Pollyanna
(1960) color 134 minutes
with: Hayley Mills (Pollyanna Whittier), Kevin Corcoran (Jimmy Bean), Jane Wyman (Aunt Polly Harrington), Karl Malden (Reverend Paul Ford), Richard Egen (Dr. Chilton), Nancy Olson (Nancy), Adolphe Menjou (Pendegast), Donald Crisp (Mayor Warren), Agnes Moorehead (Mrs. Snow), Rita Shaw (Tilly), Mary Grace Canfield (Angelica), Edgar Dearing (station master)
Plot Outline (IMDb): A little girl comes to a town that is embattled by feuds and intimidated by her aunt. By the time she must leave, she has transformed the community with her indominatable will to see the good side of even the worst situations and bring it out for the betterment of all.
***
This super-hit for Disney, and Hayley's breakthrough picture (for which she won an Oscar), this update of the children's book about a girl who brings love wherever she cracks a smile, was the start of a whole new trend for Disney, the celebrity picture, and Ms. Mills (and others) made many more fortune-making hits for Uncle Walt in the most-pivotal 60s.
POLLYANNA is very much a MAME for kids, and surprisingly enough it works, due to the all-around charisma of the cast, and the wonderful small town setting. Uncle Walt sure knew what he was doing when he snatched little Hayley Mills from father John and propped her up in the title role: walking around with her shiny pigtails and drippy milk mustache, she simply shouts "fertility goddess", the lure of the forbidden.
Disney favorite Kevin Corcoran is fine as Polly's bratty pal. Preacher Karl Malden gives a creepy hell-fire sermon, sure to scare the kids in the audience, as well as the kids in the film, which seems inordinately heavy-handed, religion-wise.
Then there's the creepy old neighbor (Menjou) who supposedly keeps kids as slaves in his rat-filled basement! When Pollyanna enters the old coot's house, we're not sure if she's just entered the lair of a sexual predator, a harmless misanthrope, or the devil himself, so occult are his surroundings (replete with mind-altering prisms, an uncanny foreshadowing of 1960's psychedelia).
Polly sets the guy straight though; in fact, precocious Polly has meaningful encounters with all the adult male authority figures in town, and subsequently becomes fixated on the machinations of prisms and politics. (Pollyanna, herself very much on the cusp of sexuality, acting as sexual catalyst for her community is a subject for further study.)
Then there's an evocative night carnival, at which Polly sings "America, the Beautiful", wrapped up in the flag! There is of course, the obligatory traumatic near-death experience to freak out the wee ones, but all ends well.
Surely, this depiction of small-town America at the very core of the Cold War acts as allegory for the whole nation as well; patriotism, paranoia and even mysticism vie for ascendancy in the mass consciousness, in an attempt to exorcise the demons which haunt her.
Lastly, POLLYANNA paints a stunningly vivid microcosm of America through its most valued economic and political commodity: the small town. This is one of the recurring motifs of the Disney live-action canon during its glorious golden age, and part of the genius of the Disney legacy. POLLYANNA depicts an idealized small town, an environment which never actually existed; or did it? Perhaps this village does accurately depict every small town in the USA, where beneath the coats of stark white paint, and its implicit veneer of respectability, neurotics and conspirators and malcontents moan and wail and lurk behind each door, ready to undermine the glossy facade of society's attempt to function like a well-oiled machine by revealing their despair, anguish, and most importantly, bitter partisan discord.
This fun omnibus of a film fully expresses Disney's obsession with suburban America as cultural and sociological experiment, an obsession which began with Disneyland and hasn't ended yet!
***
Kevin S. Butler informs us that sadly, POLLYANNA was Adolph Menjou's last movie. He would pass away a few years later, a victim of kidney problems.
Also: Rita Shaw, best remembered as Martha, the house keeper on the TV series "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir" played Tilly the cook. Mary Grace Canfield (best remembered as one of the Monroe Brothers on Paul Henning's "Green Acres" played Angelica, the grumpy maid in the film. Character actor Edgar Dearing, who had played a traffic cop in the Laurel & Hardy film comedies TWO TARS and THE BIG NOISE, played the station master of the Harrington train depot.
Video/DVD availability: VHS/DVD (Disney Home Video)
Walt Disney Productions / Buena Vista Distribution
Story: Eleanor H. Porter (from her novel)
Screenplay: David Swift
Cinematogrpahy: Russell Harlan
Music: Paul Smith
Produced by Walt Disney, George Golitzen
Directed by David Swift
