From Disney’s Vault: Pollyanna

Taken another dip into “Vault Disney” and this time bought one of my all time favorites, Pollyanna.

I have the original Eleanor Porter novel and actually Disney may have improved the original: Pollyanna, like her Canadian sister Anne Shirley, is an incessant talker, while the movie character is more thoughtful. Of course Pollyanna has had a bad rep for years, with her “Glad Game,” yet the reason for the existence of the Glad Game is rather sad: Pollyanna has always wanted a doll, but her missionary father cannot afford one. He asks his congregation back in the States if they might send a small doll for his daughter; instead crutches are sent. Instead of allowing Pollyanna to whine about this development, her father develops the game: to find something good in an event, no matter how bad it is.

Think of it: here’s a child who has little of what we think of as comforts in her life. She is not deluged in toys, her clothing comes from donations to the missions, she has few playmates. Yet she savors the things she finds in nature and in the people around her. She should be seen as gallant rather than simpering, but the foolish “Pollyanna” of legend has replaced the sturdy little girl who faces the world with her chin up; like Heidi her reputation has gotten a “bad rap.”

Disney’s gorgeous version of this story is well served by the DVD. The print has been meticulously restored, and there’s an accompanying short that talks about it: the original negative had yellowed, destroying the carefully-crafted 1912 atmosphere, and the color separations, which Disney insisted be done on all his color movies, and which should have restored the movie, had been left with a mistake in them (two blue separations were made, one labeled green, so no green stock existed).

I found the commentary on the disk fun, but not quite as good as that on Old Yeller. David Swift and Hayley Mills evidently had a good time watching this again, but occasionally they went off on tangents when I would have preferred to hear how certain shots were done. Some facts I found interesting:

• Aunt Polly’s house was a real home in Santa Rosa, California, but only the first two storys of it actually exist. The third story is a matte painting by Peter Ellenshaw.
  
• The little boy jumping in the pond at the opening of the movie really is naked—he was embarrassed to be jumping nude in front of the little girls on the set, so they made him a little “fig leaf” for his front parts that was glued on.
  
• The first scene filmed for the movie was of Pollyanna delivering the message to Reverend Ford and his discovery of “nobody owns a church.” The Abraham Lincoln saying on Pollyanna’s locket is false—David Swift made it up! After the movie came out, they sold replicas of the locket at Disneyland and David Swift, horrified, called up Roy Disney Sr. and had to confess what he did. Roy didn’t care and no one ever called them on it!
  

I was amused by the fact that, while I enjoyed the commentary, at times I was tempted to yell “Shut up so I can watch the movie!”

David Swift also complained several times about how Walt Disney wouldn’t allow him to edit anything; how he would have taken out Pollyanna mimicking the cow, Jimmy Bean’s face underwater, and many scenes at the bazaar (he also would have cut it differently, leading up to the doll sequence), etc.—about 20 minutes of the movie all told. I understand his reasoning and think the edits would have told a shorter, perhaps even better, story, but I think that, for Walt, he wasn’t just telling a story, he was going for a feeling, a mood, the fabric of 1912. He was from that era and wanted you to feel as if you were there, right then. For people like myself, it works. When I watch Pollyanna I never think of it as being too long. I love being back there.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:35:00 AM

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