"Wartime Disney" and Other Random "House of Mouse" Items...

While rooting around on the web today found this item about the "Wartime Disney" Treasures release (scheduled for early December 2003):

"Walt Disney On The Front Lines documents the training, propaganda and educational films Walt created over the years, as well as his contributions to the war effort. There are 32 shorts and films in this set."

According to another site, which claims the info came right from the horse's mouth (aka Buena Vista distribution), "Der Fuehrer's Face" is included, along with "Education for Death," the animated Disney feature about the education of a Nazi child, which I understand is very disturbing.

Also hunted about for some info on the film I mentioned in yesterday's entry, The Horse Without a Head, which Disney did release to video several years back. It was only shown theatrically in Europe, so many people may not remember it from the Wonderful World of Color series. It's the story of five French slum children whose only toy is a full-size Victorian-type hobbyhorse (instead of having rockers, it has metal wheels). Found decapitated in the basement of a bombed out villa (the original story takes place after World War II–I have the book, which is by Paul Berna), the horse provides the only source of amusement for these kids–until bank robbery booty is hidden in the horse's body and it's taken by the thieves. The film is stolen, IMHO, by Pamela Franklin as Marion, "the girl with the dogs." Marion loves dogs and takes injured strays home, treats them, then finds them homes, but not before she teaches them to always respond to her whistle. Needless to say, Marion's canine crew comes in handy when the kids go searching for their beloved horse. Jean-Pierre Aumont plays a police inspector with a twinkle in his eye.

Another co-star of this movie is Vincent Winter, a Disney regular in several movies, including Almost Angels and The Three Lives of Thomasina. I found out just recently that Winter died a few years ago, at the relatively young age of fifty. :-(

Which of course brings me to another Disney film that ought to be on DVD: why have they released Snowball Express, f'heaven's sake, and not stuff like Thomasina, with Patrick McGoohan in his second most memorable role for Disney, the dour Scots vet Andrew McDhui. McGoohan's tour-de-force for Disney, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, should also be out in DVD. I can't tell you how many websites I've tripped over where the author lovingly remembers the masked face of the Scarecrow or the words of the rousing Scarecrow theme song ("Scarecrow, scarecrow, the soldiers of the king feared his name...").

And we don't want the theatrically edited movie, Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow, either, but the full version as it appeared on television!

One of my own Disney wants probably isn't remembered by many people--no, I'm not going to harp about Gallegher again; I'll save that for another time, if I haven't talked about him enough already on his own web page. It's a Civil War-era movie called High Flying Spy with Stuart Whitman and Darren McGavin as rival balloon ascensionists and Vincent Van Patten as the inevitable kid that gets involved with them. This was a smart period piece and Whitman's character, Thaddeus Lowe, was an actual person who used balloons as spy devices during the Civil War as Spy details. Lowe later moved to California and both the Lowe Observatory and Mount Lowe are named after him. (I can't remember where I read it recently, but Lowe did something later in his career which helped World War I aviators, although he died in 1913, before the war even started.)

(This was the one case where I remember the book being more disappointing than the movie. I managed to find the source book, High Spy, to this film at the library and was bored to tears by it.)

Incidentally, Thaddeus Lowe's granddaughter Frances Lowe also figures in one of my favorite movies, just recently re-released on DVD in a special edition, The Right Stuff. Miss Lowe, who went up in her grandfather's balloons from childhood, was later known as "Pancho" Barnes.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:25:00 AM

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