40 years ago today, on Easter Sunday 4/6/80, I went to see the reissue of Walt Disney’s classic “Lady And The Tramp”, along with the reissue of Walt Disney Productions’ “The Island At The Top Of The World”.
I’d seen “Lady” in 1975, but this would be my first exposure to “Island”, which had been released as the big Christmas Disney film of 1974. A loose remake of “In Search Of The Castaways”, also directed by Robert Stevenson, it stars David Hartman, Donald Sinden, Jacques Marin, Mako, David Gwillim, and Agneta Eckemyr in an adventure of a man searching for his son, traveling across the world, to find him in a lost Vikings world, flying by a dirigible, and encountering challenges from locals from an Arctic civilization. The film has many visual wonders, and a nicely played low-key sense of humor.
With a wonderful score by Maurice Jarre, it would be the last film to be finished by Disney veteran Winston Hibler. I’d see it at the State Theater in Jersey City on Kennedy Blvd, which unfortunately wasn’t a very safe theater at that time, marring the cinematic experience, the only time we’d ever step foot in that theater.