Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

I like The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins better, OP.

OP, I love [italic]The Sound of Music[/italic] more than any other film except this but I hate that bitch with the umbrella. Punched and deleted, as will anyone who mentions that bitch. Honestly, I can't even believe the same people made the two movies. That bitch with the umbrella is maudlin, false and would be too long whether it were five minutes long or five hours long. [italic]Bedknobs[/italic] is fun, exciting, truthful about human nature, and puts something of value into every single one of its 139 minutes.

Bedknobs was the '71 Christmas movie at Radio City.

The Music Hall wasn't large enough to contain that shitfest.

Though a boy at the time I remember all of midtown stinking like the men's room at Penn station after a Knick's game during that engagement.

What do you expect when Angela Lansbury and a bed are fighting off the Nazis with Sherman Brothers trunk songs?

It wasn't until the Music Hall hosted the '73 re-release of Mary Poppins that people could again walk up 6th Av without a gas mask.

Channing lost Dolly because of Millie.

Lansbury lost Mame because of Bedknobs.

R3, if you saw it at Radio City you didn't really see it. That was the cut version, and even the critics noted the cuts and noted as much in their reviews. Others were intelligent enough to appreciate the gem that was left behind. The restored version is EONS better. And anyone who dislikes this film and likes that bitch with the umbrella really, seriously, truly needs to die in a grease fire. I'm not kidding about that, either.

[quote]Lansbury lost Mame because of Bedknobs.

No she lost it because Reagan refused to fry Charles fucking Manson and WB used her moving to Ireland as the excuse not to even ask her. B&B still outgrossed LucyMAME anyway despite the cuts and despite the fetid, wrong-headed philistinism of haters like you, R3/R4.

[italic]Dolly[/italic] was better off with Streisand, honestly. She can rein it in when she needs to. Channing never could That's also why I prefer Carol Burnett's Miss Hannigan to Dorothy Loudon's. Carol could rein it in. Dorothy couldn't, and that proto-[italic]Facts of Life[/italic] TV show of hers cost her [italic]Annie[/italic] on screen.

Lansbury's performance here is the model of perfection. Every gesture, every inflection and every line delivery is exquisitely timed. Compare her to, say, Bette Midler in [italic]Hocus Pocus[/italic]; Kenny Ortega does nothing to rein her in so she is turned up to 11. Lansbury gives a performance. Midler does shtick. Funny shtick, but still shtick.

Ha! I think Streisand is terrific in Dolly! And I love Song of the South! And I love Hepburn in Fair Lady!

And I still think Bedknobs is the turd someone left in the toilet bowl when you go to use it because they didn't properly flush it!

[quote]That Manipulative, Calculating Bitch With the Umbrella is the turd someone left in the toilet bowl when you go to use it because they didn't properly flush it!

Fixed. You still have no taste. The 117-minute version is but a pale shadow of the greatness of the complete version. Oh, that 1971 could have seen the whole thing the way it desperately needed to, and if audiences then could sit through a three-hour [italic]Fiddler on the Roof[/italic], then 20 minutes to tie up the loose ends of the plot is nothing by comparison.

They still haven't found this. They needed it because it shows how Miss Price secretly longs to be a dancer, and the words "when a little sparrow wants to leave the nest, first he has to put his feathers to the test" speaks to how she has never left the house that used to belong to her father. And it adds emotional weight to her and Mr. Browne winning the dance contest. Maybe her kicks were a little too high to keep their G rating?

It's my favorite childhood film. It was great acting by Angela Lansbury -- much better and believable than her acting in Murder, She Wrote.

And Fiddler is a piece of shit as well!

Fiddler at the Rivoli and literally a block away is Bedknobs the Music Hall's coal in the Christmas stocking.

Jesus how depressing can holiday entertainment get?

Depressing? Maybe to those who like their entertainment artificially sweetened and to those with the attention span of a gnat. I feel like standing up and cheering when the Nazis get beaten up like they fucking deserve. In fact, it makes me want to go beat up deplorables while shouting "Treguna Mekoides Tracorum Satis Dee".

When I was a child, Bedknobs was my absolute favorite Disney film.

For some reason I never even saw it.

I remember and loved this from the same time >>

Was this a hit in the USA?

R14, I don't know how it did stateside, but 1971 seemed to be an exceptionally strong year for films aimed at both children and adults. I've been wanting to see that movie for years but the DVD is out of print and astronomically priced. The G rating scared off a lot of adults even though these were movies that would have passed the Production Code if it had still been in effect, and that code let a lot of violence slide.

Before that, Jenny Agutter was in [italic]Star![/italic] as Julie Andrews' daughter. Bruce Forsythe, who plays Mr. Swinburne in B&B, played Julie's father there. Jenny worked for Disney in a 1981 film called [italic]Amy[/italic] that also had Nanette Fabray.

OP, what's all this got to do with my knob?

And why does Radio City get blamed for the Bedknob cuts? Because the Disney Corp. became a group of lying cheats?

When Millionaire started tanking in its reserved seat engagements it was the Disney company that started mutilating its films.

The Music Hall was showing 2 and 1/2 hour films through the 50s and into the 60s including Christmas movies such as Auntie Mame and Sayonara.

It also showed the more than 2 hour 1776 the following Christmas. Which would have been even longer had they not cut Considerate Men.

Which by the way was in the film's previews at the Music Hall in the summer of '72 because they were already booking seats for it!

And I saw the Railway Children at Radio City as well.

One of the few decent films I saw there.

.

R16, if the studio that owned your favorite movie kept playing musical chairs with the songs and story, you'd be a bit defensive, too.

[quote]And why does Radio City get blamed for the Bedknob cuts? Because the Disney Corp. became a group of lying cheats?

Became? I hate to break it to you, but that didn't start with Eisner, though it did get worse under him though they insist they've changed now. [italic]Happiest Millionaire[/italic] was cut after its LA premiere, but the producer and the head of the company bitterly argued over how much to cut. The head of the company got the cuts he wanted and a long, glorious, rambling 172-minute extravaganza turned into a choppy, confusing two-hour semi-musical that cut every scene Tommy Steele wasn't in and some key songs, opening to worse reviews and smaller audiences than before they cut it. They did it to [italic]Family Band[/italic] preemptively, assuming that if [italic]Millionaire[/italic] flopped, that would, too. The lie was the studio's assurance to the Shermans that the cuts were just for the Music Hall. Robert B. Sherman warned them that that's where the critics would see it. So everyone got the cut version and their fears turned into a self-fulfilling prophesy. With [italic]Bedknobs[/italic], which was never intended to be more than 2 1/2 hours tops (a standard length for a Roadshow-style musical), this time they had Bill Walsh, who was offered Walt's job after he died but turned it down (taking the job would have created another succession crisis when he died in 1975), on their side, but the studio had turned into a crippling bureaucracy that did everything by vote. They fought for the film as hard as they could but lost. With B&B, the fact that RCMH they had a Christmas show in the mix complicated things. Why couldn't they have just cut 20 minutes from the stage show?

But just be glad you didn't see the 97-minute version created after the fact to bring it closer in length to [italic]Song of the South[/italic]. I watched that once on broadcast TV and it made me angry to see how much they cut. Even at its longest length it's still shorter than any of the Harry Potter movies. And in an age where binge-watching whole seasons of TV shows is commonplace a 140-minute musical with animation in it is a drop in the bucket. I don't buy into the arguments that it is "too long." Some of the most profitable movies in history were a great deal longer than this. If you had cut [italic]Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia[/italic] and [italic]The Godfather[/italic] down to 2 hours they would probably not make very much sense. And when I first saw [italic]The Sound of Music[/italic], I saw it in the cut-for-NBC version and didn't think much of it until I saw it uncut on home video.

R17, I saw an Angela Lansbury movie at Radio City on a school trip to New York from West Virginia, it was "The World of Henry Orient". I watched it again years later and still liked it. Also saw Janis Paige and Craig Stevens in "Here's Love" on that trip. New York had Beatlemania at that time.

Another reason I very strongly prefer this film to that other Robert Stevenson musical which need not be mentioned anywhere for any reason whatsoever is that it affirms the values of adoptive families, and as a gay man that means a lot to me because most gay couples who had children adopted them. And with this film Disney was actually forward thinking in a lot of ways: Mr. Browne cooks and wears and apron, and after he leaves Miss Price is still raising the children without a man around. Other movies talk the talk about cultural diversity, this movie walks the walk and uses the wonderful Portobello Road dance to show not only that soldiers can be musical, too (and if five seasons of [italic]Gomer Pyle, USMC[/italic] couldn't convince America that gays were fit to serve openly, maybe this would help), and to show that people of color were part of the fight against Nazism. Mr. Browne even dances hand-in-hand with a black woman for three seconds while he's looking for Miss Price!

And as for RCMH, studios got tired of their G-only policy because it deprived them of some of the more profitable PG-rated films, including [italic]Star Wars[/italic]. Even Disney relented eventually and got into PG territory though they still got some negative backlash from some religious hypocrites for mild profanity. I imagine they probably objected to the very idea of witchcraft being depicted in a positive light.

The Christmas show had nothing to do with it.

Like I said Auntie Mame and Sayonara had short stage shows which included The Nativity.

For anal people like us you can look at the ads and the timings for both the films and the stage shows. Those stage shows were short.

It was get the camels and Rockettes on and get them off.

There was no excuse for the butchering of Millionaire, Family Band and Bedknobs except corporate incompetence and stupidity.

And they're still doing it concerning the DVD release of Bedknobs, the non release of Song of the South and has the cut footage of Family Band been seen since it ended up on the cutting room floor in '68?

The Music Hall's problem was that it couldn't even get good PG movies. Movie producers no longer saw any point in sharing profits with a stage show.

They couldn't even get the two G rated That's Entertainment movies because the studio didn't want the Hall to have them.

There is a whole list of 70s films that weren't R rated and the Music Hall didn't have them. Not because it didn't want them but because the studios didn't want the Hall.

Radio City was already putting Mature audience warnings in its ads back in '67 with Two for the Road.

This is a big misconception that Radio City would only show G rated films. This wasn't true at all.

They wouldn't show R rated films and honestly they didn't need to nor should they have. There was plenty of 'product' available.

The Sting, Murder on the Orient Express, The Way We Were, Star Wars, American Graffiti...

.

And by the way I saw Murphy's War in '71 at Radio City in which O'Toole said 'fuck.'

A lady nearby gasped.

Radio City was not as maiden old lady as people would have it.

This could be an anthem for a gay militia:

[quote]Jesus how depressing can holiday entertainment get?

[italic]It's A Wonderful Life[/italic] is about a guy trying to kill himself after he let multiple opportunities for success pass him by. [italic]Miracle on 34th Street[/italic] is about a guy who gets put in a mental hospital for claiming to be Santa. [italic]A Christmas Story[/italic] is about a trigger-happy little boy. [italic]National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation[/italic] is about a poor family begging their more successful cousin not to let them rot in the streets and die a bunch of homeless bums. [italic]Bad Santa[/italic] is about a loser who builds up the trust of children and adults in order to rob them blind. And don't get me started on [italic]Home for the Holidays[/italic]; not one likeable character of any sexual orientation! And Christianity itself is built around the fetishization of death, even going so far as to wear an implement of execution around one's neck. At least this movie offers a viable alternative to Christianity and suggests, unlike other films of its kind before it, that that's not all it's cracked up to be and not all there is, hence the Roddy McDowall parts.

You want depressing, it doesn't get much more depressing than that? These kids just lost their homes and the closest thing they had to a family: their Aunt Bessie. Oops, you didn't see the part about Aunt Bessie. That was one of the scenes they cut. It also happened to be one of Cindy O'Callaghan's best scenes in the film, the only one that explored the children's life before they got to Pepperinge Eye (but at least it's not bogged down in backstory like [italic]Tomorrowland[/italic]), and the only one that acknowledged the undeniable reality of war: people die.

Judy Carne was on the short list to play Miss Price but they still let her perform a song from it on a second cast album with different arrangements and vocalists from the film but also put out by Disney. Much like some of the songs from [italic]The Wizard of Oz[/italic] have lyrical introductions heard only outside the film (like the 16-bar intro to "Over the Rainbow"), so does "Substitutiary Locomotion":

[quote]And they're still doing it concerning the DVD release of Bedknobs, the non release of Song of the South and has the cut footage of Family Band been seen since it ended up on the cutting room floor in '68?

The DVD is the as-uncut-as-it's-going-to-get-for-the-foreseeable-future-barring-some-major-miracle version with "With a Flair" and "Nobody's Problem's For Me" put back. The soundtrack has the former but not the latter and has "Step in the Right Direction," the song from R9 that still can't be found (and one of the dance moves in "Portobello Road" that had two women dancing together with their arms around each other only existed as a workprint which, coupled with how little of Roddy's role made it to the premiere, made me think that was a point of contention as much as the actual running time). The Blu-ray is the shortened version you saw at Radio City with some, but not all, of the scenes that were restored in 1996 available only as a supplement with no way to actually watch them in the film, and the scenes themselves are not complete.

The cuts to [italic]Family Band[/italic] were made in time to keep the songs off the soundtrack album (which is in stereo though the film only got a mono release). One was a Buddy Ebsen solo, the other a Janet Blair solo, and they were intended to give the parents a chance to express how they feel about relocating to the Dakota territory. There's a book of cut Disney songs in sheet music called [italic]Disney's Lost Chords Volume 2[/italic] that has them. A lot of dramatic cuts that weakened the character motivation were also made, too; there's a scene where Lesley Ann Warren's character is having to defend herself before the school board for letting her grandfather substitute teach, and the pacing and editing is off in a way that makes me feel like crucial stuff was ordered removed. And it seems as though there was supposed to have been more of the love triangle between Lesley, John Davidson and a very queeny-looking Dakotan named Ernie Stubbins who wears a large, brightly colored handkerchief than what we actually see in the film.

No one has been able to conclusively prove there was a stereo screening of B&B prior to the 1996 reconstruction when they found the three-channel music tracks and used the soundtrack album as a guide to instrument placement. Irwin Kostal's arrangements are brilliant but they lose something in mono.

R14, is on the left was in THE RAILWAY CHILDREN and STRAW DOGS!!!!!

1971 was also the year Nixon launched the War on Drugs, so the age of trippy family-friendly musicals that look like what happens when you give LSD to middle-aged Jews was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

And as for the assertion that this film cost Lansbury the chance to do [italic]Mame[/italic] on screen, based on the time frame and amount of pre-production time needed, I think WB had already made up their minds before it came out anyway. They wouldn't even listen to Jerry Herman making a personal appeal to cast her even though she already turned down that woman to do [italic]Dear Heart[/italic] for them (this was after Jack Warner sold out, though). And also remember that Lucy put up some of her own money to do it and also that it was supposed to be a Christmas 1973 release, and when the dailies started to dash any hopes of Oscar gold — it got nary a nomination for anything — they pushed it back to the spring of 1974. So based on how long it would have taken for WB (and ABC who also had a hand in its production) to negotiate the rights, the money and the casting, the wheels for LucyMAME were already in motion by the end of 1971 and it was just too late to turn them around.

Both Angela and Lucy had serious accidents during the early 1970s. Angie was hit by a car in Cork, Ireland, and broke her arm in the summer of 1971. Lucy broke her leg skiing (?) around the same time and had to postpone LucyMAME to recover and IIRC they wrote it into [italic]Here's Lucy[/italic].

There, there, Mary. Let it out, let it all out...

Shhhh....everything's going to be okay. Hush. Tell you what. Why not go make yourself a nice warm mug of soothing herbal tea to cradle while you put on that lovely CD of 'Follies' that you like so much.

Sound good? Feel better? Thought so.

B&B is to Disney as [italic]Follies[/italic] is to Broadway and they came out the same year.

[quote]Why not go make yourself a nice warm mug of soothing herbal tea to cradle

I prefer yerba mate but thanks anyway.

[quote]Mary

The original books were written by a Mary: Mary Norton, who also wrote [italic]The Borrowers[/italic]. For some reason, that's been harder to get right on film.

The spell book is from the duke of hell!

!!!!

The only thing good I can say about Mame was the opening credits looked great on the large Music Hall Screen.

[quote] The spell book is from the duke of hell!

At least it's not from that Dukes of Hazzard movie.

Jeez, Angela never would have done Mame. If they wanted someone other than Lucy, it would have gone to Julie Andrews or Ann Margret or Cher or....well, anyone but Angela. Roz Russell said she thought Cher should do it because she would bring something new to it.

It's annoying to hear people say "Julie should have done it" as if that automatically would have made it a bigger hit. If that's true, [italic]Star![/italic] and [italic]Darling Lili[/italic] would not have lost money. Every time I read a review that says "Julie Andrews would have been better in this role," especially from the same people who turned on her on a dime, it makes me think, "jeez, first you trash her for the roles she did do, then you trash others for the roles she turned down." Ultimately, Julie made the career and life choices she wanted to make.

And what movies or TV shows had Angela Lansbury done at that time that made money? You might have well have cast Sheila Klutz because she was as well known as Lansbury to the American public.

It was a cheap knock off of my TV Show

[quote]And what movies or TV shows had Angela Lansbury done at that time that made money?

You've got to be kidding me. [italic]The Manchurian Candidate[/italic] was and is a well-regarded film for which she earned an Oscar nomination in a year when no one deserved to lose. It was hardly a flop. Here, the Disney studio passed over Wendy Craig because no one in America knew who she was.

Julie had never made any movies at all before Disney miscast her as that umbrella bitch. All the age-related criticism of Streisand in [italic]Dolly[/italic] then and now was more fangurl projection onto someone who was too young, too callow, and too cutesy by even more. The script is to blame for that. Mrs. Goff said she could have played it any way she was directed to but said the trouble was how she was directed to. Even so, the was offered this first but turned it down for fear of typecasting, which is also why she passed on [italic]Chitty[/italic] for [italic]Star![/italic] though the former still outgrossed the latter without her and in some parts of the UK, it's what the Shermans are most identified with as it was actually shot there and made with English money. But [italic]Bedknobs[/italic] had the strongest story and a score most successfully integrated into both the story and the time period, so much so that my father actually asked me if "The Old Home Guard" was a real WWII song, and the effects shots didn't have that distracting blue fringing on the flying car shots that could stand to be fixed digitally.

There is just so much to this film that is not obvious at first glance. I mean, seriously, they've got a 10-minute musical number about antiquing, and the heroine is a freedom fighter with Petula Clark's hair and Dusty Springfield's hand gestures. And the drummer undersea is an octopus, a very clever reference to The Beatles and "Octopus' Garden," which Ringo wrote before covering the Shermans' "You're Sixteen".

Bedknobs and Broomsticks stinks. Jowly middle-aged Lansbury is absolutely decrepit in it. Mary Poppins is a brilliant work of Art and Julie Andrews was incredible in it.

"The Old Home Guard" is such a gem.

They had FACES, back then!

R40, and as we know, everyone saw "The Manchurian Candidate" because Angela Lansbury was the star.

Listen, I've enjoyed Lansbury onstage greatly but this constant "Angela not playing Mame in the movie is a disgrace" is so tiresome. She has very little visual appeal onscreen and no box office strength. And truth be told, she's not much of a singer either.

R41, you are an idiot and a bad person. That stink you complain of is the bullshit coming out of your mouth. You really need to jump into a grease fire as soon as possible.

That Narcissistic Cunt with the Umbrella is absolutely horrid. It's overlong by however long it is, Dick Van Dyke gives one of the most annoying, headache-inducing performances ever captured in any medium, Glynis Johns sets feminism back 50 years or more, and David Tomlinson's character transformation is unconvincing, but who cares when his character is so unsympathetic to begin with? Furthermore, your vilely insulting comments towards Angela Lansbury prove that its lookist attitudes (the Banks children made "very pretty" a qualification in that unbearably sappy song they wheeze out, totally contradicting the book) have a negative effect on people's beliefs.

[italic]Bedknobs[/italic] is a well-written, acted and directed musical fantasy and Angela had never been more radiant on film before or since (Frank Phillips was really an underrated cinematographer, by the way). She and David Tomlinson act like they've been married for years already from the moment they met while showing love is possible for middle-aged people without relying too heavily on the icky-sticky parts. And I honestly don't know who could have played Roddy McDowall's small but pivotal part better than he did. Tessie O'Shea is a force of nature as Mrs. Hobday, and she owned her own business. All the feminists who bash the Disney Princesses but ignore this movie are missing out. The women in this film (as well as those of [italic]My Fair Lady[/italic] and [italic]Pete's Dragon[/italic]) are far smarter and far less deferrent to men than the fauxminist man-bashers that umbrella bitch works with but never associates with (umbrella bitch doesn't even seem to like other adult women at all, honestly, the way Walt depicts her).

[quote]And truth be told, she's not much of a singer either.

The hell she isn't. She can still sing "Beauty and the Beast" at 91 when Julie could barely croak out "Le Jazz Hot" at 60 before the doctors finished her off. Even Helen Reddy can still deliver a fine rendition "You and Me Against the World" at 75. Julie had a fine instrument but lacked the discipline and technique to maintain it. And most of the time she tried to play a love interest, no one took her seriously unless she was a failed nun, a drag queen, or a variation of herself.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is severely flawed as a musical film, and I think Pauline Kael pointed out most of the worst parts of it in her review of it for The New Yorker: the children are charmless and the director horribly decided to make clearer what they were saying with Cockney accents he would have to photograph each of them in EXTREME closeup when they spoke; David Tomlinson "twinkles like a sexless pixie" (which is brilliant put); it goes on too long, etc. But it does have some nice moments in it: I still think "Substitutiary Locomotion" is one of the most entertaining songs the Sherman Brothers ever wrote, and that Lansbury's performance of it is a career triumph.

[quote]this constant "Angela not playing Mame in the movie is a disgrace" is so tiresome.

No it isn't. What's tiresome is the constant whinging of Julie Jihadists flogging the worst film of her above-average film career just because she stole an Oscar that should have gone to Audrey Hepburn and your refusal to admit to either that to the monumental shortcomings of the film and the source material.

[italic]Mame[/italic] could have been one of the all-time great movie musicals. It had a reasonably faithful adaptation, Onna White choreographing, a strong supporting and orchestrations that do more to evoke the 1920s than the Broadway originals. But as much as I love Lucy she was just not right for the part. The tobacco and booze took all the oomph out of her. After Beau dies, the film becomes a chore to sit through.

By comparison, [italic]Bedknobs[/italic] feels like a beautiful dream that ends too soon. I genuinely think they got the right balance of light and dark, the right balance of music and dialogue, one Big Crowd Dance Number instead of six, and not a single miscast role in the bunch. Pauline Kael was a homophobic bitch. She didn't like [italic]Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory[/italic] either. She was a well-connected philistine.

Substitutiary locomotion

Mystic power that's far beyond the wildest notion

It's so weird, so feared, yet wonderful to see

Substitutiary locomotion come to me!

Treguna Mekoides and Trecorum Satis Dee!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory isn't that great of a film, r46. It has three charming and very funny performances in it (Gene Wilder's and the two girls'), and Gen Xers have enormous nostalgia for it because it was important to them in their childhoods. But the songs range from middling to dreadful, the Oompa Loompas are preachy and irritating, and the use of spelled-out words on the screen during their song (to echo the effect on the then-new and popular "Sesame Street") is almost hilariously annoying and superfluous, and the film goes on far too long and stops absolutely dead for five minutes during "Cheer Up, Charlie."

[quote] What's tiresome is the constant whinging of Julie Jihadists

Mary!

"Mame" would have never been one of the great movie musicals. Ironically, it seems to have improved with age because it seems so dated. If the movie had, as Pauline Kael noted, a smashing young actress in the lead, it might have seemed less ancient. Lucy is actually not too bad in the last third or so of the movie when the character is called upon to be around the same age as Lucy was but in the early goings, when she's obviously trying to be an ingenue, she's an embarrassment, especially in soft focus.

Julie Andrews would have brought some box office appeal but little else.

Grew up in the 80s, and I LOVED this film as a kid, and still have a fondness for it as an adult now. I remember wishing I could perform the spells Ms. Price performed in the movie.

It certainly isn't of the calibre of Sound of Music or Poppins in terms of timelessness or artistry, but it still evokes a sense of childlike wonder and feelings of nostalgia. It's very good comfort food, even now, and if the film can manage that after 40+ years, then it obviously managed to strike some chord.

There was nothing wrong with it that the restoration didn't fix. I wish they'd have left in "A Step in the Right Direction" even if they only had still photos. At least they were in color unlike the ones from Judy Garland's [italic]A Star is Born[/italic].

And as a former child performer, the children here are some of the best child actors I've ever seen on film. When I showed it to friends they commented on how well-written their dialogue was. They're far better than those two little Banks brats. And Charlie's comeuppance for essentially trying to "out" Miss Price is as satisfying as any other form of screen revenge.

[quote] David Tomlinson "twinkles like a sexless pixie" (which is brilliant put)

No, it's not brilliantly put. It's privileged str8 girl rubbish. Pixie = fairy = gay, and Kael's homophobia was such that she didn't mind essentially gay-shaming heterosexual actors, and it extended to LucyMAME when she used "drag queen" as an epithet to describe Lucy's performance. That's insulting because a drag queen could have done it better and come off more feminine. Casting a hunk as Mr. Browne would make it utterly ludicrous. David Tomlinson looks more like someone who would be involved with someone like that. Just because he didn't do anything for Pauline's cooter doesn't make him wrong for the part. And though the cut versions harmed the relationship scenes and the ultra-short 97 minute version tried to eliminate it altogether, it was in the book and the movie improves on it. In the book they both go back to the past (Mr. Browne was a medieval necromancer named Mr. Jones, but Browne rhymes with "down" as in "Don't Let Me Down") and leave the children in the present. In the movie she stays to take care of the kids without him while he joins the military. Pauline neglected to point that out. And since she only saw movies once she likely never saw it restored so like I said she didn't really see it.

[quote] Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory isn't that great of a film, [R46]. It has three charming and very funny performances in it (Gene Wilder's and the two girls'), and Gen Xers have enormous nostalgia for it because it was important to them in their childhoods. But the songs range from middling to dreadful, the Oompa Loompas are preachy and irritating, and the use of spelled-out words on the screen during their song (to echo the effect on the then-new and popular "Sesame Street") is almost hilariously annoying and superfluous, and the film goes on far too long and stops absolutely dead for five minutes during "Cheer Up, Charlie."

None of the songs in [italic]Wonka[/italic] make me want to hurt people like the umbrella bitch songs and absolutely everything related to it. And why does everyone hate "Cheer Up Charlie"? It's a beautiful song that expresses a mother's love for her son and encourages him not to give up hope. A lot of gay kids didn't have that growing up.

Kael was wrong twice in the same year. She was no visionary. Just a privileged str8 bitch. And both those movies have outlived her and will outlive her sycophants. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it, and as a matter of fact, neither have you. These films have earned their love and if the industry disrespects and condescends to them than that's a reflection on them and not the people who made it and put their heart and souls into them.

[quote]It certainly isn't of the calibre of Sound of Music or Poppins in terms of timelessness or artistry,

[italic]The Sound of Music[/italic] is almost as good but not quite as it is a wildly inaccurate biography and skirts over the negative parts of Catholicism. Umbrella bitch is so bad that to link it with any of them is to insult them and to insult time and art itself. That's part of what makes me dislike it so much. Fanatics of that woman never shut up about it. Someone started a thread not to talk about the content of the movie but to use ableist slurs against me for pointing out why it is a gloopy farrago of bad art, bad storytelling and bad morality.

I'm not R41 but I was the one who said Bedknobs stank up the entire island of Manhattan and the outer boroughs as well when it opened in '71.

When Vincent Canby returned to the Times after the morning show on opening day he went to the editor in chief and claimed that that there was an act of terrible human cruelty being committed at the Music Hall 5 times a day and 6 times on Saturdays. The Times called him an alarmist.

They had even ignored Renata Adler when she was staggered by Family Band in '68.

When Millionaire opened in '67 Bosley Crowthers was so appalled he wrote a major Sunday Arts and Leisure section think piece asking what the fuck was happening at Radio City.

I am not making this up.

They said the same things about [italic]Pink Flamingos[/italic].

R53, what is it going to take to get you to realize that you were wrong then and now and so were they? Maybe if they had seen the whole movies they would have liked them more.

Bosley Crowther also hated [italic]Lawrence of Arabia[/italic].

Here's what Canby said. Not a deification, not a hatchet piece.

Well I'll give you the animated sequences.

The soccer match is quite wonderful.

Not that anybody cares but the stage show had a circus theme.

There was a trapeze act that was not done within the proscenium but from the first arch over the orchestra pit basically in the auditorium.

It scared the hell out of me as a boy.

I saw "The Happiest Millionaire" as a roadshow when it was first released, and still have the souvenir program, which occasionally appears on E-bay. I didn't like it much; it was too long and way too cute, and I always thought a little of Tommy Steele went a long way. The most ludicrous thing about it, though, was the finale, with happy Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson merrily driving toward smoking "Detroit" on the horizon! That was ludicrous.

I saw B&B when it first came out, but also didn't think much of it; seemed more like an MP wannabe. (Too bad Angela didn't play that role; it would have been far closer to the book, though Ms. Travers was once quoted as saying the ideal MP was Beatrice Lillie.) I also was never taken with the conflicting tones in B&B: little kids, cute witch, animated sequences, funny magic, and Nazis. WTF!

Never saw O&OFB, never wanted too. By that point, I had overdosed on Disney cute.

I did see both "Mame" and "1776" at the Radio City Music Hall. I was aghast at the leaden "Mame," and at all the cuts in "1776." Came away despising both, though I still think the best element in "Mame" is Robert Preston.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks...the most unintentionally pornographic title of all time

I saw B&B on the first Saturday of its release in Boston at the now demolished Gary Theater downtown, which was one of those old vaudeville/burlesque theaters now screening films. I loved it of course, I was 8 years old. I saw it later on tv as a teen, and realized they must have cut a lot of it out, as there were scenes and numbers I recalled and it was so much shorter commercials notwithstanding!

Sad to learn it had been butchered and hope the latest dvd restores everything from the original release!

My first-ever visit to Radio City Music Hall was to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

I don't remember a thing about the movie but the Music Hall was (and is) magnificent.

I watched MP last night on ABC and it moved along nicely, even the bank scenes.

And I don't think Julie Andrews was sweet or cloying, she seemed sensible and firm yet loving.

R62, out out, damn troll!

[quote]The most ludicrous thing about it, though, was the finale, with happy Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson merrily driving toward smoking "Detroit" on the horizon! That was ludicrous.

They cut the song "It Won't Be Long 'Til Christmas" until

[quote]I saw B&B when it first came out, but also didn't think much of it; seemed more like an MP wannabe

You say ripoff, I say upgrade. Although the technology to combine animation and live-action had improved in the past 20 years, that woman's animation is certainly inferior to all the other Disney hybrids; the animation in [italic]Song of the South[/italic] alone leaves it in the dust. Compare the animation of Br'er Fox to that of the Fox trying to escape the hunters; there is no comparison. Even after it, B&B had a more refined Xerox line and its animated sequence had funnier gags and something to do with the plot as well as a plot to have something to do with in the first place. With [italic]Pete's Dragon[/italic], Don Bluth managed to get back some, but not all, of the amenities they'd lost since [italic]Sleeping Beauty[/italic] like shadows, sparkles and ink lines, but a few unfinished shots snuck into the finished release which they've also re-cut multiple times, and what's available to watch isn't uncut. But he had to fight for every bit of it, even to get Elliott seen at all. [italic]TRON[/italic] and [italic]Who Framed Roger Rabbit[/italic] were the next big leaps forward in technology. Now computers have made it so commonplace that even John Waters could afford it with [italic]A Dirty Shame[/italic] but it's just not the same as pencil-to-paper.

WB copied all the Disney hybrids shamelessly in [italic]Space Jam[/italic] in addition to completing the classic Looney Tunes characters' descent into shameless shilldom.

[italic]Happiest Millionaire[/italic] is Tommy Steele's best American film work if for no other reason that they don't saddle his character with a girlfriend.

[quote] The most ludicrous thing about it, though, was the finale, with happy Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson merrily driving toward smoking "Detroit" on the horizon! That was ludicrous.

They cut the closing song "It Won't Be Long 'Til Christmas" and it was not found until the 1980s, so that gave it a more melancholy ending but put some of the heart back into it. The dialogue lead-in had to be pieced together for the restoration but they matched the voices more closely than the B&B redub voices. When the film was new, Diana Ross covered it for a Disney album that got shelved; a "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" cover was among the set list but not included.

John Davidson's character came from a family that got rich on tobacco, and Walt Disney died of lung cancer right after they had a rough cut ready. Never before had the phrase "The End: A Walt Disney Production" been affixed to a more appropriate image.

As a boy I saw Millionaire at the Music Hall.

I loved it.

But at still so young an age I was incredulous at that final shot of a Detroit skyline full of pollution.

What in the world were the people at Disney thinking?

I recently looked at the closing credits on youtube not having seen it since then.

It was more ludicrous than I remembered.

Still that NY telephone directory line is great. I wonder who came up with it.

[quote]What in the world were the people at Disney thinking?

They were showing what Detroit was going to turn into in 50 years. In the late 1960s, pollution was a huge issue. On the DVD of the original [italic]Freaky Friday[/italic], Jodie Foster says the exterior shoots were limited just because the smog was so bad. That's a possible reason why a lot of 1950s/1960s Hollywood musicals were shot indoors and the ones that had lots of exteriors were shot outside of LA.

Those Peter Ellenshaw mattes probably saved them millions of dollars in the long run. I prefer the more painterly look of glass mattes to modern CGI that looks a bit too uncanny valley for my tastes.

Uncanny valley?

I didn't like Bedknobs because Angela was not attractive, she was a dowdy old spinster and there was simply no magic to her character. They should have cast somebody like Audrey Hepburn or Liz Taylor as Eglantine and gotten Marni in to do the vocals.

R69 Now you've done it!

That guy is going to need more grease for that fire.

Rest in Peace Angela Lansbury....so weird for her to die suddenly today right when this thread is 'hot, hot, hot',,,,,,

Sad.

R69, [italic]A Little Night Music[/italic] proved Liz was not cut out for musicals.

R72 is it true or a hoax?

It's not true, R74.

Whew!

That "Step in the Right Direction " song sounds suspiciously like "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorriw," which the Shermans wrote for Disneyland's "Carousel of Progress."

[quote] Bedknobs and Broomsticks...the most unintentionally pornographic title of all time

What do you expect from a country that also eats spotted dick?

Dick was a fine name until everyone and their mother got a toilet mouth.

There are still old men who are called Dick.

Though I imagine at this point the youngest is 75.

The picture quality on the Blu-ray is exquisite. They left all the film grain instead of using a digital filter to remove all the detail.

[quote] The picture quality on the Blu-ray is exquisite. They left all the film grain instead of using a digital filter to remove all the detail.

Pity they couldn't include the whole movie when they could include an extended cut of [italic]Muppets Most Wanted[/italic] on its Blu-ray which was released on THE EXACT SAME DAY! And some of the Disney animated Blu-rays actually look quite bad in terms of using too much digital noise reduction, but they seem fairly hands-off with live-action and hybrids are categorized as live-action. As a result, the animated parts of the hybrids didn't get the same sort of smear-storation they gave to [italic]The Sword in the Stone[/italic]. Re-release it uncut and I will buy it. Until then and until [italic]Song of the South[/italic] comes out again to stay, my Disney boycott will continue. If that means I never give another dime to the company, so fucking be it. I'm prepared to boycott absolutely everything they do from here on in for the rest of my life if necessary. There are other factors, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

And I don't think that it's a coincidence that [italic]Unpete's Undragon[/italic] came out exactly two years to the day of that short-version only Blu-ray. I spit on anyone who likes that and dislikes the original film; you're the reason Drumpf was able to steal the election.

[quote] That "Step in the Right Direction " song sounds suspiciously like "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorriw," which the Shermans wrote for Disneyland's "Carousel of Progress."

At least they're copying themselves instead of us this time.

Lucille Ball was up for a part in the movie and she said "Great what part will I play," and the producer looked at her and said, 'The bedknob what else?"

Their continued refusal to release the Song of the South is criminal.

Just the moment when the screen goes from live action to animation is one of my favorite moments in a movie.

Disney genius.

This refusal is the kind of stupidity that diminishes the good intentions of the pc movement.

It's also an incredible insult to James Baskett who gives a wonderful performance as Uncle Remus.

I remember seeing it several times when I was young in the 70s when it was very controversial and I was thinking what the fuck are they going on about?

[quote] Their continued refusal to release the Song of the South is criminal.

And the generation that was deprived of legal access to it grew up to be the generation of endless warfare, SJWs and deplorables. Its critics then and now were as misguided as the people who thought [italic]All in the Family[/italic]'s writers were taking Archie's side, but the protests started before there was even a shooting script! Walt hired a black actor named Clarence Muse and a white "professional Southerner" named Dalton Reymond to write the first draft. Muse quit when Reymond refused to listen to any of his suggestions, and that's when the trouble started. But Walt realized not only that Reymond was a racist, but that the first draft was such a mess he fired Reymond and hired a Jewish screenwriter named Maurice Rapf to clean it up and neutralize the most demeaning parts of that early draft. Muse had his name taken off the picture but returned to the studio to play an African native in [italic]The World's Greatest Athlete[/italic], which features Jan-Michael Vincent in a loincloth. Rapf was blacklisted but his name was never taken off either that or [italic]So Dear to My Heart[/italic], which they let us have instead rather than in addition to. That movie's DVD release kept getting pushed back for years and years until it came out through Disney Movie Club; it was supposed to be released in stores under the same banner as the other pre-[italic]Roger Rabbit[/italic] hybrids but other countries got it before we did. The religious overtones might have had something to do with that.

Under the current management at Disney, we've got no [italic]Song of the South[/italic], the de-restoration of B&B, and almost everything that they've made is either a sequel or a reboot or a remake of something that's been done before with a few exceptions. Even in the 1970s they could still make films that were nominally different from their Walt-era predecessors but now they can't even muster that anymore!

I bought a bootleg copy of South in of all places, Juliet Georgia where they filmed much of "Fried Green Tomatoes."

You used to be able to find it for rental in some video stores in the South, and Disney turned a blind eye to that and no one made a fuss over it. In my hometown there was a store that rented laserdiscs and they had a Japanese import for rental. The studio didn't turn on it until after Michael Eisner had a heart attack, Frank Wells died in a plane crash after a hiking trip with Clint Eastwood, and Jeffrey Katzenberg quit when Michael Eisner wouldn't give him Frank Wells' job. Rodney King and the O.J. trial had already happened by that time.

It seems to have influenced a lot of the Shermans' work for Disney and others' too: Peter, the little boy in [italic]Summer Magic[/italic], gets teased over his hairstyle just like Johnny got teased over his lace shirt collar. Mr. Banks' transformation was just him finding his laughing place. John Lawless in [italic]The Happiest Millionaire[/italic] is a sort of white version of Uncle Remus. Grandpa Bower in [italic]…Family Band[/italic] gets sent away for trying to interfere in his granddaughter's love life, which makes his other grandchildren upset; a similar thing happened when Miss Sally told Uncle Remus to stay away from Johnny. The sailor bear in B&B is essentially a white version of Br'er Bear. Even the post-Sherman musicals and hybrids were influenced by it in some way: the Gogans in [italic]Pete's Dragon[/italic] are an older, more sadistic version of the Favors boys. And the animated characters themselves actually appear in [italic]Who Framed Roger Rabbit[/italic] (a white rabbit in a throwback to the same postwar Hollywood SOTS was created in).

B&B has such a weird ending. Just the boring old land guard marching away. No final shot of the kids or Lansbury? Just these old farts marching? Poorly done.

They did a pretty good job with the matte work, and it would have been anticlimactic to cut away from Mr. Browne walking off into the distance, not knowing whether he will ever be back, after we've already seen Miss Price and the children wave goodbye to him.

Notice how the black kid walks on right when he says "good times." That show actually has connections to this movie as Donald McKayle, the choreographer, directed a few early episodes in addition to their also having a character named Bookman (played by Johnny Brown no less), but it must be a coincidence since I don't recall it ever airing in England.

I’ve just started watching this movie for the first time ever. It better be worth the 2 hours and 19 minutes...

It's not, R91. Sound of Music is much better.