“Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Dr. Sterdivant on sabbatical from the Sorbonne.” “Oh hi, I’m Tim, the ice cream man from Dolly Dixons.”
40 years ago Walt Disney Productions’ comedy classic “The Shaggy D.A.” returned to network television, presented in two parts, a 1976 sequel to Disney’s first live-action comedy, the 1959 classic “The Shaggy Dog”, a whole 17 years later.
Wilby Daniels (Dean Jones) is now grown up and a lawyer with a wife (Suzanne Pleshette) and son (Shane Sinutko) who’s house is robbed twice, and decides to run for District Attorney, against the crooked current DA John Slade (Keenan Wynn) and his crooked partner Eddie Rochack (Vic Tayback). The Lucrezia Borgia ring cursed with magical transformative powers from the museum is stolen by the same two crooks that robbed the Daniels’ house (Dick Bakalyan and Warren Berlinger), and eventually falls into the hands of local ice cream man Tim (Tim Conway) and his girlfriend (Joanne Worley), and the reading of the inscription turns Wilby into Elwood, Tim’s dog. Slade’s henchman Raymond (Dick Van Patten) finds out about the powers of the ring, and the campaign is going to the pound!
“The Shaggy D.A.” is a wonderful, joyous film that incorporates a great cast with an engaging plot for some truly inspired fun. The interview with host Jonathan Daly, the pie fight with Iris Adrian hoping to find the ring for the reward, the nocturnal prowls with Tim to try to get evidence on Keenan Wynn, and the dog pound with John Fiedler and Michael McGreevey as two very unfortunate kennel keepers makes for one of the best comedies the studio ever made. The voices by George Kirby for the dogs in the kennel, with imitations of Bogart, Cagney, Robinson and even Mae West make for one inspired film.
“Smile Darn Ya Smile You know that this big world is a big world after all.”
That is the song and title of one of the early Warner Brothers cartoons, which came out in 1931. In today’s world it’s a little tougher to not be worried about what’s going on in our world and SMILE. My father would always say that positive thinking was so crucial to getting better, possibly the most important ingredient to getting better from ANYTHING.
We all need to keep positive, and try to keep our spirits high. Yes we’re going through something of epic proportions, and it’s hard to know what exactly will happen, but our grandparents (or at least SOME of our grandparents) had to go through the 1918 Spanish Flu, and we’ve gone through essentially 100 years of nothing of that epic nature happening again. There’s a tendency to think that this is a whole new experience to man, but it is just to several generations down that haven’t had such a horrible calamity. It’d be wonderful if it wasn’t happening, and at times this seems like a bad nightmare we’ll wake up from, but we will come out of this. We always do.
In Walt Disney’s classic “The Three Lives Of Thomasina” Patrick McGoohan plays a disillusioned vet who’s lost his wife and despite loving his daughter has lost a lot of his worth and love of living. When he first encounters Susan Hampshire, the local girl who happens to take care of animals at her cottage, she has just found a badger who has been caught in a metal spring trap, and possibly going to die. He looks at it and arrives quickly at the futile conclusion that the badger is beyond help, and that it would be more merciful to put it out of its misery. She insists to him that he has to try; that even if the creature goes through some pain that it’s always worth trying. As she states, “and wonderful to give him his life.” Life is always worth it, no matter what challenges are presented to us.
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.
