Disney In The Groovy Sixties: Disney, #3

By Brett Dillon

After reading the biography of Walt Disney, what immediately comes to mind, is the several elephants in the room when discussing Disney product. His right-wing tendencies only increased during the sixties leading, to my mind, in one or more serious breaches of good taste. You will also note in this period, how out-of-sync with the history of the times the company was. The accusations of systemic racism aren't far off. The accusation of anti-Semitism comes from his involvement with the anti-Semitic group, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, in the forties. While the grand old man did make the Studio a safe haven for (closeted) gays, he also had to deal with the controversy star, Tommy Kirk's, sexuality caused for the Studio.

The big crunch came in 1966 with Walt's death. His autocratic ways left no one with a clear vision. To complicate matters, the theme parks were making the money (as was pointed out in the late seventies to the executives - the theme parks only make money based on the films providing new content to base new themes on. Walt, himself, said, "We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies"). The executives were unimaginative enough to ask themselves, at every roadblock, what would Walt do? They then modelled their response on what Walt had done in the past. What Walt would really do is something innovative. Walt had given a kind of ground plan when he said, "…we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths". The executives were only curious about how much profit the Company had made in the last quarter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brett Dillon
• Release date: Oct 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215931295

Book preview

Chapters

Walt Disney Biography

Introduction

Films

Index

Chapters

1960

Kidnapped

Pollyanna

Swiss Family Robinson

Ten Who Dared

Toby Tyler; or Ten Weeks In A Circus

1961

The Absent-Minded Professor

Babes In Toyland

Greyfriar’s Bobby

The Horsemasters

101 Dalmatians

The Parent Trap

1962

Almost Angels

Big Red

Bon Voyage

Dr Syn; Alias The Scarecrow

Escapade In Florence

In Search Of The Castaways

Mooncussers

Moon Pilot

The Prince And The Pauper

1963

The Incredible Journey

Johnny Shiloh

Miracle Of The White Stallions

Savage Sam

Son Of Flubber

Summer Magic

The Sword In The Stone

The Waltz King

1964

A Tiger Walks

Emil And The Detectives

Mary Poppins

The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones

The Three Lives Of Thomasina

1965

The Adventures Of Gallagher

The Further Adventures Of Gallagher

The Monkey’s Uncle

The Moon-spinners

That Darn Cat!

Those Calloways

1966

The Fighting Prince Of Donegal

Follow Me, Boys!

The Legend Of El Blanco

Lt Robinson Crusoe, U.S.N.

Monkey’s, Go Home

The Ugly Dachshund

1967

The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin

The Gnome-mobile

The Happiest Millionaire

The Jungle Book

1968

Blackbeard’s Ghost

The Horse In The Grey Flannel Suit

The Love Bug

Never A Dull Moment

The One And Only Genuine Original Family Band

Pablo And The Dancing Chihuahua

1969

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

Secrets Of The Pirates Inn

The Secret Of Boyne Castle (aka Guns In The Heather)

Producer,

Walt Disney

Was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, USA, and he died in 1966.

In 1906 the Disney family moved to Missouri where the young Walt began a somewhat Tom Sawyer-like existence. He developed an interest in drawing (and gained experience by copying the newspaper cartoons of Ryan Walker). Walt also developed a fascination with trains (this would be the big truck/dinosaur fascination of children today).

The stay in Marceline wasn’t long for, in 1911, the family moved to Kansas City. This is where he made friends with Walter Pfeiffer who introduced Walt to the world of vaudeville and movies. He also began to get poor grades at school. Part of this was due to his part time job delivering newspapers. He, and brother Roy would get up at 4:30 each morning and do their rounds before school. When school was over, it was time to deliver the evening paper. Walt kept this up for six years. Being in the big city, he was also able to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, and took a correspondence course in cartooning.

In 1917 the family moved once more. This was a return to Chicago. In Chicago, Walt attended McKinley High School and did night classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. As you’ll notice from the date, it was mid-WWI. Inspired to serve in 1918, Walt volunteered... and was rejected for being too young. Ever resourceful, and an artist, he forged the date of birth on his birth certificate and joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver to arrive in France... just after the armistice. Walt was returned Stateside and took up a job as an apprentice artist at the Presman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. Fellow apprentice, Ub  Iwerks formed a friendship with Walt. Probably just as well, because both were laid off in January, 1920. This early beginning had ended in defeat.

The lesson Walt got from this experience was that you can’t be fired if you’re the boss. He and Ub formed the Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists company. This failed to attract customers so, to earn some money, Disney joined the Kansas City Film Company. The plan was that Ub would continue to try to get work for their company, while Disney got the money to keep it going. After a few weeks, Ub went into the movie business with Walt. The Kansas City Film Company produced animated commercials using the cutout animation technique (this is exactly what it sounds like).

Walt became fascinated with animation. He purchased a camera and began to experiment with different techniques at home. It wasn’t long before he concluded cel animation (painting on a plastic cel) was the way of the future. He failed to convince A.V. Cauger, head of the Kansas City Art Company of this.

Walt had his stubborn streak. To prove the concept, he formed a company with a worker from Film Ad Co., Fred Harman. Their client/guinea pig was the Newman Theatre. The product they sold was short animations called Newman’s Laugh-O’Grams. The success of both the technique and product launched Walt on the next phase of his career.

In May, 1921, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio was created and additional animators were added to the team. These were Fred’s brother, Hugh, Walt’s friend, Ub Iwerks, and Rudolf Ising. As their Laugh-O-Grams weren’t pulling in enough money, Walt came up with the idea of a series of films that combined live-action with animation and that was based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. The first of this series was completed before the company went bankrupt in 1923.

The centre for US animation at this time was New York City. This held no interest for Walt. Instead, in part because his brother Roy was there recuperating from tuberculosis, he headed for Los Angeles with the Alice film as his calling card. He was hoping to become a live-action director. With a wondrous irony, a new hope came from New York City. New York film distributor, Margaret J. Winkler, was losing the rights to Out Of The Inkwell and Felix The Cat, both very popular animated series, and she was looking for replacements. In October, 1923, she signed Walt to a six-film deal. Walt and his brother, Roy, formed the Disney Brothers Studio (which later morphed into The Walt Disney Company) to honour the contract.

Disney wanted his choice of Alice, Virginnia Davis, to star in the series. He persuaded her family to move to L.A. and offered a contract of $100/month. Walt also wanted his friend, Ub Iwerks, to be in on this adventure. Ub didn’t take much persuading. As the business expanded, so did the staff. The most notable of these was ink artist, Lillian Bounds, whom Walt married in 1925.

Things changed in 1926 when Margaret Winkler handed over distribution of the Alice series to her husband, producer Charles Mintz. Charles and Walt did not see eye to eye. One of the sources of tension was that Disney was tired of the live-action/animation mix and wanted to go full-on cartoon. Charles set up a deal, with Universal pictures as distributor, but a new product was required. Walt created the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (probably because he had all his feet).

Disaster struck in February, 1928. Charles was a bit of a double-dealer. He had persuaded many in Walt’s staff, including Fred Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Friz Freleng, to prepare to move to a new company. Charles had also ensured that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald. When Walt wanted to renegotiate the Oswald contract, Charles counter-offered with a reduced price or he (Charles) would set up his own studio to complete the contract. Walt called his bluff and lost all his workers except for Ub Iwerks. Walt appreciated loyalty in his workers.

Given Walt’s sucky luck, it was probably time, at this stage, to start again. He had a studio, but no product to sell. The result was a brainstorming session with Ub that produced Mickey Mouse. Walt had already begun to distance himself from the animation process, leaving Ub to perfect the design from Walt’s basic sketch. Walt was to provide the voice (until 1947).

The first two shorts featuring this character were failures. Disaster loomed. Then The Jazz Singer (1927) brought synchronised sound into feature length films. An animated light bulb appeared over Walt’s head. The third Mickey film would feature synchronised sound! (I bet you thought he was going to take the feature-length cartoon route). The animation was completed and the canny Disney signed a contract with Pat Powers, former executive at Universal Pictures, to use the Powers Cinephone as his recording system. In return, Cinephone became the new distributor of Disney’s product.

Walt also realised the quality of the sound would need improvement. He hired composer and arranger Carl Stalling for his expertise. Carl suggested the idea of the Silly Symphonies series. Both Mickey and the Symphonies were hugely successful with the public... not so profitable for Disney. Walt and Roy felt Pat Powers was being... shall we say tight fisted... with the profits. Walt asked for an increase in payment for the product. Pat refused and managed to get Ub to sign to him. This might have been because of a conflict of artistic interest between Walt and Ub. Walt wanted to introduce a more factory line of animation (much like what is done today). The animator draws the key moments and assistants handle the bits in-between. With Ub gone, Carl Stalling resigned (probably on the basis that he felt the Studio, without Ub, would fail). Walt had a nervous breakdown as his sucky luck continued.

Without Pat Powers, Walt now had to find a new distributor. He found succour at Columbia (who had noted how popular the Disney product was internationally). Walt kept keeping his eye out for ways to improve his product. Three-strip Technicolor film caught his eye (it was one of the earliest, stable formats for colour reproduction on film with shades that had a vibrancy and life that had obvious appeal to animation. In fact. so obvious was the appeal that Walt sealed a deal giving him the sole right to produce colour animation using the process for the next three years). He introduced colour in Flowers and Trees (1932) and followed it the next year with the smash hit, The Three Little Pigs (1933). The success of that film led to an expansion of the studio and the creation of a separate story department that was compartmentalised away from the animators. Storyboard artists would lay out the script for the animators.

Because of his distribution problems, Walt became opposed to this monopolistic practice and became one of the founding members of the Society for Independent Motion Picture Producers.

By 1934 Walt had realised the short films had become formulaic. Walt was very clear about the formula, he said, The proper comedy for the screen is visual. Films try to get too many laughs out of the dialogue. We use pantomime not wisecracks. Portrayal of human sensations by inanimate objects such as steam shovels and rocking-chairs never fail to provoke laughter. Human distress exemplified by animals is sure-fire. A bird that jumps after swallowing a grasshopper is a natural. Surprise is always provocative. More importantly, he decided a feature-length animated story would be more profitable. He ordered the start on an adaptation of a fairy tale, Snow White And The Seven Dwarves. Punters were soon calling this film Disney’s folly (and they weren’t all that far from right. Production ran three-times over-budget). Walt, and the company, were only saved from folly by the fact the film became a smash hit. His next two films tanked as the world went to war and overseas sales dried up. It seemed like Walt’s luck was in play once again.

Perversely, the saving grace came when the US entered the war. Walt formed the Walt Disney Training Films Unit to make training films for the military; he also contracted to make propaganda shorts (such as Der Fuhrer’s Face [1943[). A lesser-known work, Victory Through Air Power championed the use of an Air Force as part of a nation’s defence and attack strategy (in fact, the film argues that Air power will be the deciding factor in modern conflict).

The war didn’t begin very well for the Studio as the Army drafted one of their major stars, Donald Duck.

Over this time, Walt was also involved to a lesser degree, in the Citizen Kane (1941) controversy. He, and his Studio, cowardly gave in to William Randolph Hearst’s bluff. This might be explained by the fact that the company, by 1944, had amassed $4 million of debt to the Bank of America. Having Hearst’s paper diss the Disney product might have rocked that unstable house of cards. Amadeo Giannini, the Bank chairman, was under pressure to foreclose on Disney but said, I've been watching the Disney’s pictures quite closely because I knew we were lending them money far above the financial risk. ... They're good this year, they're good next year, and they're good the year after. ... You have to relax and give them time to market their product.

Walt had reason to feel jittery. In 1941 there had been a strike at his studio. This was Disney’s fault and Walt never acknowledged it. In his mind he was a benevolent boss; to the workers he was a slob who underpaid them and created a toxic work environment. His Dickensian ideas of staff and staff management had to go. It took a strike to force Walt into some power sharing and an acknowledgement staff was not a word synonymous with serf. Among many examples of his tyranny was that he forbade employees to have moustaches (even though he had one himself) because he felt it would impact of the company’s clean cut image (in 1940 he allowed Ub Iwerks and Bill Tytla to be exceptions to the rule). I also note the 1936 incident where employees gave Walt a surprise birthday party. As a gag a film reel had been created showing Mickey and Minnie Mouse consummating their relationship. Disney fired the people involved. Walt said, You know, every once in a while I just fire everybody, then I hire them back in a couple of weeks. That way they don't get too complacent. It keeps them on their toes.

Walt cut production on the short films during the forties. In part for financial reasons and in part due to competition from Warner Brothers and MGM who had both established their own animation departments. Roy Disney suggested a move to live-action. This resulted in the True-Life Adventures series (which is also Disney’s first foray into ecological issues).

As Walt grew older, his politics became more conservative. With the end of the war his decidedly fascist impulses came to the fore. He became a founding member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. This organisation claimed it, believ[ed] in, and like, the American Way of Life ... we find ourselves in sharp revolt against a rising tide of Communism, Fascism and kindred beliefs, that seek by subversive means to undermine and change this way of life (sub-textually, this is all about White Supremacy and that Democracy should only be afforded to the white kind of people). Nor should it come as a surprise, Walt was happy to testify at a 1947 HUAC meeting and named names. Strangely these were all the names of people who had opposed his will during the 1941 strike (Herbert Sorell, David Hilberman, and William Pomerance). He claimed the strike was a communist effort to undermine Hollywood (there is an alarming disconnect from reality here that suggests Walt was gaming the system to get revenge on people he felt had been disloyal to him).

From about 1950 onwards, Disney lost his focus on the animation department. He had turned to developing live-action films, beginning with Treasure Island (1950). His mind was also revolving around the concept of a theme park. He originally envisaged a park close to his Burbank Studio but the property proved unsuitable, He shifted his sights to a site in Anaheim and distanced the Studio from the project by creating WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) to oversee the project. Construction began in 1954 and Disneyland opened in 1955.

One of the investors in this project was ABC Television, and they made their support contingent on Disney providing product for their service. Roy Disney was in favour of this agreement, writing in 1951 that, television can be a most powerful selling aid for us, as well as a source of revenue. It will probably be on this premise that we enter television when we do. And so, in 1954, Walt Disney’s Disneyland was first screened. Disney then added The Mickey Mouse Club with accompanying promotional materials that were huge sellers. It was, however, the mini-series Davy Crockett that caused the next mutation of the company. The song The Ballad of Davy Crockett was such a big seller that Walt formed his own record production and distribution company, Disneyland Records.

Disneyland became a major source of the company income so that, by the early sixties, Walt was thinking of expanding the idea. In 1965 he announced plans to develop a new park to be called Disney World (now Walt Disney World) to be built in Orlando, Florida. The beating heart at the centre of this concept was the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). Walt wrote that this was, ... an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise".

In November, 1966, Walt was diagnosed with lung cancer. Feeling unwell on November 30, an ambulance took him to the hospital where he died ten days later. I give the final word to Walt, We don't actually make films for children, but we make films that children can enjoy along with the parents.

Introduction

After reading the biography of Walt Disney, what immediately comes to mind, is the several elephants in the room when discussing Disney product. His right-wing tendencies only increased during the sixties leading, to my mind, in one or more serious breaches of good taste. You will also note in this period, how out-of-sync with the history of the times the company was. The accusations of systemic racism aren’t far off. The accusation of anti-Semitism comes from his involvement with the anti-Semitic group, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, in the forties. While the grand old man did make the Studio a safe haven for (closeted) gays, he also had to deal with the controversy star, Tommy Kirk’s, sexuality caused for the Studio.

The big crunch came in 1966 with Walt’s death. His autocratic ways left no one with a clear vision. To complicate matters, the theme parks were making the money (as was pointed out in the late seventies to the executives - the theme parks only make money based on the films providing new content to base new themes on. Walt, himself, said, We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies). The executives were unimaginative enough to ask themselves, at every roadblock, what would Walt do? They then modelled their response on what Walt had done in the past. What Walt would really do is something innovative. Walt had given a kind of ground plan when he said, ...we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. The executives were only curious about how much profit the Company had made in the last quarter

The Movie Chronicles series of books are based upon the scripts for Movie Chronicles, the podcast. The format can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles of the Dark Ages (if you are so inclined to go back that far). During the course of coarsely writing the scripts for this podcast series I found I needed to institute some rules.

The major rule concerns Spoilers. Regular listeners to the podcast know how much I abhor this very concept. It is an internet meme designed by halfwits to bully halfwits. I’m not a halfwit. However, in order to appease the wrath of halfwits, the rule is that there are no spoilers in movies less than 10 years old (after that period I assume there are so any spoilers out there that my contribution doesn’t matter). As always, there are exceptions to the rule – these are documentaries – which are films that have already been spoiled before they have been released... according to the halfwitted spoiler theory.

In this book I am trying to portray the links between history and pop culture (and the history of pop culture) around the world. As a reader in English then I am happy to predict that, if you are happy watching the latest US blockbusters, then this is NOT the series for you. If you want to explore world cinema, then hop on board for the ride. None of the books in this series are definitive (in the meaning of covering every movie from every country released in a particular year). It is more in the nature of a survey (in which there is a large amount of reviewer bias in the selection). I hope, at best, to peg out the general territory, and allow you to note some themes within a year through multiple countries.

Format

The movie list is at the front of the book. At the back is the list of people, places and events that are in the main text. These are formatted as:-

Name     Film      Year

e.g.

Acosta, Tom   The Jungle Book   1967

Thus, Tom Acosta worked on the movie The Jungle Book (or has a mention in that section) and this movie can be found in the 1967 section. Simple, right?

When the person appears in more than one film, this looks like

Alwyn, William  In Search Of The Castaways  1962

Swiss Family Robinson  1960

When an entry is BOLD then this entry is where the biography can be found.

The cast and crew list are not definitive – especially the cast list, which covers the main actors in the film and then people of interest to me lower down in the cast order.

Names can be tricky things. I have tried to follow a consistent system based on these guidelines. If the Last name is a compound of words, then the name is listed under the first word in the compound. Ruiz de Luna, Carlos is listed under R (for Ruiz); De Carlo is listed under D (for De). Things get a little trickier for names that are not compounded, such as de Carlo. This is listed under C. The rule, you will have noted, relates to where the capitalisation appears in the name.

I also admit to being a little eccentric in the Index for the sake of conciseness. Every Institute of higher learning, for instance, makes its way into the Index. No Place names do. The rule I created was to ask myself how relevant is this information to someone who wants to learn about movies?

Dictionary

A: - Actor

DOP: - Director Of Photography

RADA – Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts

And so, without shovelling further ado at you, here is Disney... in the groovy sixties...

1960

February 24 – Kidnapped premiered.

May 19 – Pollyanna premiered.

November 1 – Ten Who Dared premiered.

December 21 – Swiss Family Robinson premiered.

––––––––

Kidnapped

Director & Script: Robert Stevenson

DOP: Paul Beeson      Editor: Gordon Stone

Music: Cedric Thorpe Davie

A: Peter Finch, James MacArthur, Bernard Lee, John Laurie, Finlay Currie, Miles Malleson, Peter O’Toole

I hope it was an in-joke that had Robert Stevenson assigned as director to this production. This was a favourite film of mine when I was a child and yet all I could recall is the castle steps sequence (which makes more than a passing reference to Vertigo [1958]).

David Balfour steps out to make his fortune. He is kidnapped to prevent him obtaining it where he is joined by the amiable rogue, Alan Beck. They are on the run due to Beck’s political connections. The Highlands of Scotland are in revolt to support a Stuart King (of England and Scotland). They suffer shipwreck and being hunted by an Army of Redcoats (English soldiers) until they reach safety.

Disney plays the set pieces of the narrative – the curse, the fog, the stairs, the wreck, the piping contest (with a surprise cameo from Peter O’Toole, a young actor to keep an eye on) – like a mellowed out Alfred Hitchcock.  The most striking feature of the film is the poor match between location and studio footage. The studio shots are on an obvious studio lot. I would like to be generous and say this is a stylistic choice. Sadly, my impression is that it is just Disney being as cheap as possible. Director, Robert Stevenson, isn’t even trying to use the limitations to good effect (for instance: that David, for most of the film, is outside his comfort zone and so the entire experience has a surreal quality to him. A few distortions in each of the sets might have made this point. What we get is an emphasis on the theatricality of the narrative).

David Balfour is a curious character – a bit of a prig. If the film had been made even five years later, the story would be about a young man coming to political consciousness. In this version, David doesn’t change, despite seeing the harm the status quo is doing to the Highland Scots. He is a highly focused and motivated young man. He intends to return home and claim what is rightfully his. He’ll put up with almost anything to attain that goal. This is surprising as, on surface acquaintance, he is being set up as a passive hero. He accepts his uncle’s word; he even accepts being kidnapped. What spurs him to act is to save the life of Alan Beck (which is suggested to him by the captain’s double-dealing toward Beck. David feels it is his own honour that is at stake).

Alan comes from a long line of movie rogues. He is unusual in that he gets to articulate, at length, his moral code. It is this strong attachment to a (howbeit different) code that allows Alan and David to become friends.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Was born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he died in 1894.

The author of Kidnapped also wrote Treasure Island and The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde. In 1868 Robert changed the spelling of his middle name Lewis to Louis and dropped his other name Balfour (although he did drop the name into Kidnapped). He spent a large amount of time in his boyhood, in the home of his maternal grandfather, recalling later, I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them.

Robert was taught for extended periods by private tutors due to recurring illnesses and, in part due to this isolation, he began to write stories. His father paid for his first work to be printed (having encouragingly told him earlier to, give up such nonsense and mind your business). His father seems to have been mollified by Robert agreeing to go to Edinburgh University to study Law while starting his career as a man of Letters. At University he became an atheist (the only thing as despicable as a theist). He qualified for the Bar in 1875.

Meanwhile, he travelled. He travelled in search of better health. He travelled to inspire his writing. In this phase of his career. he can be characterised as an early travel writer. He married in 1880, when he was, a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom".

Settling in Westbourne, England, and mostly bedridden, Robert began the most productive period of his life (his five best-loved works come from this period – including Kidnapped).

In 1889 Robert was travelling the Pacific and entered port in Samoa. He and his family decided to settle, and this is where he died. The Samoans call him Tusitala (Teller of Tales). He was, for the most part, excised from the history of English literature through the 20th Century partly for his association with the Pacific and partly for a snobbish belief that he wrote children’s stories and horror (lowly pulp fiction forms of literature). His work is currently undergoing reappraisal as critics have found out his works are aimed at adults and his oeuvre of travel books and literary criticism extends far beyond what is considered his childish outpourings.

Director,

Robert Stevenson

Was born on March 31, 1905, in Buxton, England. He died in 1986.

Robert is the only director, to date, to be Oscar nominated for a Disney film. His career started at Paramount British Newsreel as a script writer. He moved to Gainsborough to work in the same capacity and then moved to the US to avoid conscription as he was a pacificist. There he worked at RKO.

During WWII he worked with Frank Capra making documentary films. After the war his career had a dry period where he had to turn to television to get employment. This continued until he was hired by Walt Disney in 1956.

Actor,

James MacArthur

Was born December 8, 1937, in Los Angeles, California, USA. He died in 2010.

He said, I'm not so sure how much influence actors really have. And anyone who votes for a [political]candidate solely on the advice of his favorite actor isn't too bright in my book. This spotlights how the cult of personality has undermined Democracy in the USA and pointed the system in the direction of fascism (and the cult of personality).

––––––––

Pollyanna

Director & Script: David Swift

DOP: Russell Harlan     Editor: Frank Gross

Music: Paul J. Smith

A: Hayley Mills, Kevin Corcoran, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, Adolphe Menjou, Donald Crisp, Agnes Moorehead, James Drury

The glad girl (a pessimist is an optimist with more information) makes a comeback to the big screen, courtesy of Walt Disney, who imported Hayley Mills for the title role (after seeing her performance in Tiger Bay [1959]). Despite its fractured structure the narrative is coherent (so well, in fact, that you do feel a little short shifted by the rushed nature of the ending). Disney shows a courage his successors lacked by having nude boys in the opening credits (the boy feature in that shot was William Betz who remembered people were not allowed to swim in the water where that scene was shot). All in all, it is a paean to small town America, as Disney envisaged it to be.

It bears comparison to It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). A small town is controlled and is having the life squeezed out of it. It is saved by an outsider that brings the community together.

On mature reflection, there is an element of sedition in this film. It comes from the ambiguous way the film can be read. Pollyanna can be read as a desire by the US to