"Babe in Toyland"
Gary Leach
bangfish at comcast.net
Tue Dec 9 14:25:10 CET 2003
Eta Beta:
>> Of course, in 1961, Disney did his own version of the film
>
> Never seen that. Did it feature the Pigs and Mickey as well ?
Don't know about Mickey, but it does feature Tommy Sands as the hero,
Tom Piper, the fairy tale character who "stole a pig and away he run…"
Disney's version was "Babe in Toyland," featuring the aforementioned
Mr. Sands, the recently discussed Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Ed
Wynn, a very young Ann Jillian, and the marvelous Ray Bolger as the
villain, Barnaby. It was one of my all-time favorite childhood films -
I kept bugging my parents, grandparents, any relative who'd listen to
buy me the toy soldiers, and I would've given my right eyeteeth for
some of the other toys depicted. It was all just so colorful and, well,
cool. I had no idea that it was being rather poorly received in other
quarters.
Seeing it many, many years later, I have to go along with the critics
of the day; it just doesn't hold together very well. The animated
toys-vs-Barnaby battle scene at the end is still kinda neat, though.
An article in a Disney publication of some years back focused on this
film, and related that on seeing an initial edit, Walt Disney observed
that (paraphrasing from memory) "Well, I guess Disney just can't do
musicals."
Fortunately, this didn't result in Disney halting another musical
project just getting underway at the time - "Mary Poppins."
Gary
More information about the DCML
mailing list