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A wonderful cast enlivens this quiet, more moderate comedy, originally made for television but released theatrically, garnering two wonderful sequels “Now You See Him Now You Don’t” and “The Strongest Man In The World”.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.”