40 years ago today, on 3/16/80, Walt Disney’s comedy classic “Son Of Flubber” came to network television for the first time on NBC’s “Disney’s Wonderful World”. It was the first sequel done at the Disney studio, the joys of the first film providing too many wonderful ideas for the filmmakers to resist.
This 1963 comedy continues the adventures of Professor Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) and his gravity defying discovery Flubber, which he develops into a gas, Flubbergas, which can make it rain at will, be a great fertilizer, and have some unfortunate side effects like breaking glass.
One of the greatest comic casts ever put together into one film, it stars Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, Joanna Moore, Ed Wynn, Charlie Ruggles, Ken Murray, Edward Andrews, Paul Lynde, Gregg Hoyt, William Demarest, Bob Sweeney, Leon Tyler, Stuart Erwin, Alan Carney, Gordon Jones, Alan Hewitt, Norman Grabowski, James Westerfield, Forrest Lewis, Jack Albertson, Harriett MacGibbon, Joe Flynn, Byron Foulger, Dallas McKennon, Wally Boag, Beverly Wills, Don Edmonds, Burt Mustin, J. Pat O’Malley, Hal Smith, the voice of Ginny Tyler, and Walt Disney’s grandson Wed Miller as the bouncing baby boy in the Flubberoleum commercial.
One of the greatest comedies of the studio, the 100 minute film was cut for television to 95 minutes, cutting out the Bob Sweeney scene where he tries to collect the taxes of the Brainards. It would be the only showing of the film on network television. In the late 90s a colorized version would appear on The Disney Channel, but the film is best in its original black and white, one of the last black and white films to premiere on network television.
“Son Of Flubber” is one of the best Disney comedies of all time, and a film with great heart (at its trial scene). It is one joyous film.
“Adventure, humor and suspense are interwoven when a maverick newspaper woman teams up with THE KIDS WHO KNEW TOO MUCH.
Don’t miss Sharon Gless, Larry Cedar, Lloyd Haynes, David Sheiner and THE KIDS WHO KNEW TOO MUCH in a special 2-hour presentation on Disney’s Wonderful World”.
40 years ago, on 3/9/80, Walt Disney Productions’ classic TV movie “The Kids Who Knew Too Much” premiered on “Disney’s Wonderful World”.
A small-time pickpocket (Erik Stern aka: Jack Lemp) gets killed when betraying a fence (David Sheiner), his thugs (Michael Dante, John Milford and Don Knight), and the connection they have to a crooked senator (Jared Martin) and police commissioner (Richard O’Brian) who are going to try to assassinate a Russian Premier (Ben Astor). A boy (Rad Daly) stumbles upon it with his friends (Dana Hill, Christopher Holloway, and Kevin King Cooper), as well as an unsuspecting reporter (Sharon Gless), along with the photographer assigned to her (Larry Cedar). Accordingly their lives will be in major danger.
“The Kids Who Knew Too Much” is a taught, exciting adventure, with a tight plot, and plenty of incident laced with humor. Directed by Robert Clouse, who had done the Disney classic “The Omega Connection” a year earlier, the movie doesn’t have the budget of the previous film, but is beautifully interwoven in its story that makes it very involving.
“Well I don’t care what the whole world thinks, She loves the Monkey’s Uncle! Call us a couple of missing links, She loves the Monkey’s Uncle!”
40 years ago today, on 3/2/80, Walt Disney’s “The Monkey’s Uncle” returned to television for its third network showing, for the first time the whole film being presented in one evening, a special two-hour presentation.
Merlin Jones (Tommy Kirk) returns from “The Misadventures Of Merlin Jones” (1964), with Jennifer (Annette) his girlfriend, and Stanley the chimp, Merlin becoming legally the monkey’s uncle in the opening scene. Merlin gets into trouble by doing sleep learning for some of the let’s say less gifted football players of the college (Leon Tyler and Norman Grabowski), trying to get them to pass their exams to be eligible for their football team. In the second half Judge Holmsby (Leon Ames) has a competition with Mr. Dearborne (Frank Faylen), the Judge wanting to save the football program of Midvale College, while Dearborne wants it terminated, trying to figure out a way to financially help the college. The Judge is approached by a “millionaire” (Arthur O’Connell) who wants man propelled flight to be achieved by man’s own strength, and Merlin makes a flying contraption to hopefully save the football team.
“The Monkey’s Uncle” is a pleasant, goofy film, like its predecessor, and since it was a theatrical film from the start, its production values are a little higher than the first film. They still approached it as two separate stories, but there’s more physical hijinks than in the first film. The cast is wonderful, with familiar faces like Connie Gilchrist returning as the Judge’s housemaid, Alan Hewitt as the professor, and Frank Faylen in his only Disney film. Mark Goddard plays the head of the sorority, though he goes unbilled (just before he’d appear in “Lost In Space”), and Cheryl Miller is Stanley’s gorgeous babysitter, creating friction between Merlin and Jennifer. Gage Clarke appears as the president of the college, and it’s sadly obvious that he had health problems at the time, this being his last film, passing away in 1964, the film being released posthumously.
“Cats and rabbits would reside in happy little houses, and be dressed in shoes and hats and trousers, in a world of my own.”
200 years ago today, on 2/28/1820, Sir John Tenniel was born. He’d eventually give birth to the adventures and characters of the classic “Alice In Wonderland”.
Before he wrote it there was no Alice, or March Hare, or Queen Of Hearts. A world without such treasures? Not without Sir John Tenniel.
A very merry unbirthday, I mean birthday, to you, you very imaginative man. Without you the illogic would be illogical.
“I could listen to a babbling brook, and hear a song that I could understand. I keep wishing it could be that way, because my world would be a wonderland.
40 years ago today, on 2/3/79, Walt Disney Productions’ classic “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” concluded on “Disney’s Wonderful World”, having begun the previous Sunday, the third and last network showing of the 1970 comedy.
Student Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) is jolted by the current of a computer at Medfield College, and the middling student becomes a boy genius, with his college Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn) desperately trying to keep him at the school, and gangster AJ Arno (Cesar Romero) trying to stop him because of the unwitting information he’s absorbed about Arno’s criminal operation from the computer memory banks.
A wonderful cast enlivens this quiet, more moderate comedy, originally made for television but released theatrically, garnering two wonderful sequels “Now You See Him Now You Don’t” and “The Strongest Man In The World”. All three films would end up being shown three times on network television, at least one time in a two-hour format for each film (all three for “Strongest”).
“The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” is one of the most important comedies of the Disney studio in the 1970s, making a movie star of Kurt Russell, his first leading role, and leading to some wonderful films that are total delights.
“The computer wore tennis shoes had a twinkle in his eye.”
40 years ago today, on 2/17/80, Walt Disney Productions’ classic about two young space travelers who have to try to return to their own world, “Escape To Witch Mountain” came to television for the first time in a special 2-hour presentation on “Disney’s Wonderful World” on NBC.
Tony and Tia are kids with supernatural powers from another world, who’s powers are attempted to be harnessed by evil millionaire Aristotle Bolt and his assistant Deranian. They have to escape, and encounter a friend in Jason O’Dea, who lives out of his Winnebago, but they will be hunted down by Bolt and the bounty he has put on their return. The chase is on.
The 1975 film stars Eddie Albert, Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence, Ike Eisenmann as Tony, and Kim Richards as Tia, in a supernatural thriller unlike any Disney movie made before. This family friendly, but still rather tense action film was produced by Jerome Courtland and directed by John Hough.
It would return to NBC later that same year shown again in two hours on 10/12/80, and then in two parts on CBS on 12/19/81 and 12/26/81. It would have a sequel in 1978 “Return From Witch Mountain”, and a TV follow-up “Beyond Witch Mountain”.
“Escape To Witch Mountain” is an exciting, and eventually rather touching film, one of the most successful Disney films of the 1970s.
