animated feature based on Victor Herbert’s 1903 operetta Babes In Toyland. Herbert’s show had also been filmed previously, most notably as a 1934 feature starring Laurel and Hardy. Walt put animator Ward Kimball in charge of the project and Kimball worked on the script with storyman Joe Rinaldi. Kimball and Rinaldi had a hard time cracking the project. They streamlined the complicated storyline as much as they could, turning it into a romantic triangle between fairytale lovebirds Tom Piper and Mary Contrary and the evil Barnaby, who wants to marry Mary for her inheritance.

By late 1959, Walt had reconceived Babes In Toyland as a live-action musical. Lowell S. Hawley, who had written for Zorro and Swiss Family Robinson, was brought on board to rewrite Kimball and Rinaldi’s script for live-action. Jack Donohue, a Broadway choreographer and TV director responsible for several variety shows featuring such stars as Frank Sinatra and Red Skelton, was hired to direct. Kimball, who’d had several disagreements with Walt over the scripts and casting, was sent back to the animation department.

Although she wouldn’t get a chance to rule Oz as Ozma, Annette Funicello still got her biggest movie showcase to date as Mary. Annette was a huge star on TV and had even had a few hit records. But so far, her only big-screen appearance had been a small supporting role in The Shaggy Dog. Walt believed she was ready for bigger things. At the time of Babes In Toyland, Annette was so famous that she didn’t even need to be credited under her full name. She’s simply “Annette”. Everybody already knew who she was.

The same probably couldn’t be said about her costar, teen idol Tommy Sands. Sands made a big splash right out of the gate, starring as an Elvis-like singing sensation in an episode of Kraft Television Theatre called, appropriately enough, The Singin’ Idol. His signature number on that show, “Teen-Age Crush”, made it all the way to #2 on the Billboard chart. 20th Century Fox produced a feature-film remake of The Singin’ Idol called Sing, Boy, Sing but while Sands received some praise for his performance, the movie was a flop.

Nevertheless, Sands continued plugging away at both his acting and recording careers (he also married Nancy Sinatra in 1960). It makes perfect sense why Walt would cast him in Babes In Toyland. He was popular enough to make it seem like the studio wasn’t completely out of touch with the kids but not so popular that he’d be too cool for a Disney movie. Walt certainly made the most of Sands’ short time on the lot, recruiting him to sing the title song to The Parent Trap with Annette.

The Oz connections continue with the casting of Ray Bolger as Barnaby. The former Scarecrow had kept busy on stage (winning a Tony Award for his performance in Where’s Charley?) and television, where his sitcom Where’s Raymond? was eventually retitled The Ray Bolger Show. His only Disney appearance offers him a rare chance to play the bad guy and he has fun with it, playing to the cheap seats with his stovepipe hat and purple-lined cape.

Most of the rest of the cast was filled out with members of the Disney Stock Players. Ed Wynn does his Ed Wynn thing as the zany Toymaker. Tommy Kirk, still stuck in the “what-the-hell-do-we-do-with-this-kid” phase of his Disney career, appears as Wynn’s apprentice. Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon, fresh off appearances in Zorro and Toby Tyler, are again teamed up as the bumbling crooks Gonzorgo and Roderigo. Kevin Corcoran shows up as Little Boy Blue. Perhaps hedging his bets against Moochie eventually hitting puberty, Walt also recruited Kevin’s brother, Brian Corcoran (who had appeared in a few episodes of Daniel Boone and Texas John Slaughter on TV), to add some additional precociousness as Willie Winkie.

The newest member of the Disney family was young Ann Jillian, who appears as Bo Peep. Jillian’s Disney tenure was relatively brief. She’d go on to appear in the TV production Sammy, The Way-Out Seal. But Jillian was one of the rare child stars who became much more famous as an adult, starring on the sitcom It’s A Living, as Mae West in a popular TV-movie, and as herself in the made-for-TV biopic The Ann Jillian Story. She’s still out there on the lecture circuit discussing her experiences as a breast cancer survivor, proof that not every child star’s career ends in tragedy.

Theatrical release poster for Babes In Toyland

Walt spared no expense on Babes In Toyland. He spent years developing the script. The production cost in excess of $3 million. George Bruns and Mel Leven, who had recently made a splash with their music for One Hundred And One Dalmatians, were brought on board to update Victor Herbert’s music for the swinging sixties. Cast and crew alike were stocked with top professionals from both inside and outside the studio.

So why is the movie itself so terrible?

The trouble starts right away as an inexpertly performed goose puppet named Sylvester is thrust through a velvet curtain to address the audience. This is no Jim Henson creation. It’s a cheap looking puppet whose beak movements don’t even sync up with the dialogue. Sylvester is held throughout by Mother Goose (played by musical theatre performer Mary McCarty). Mother Goose and Sylvester bring us up to speed, welcoming us to Mother Goose Village and inviting us to the wedding of Tom and Mary. The whole thing feels a bit like a play performed by an amateur children’s theatre group and the movie never manages to rise above that level.

The opening number foreshadows the table-setting theatrics of “Belle” from Beauty And The Beast, introducing all the characters and showing us around the elaborate but somehow still chintzy-looking sets. But “Mother Goose Village and Lemonade” has none of the charm and sweep of “Belle”. The fact that it morphs into an inexplicable tribute to lemonade for some reason should tell you all you need to know.

Babes In Toyland soundtrack album cover

Bruns and Leven were both responsible for some terrific songs but virtually none of them are in Babes In Toyland. Annette’s big number, “I Can’t Do The Sum”, is essentially all about how bad she is at math because she’s just a girl. It’s livened up by some neat visuals, including Annette dividing into four multicolored doppelgangers, but it’s still in service of a truly lousy song. Most of the other songs are just forgettable.

There is one good song in the batch, Ray Bolger’s “Castle In Spain”. I first encountered the song on the great Hal Willner-produced album Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films where it was performed by Buster Poindexter. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Babes In Toyland and had no idea what movie the song was from. I still prefer the Buster Poindexter cover but Ray Bolger’s version is fun, too.

(If you’re unfamiliar with Stay Awake, I highly recommend tracking it down. Other highlights include Tom Waits’ take on “Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs’ Marching Song)”, Los Lobos on “I Wan’na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” and The Replacements tearing through “Cruella De Vil”. Oddly enough, Buster Poindexter (a.k.a. David Johansen) will not be back in this column, despite the fact that his voice is ideally suited to animation. He did appear on an episode of The Magical World Of Disney, performing at the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park Grand Opening, but that’s the extent of his involvement with the studio.)

Babes In Toyland has a lot of problems: the mediocre music, the non-existent character development, the off-putting production design and visual effects. But the movie’s fatal flaw is that for the first time, a Walt Disney production feels like it’s talking down to its intended audience. Walt Disney was in the business of making family entertainment. At his best, he made films that are universal in their appeal. Babes In Toyland is specifically directed toward young children. Very young. Ann Jillian would have been around 10 or 11 at the time she appeared in this and she would have already aged out of the target audience. The whole movie feels forced and condescending in a way we don’t typically associate with Disney.

Released in time for Christmas 1961 (although I wouldn’t really call this a Christmas movie, it’s more Christmas-adjacent), Babes In Toyland wasn’t exactly a bomb but it certainly didn’t do as well as anyone had hoped. The movie did manage to snag a couple of Oscar nominations, for Bill Thomas’s costumes and Bruns’s score, but it lost both to a far more successful musical, West Side Story. Both Thomas and Bruns will be back in this column and both will again be Oscar nominees for their work on Disney films.

Even today, the Laurel and Hardy version is still the best film adaptation of Babes In Toyland. The source material continues to confound those brave enough to attempt to film it, resulting in some truly weird spectacles. In 1986, Drew Barrymore starred in a TV remake alongside Richard Mulligan as Barnaby, Pat Morita as the Toymaker and Keanu Frickin’ Reeves as Jack-Be-Nimble. It’s…um…it’s something, alright.

Never one to live in the past, Walt certainly didn’t linger on the failure of Babes In Toyland. As usual, he had already moved on to his next musical project. Earlier in 1961, he had finally been able to persuade author P.L. Travers to let him have the film rights to her Mary Poppins books. Walt would take a more hands-on approach with this one and the results would be a whole lot better.

VERDICT: You have to ask? Oh, it’s a big-time Disney Minus.

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