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Tag: Angela Lansbury movies
Summer of Angela: A Life At Stake (1954) with minor spoilers
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.
Up this week was A Life At Stake, another crime noir “B-movie” and another chance for Angela to show her evil side. Honestly, she’s been evil in a lot of the movies I watched with her throughout this summer, which cracks me up since a lot of people associate her with being sweet in kind from things like Murder She Wrote and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
This movie was not the best I’ve ever seen plot-wise but the dialogue was actually very well written and the sexual tension was something I didn’t expect for a 1954 movie.
The movie is essentially about a man who is very paranoid and thinks everyone is out to get him. Or, as Google describes it: “After an out of work architect accepts a business proposition from a married woman, he soon begins to suspect her motives, and fear for his life.”
Edward Shaw, portrayed by Keith Andes had a business failing and now he’s been approached by a lawyer with the prospect of a new business.
Edward tells the lawyer he really doesn’t really want to get involved. He keeps a $1000 bill framed on his wall to remind him of his failures and encourage him to try again. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a $1,000 bill by the way.
Anyhow, I digress, the lawyer puts him in contact with Doris Hillman (Angela), wife of Gus Hillman (Douglass Dumbrille). Edward goes to Doris’s home and the housekeeper says he needs to call out before he goes to the pool because Doris has been known to swim in the nude. Edward quips back, “That’s okay. I’ve been known to swim in the nude too.”
Doris isn’t naked but she does tell Edward he should have called out. From their first meeting the flirting begins in earnest. Doris even covers herself with a towel but removes the top of her swim suit underneath it because she says it’s uncomfortable.
Eventually they get to business talks and Doris says Gus wants Edward to run the company, buying up property with money Gus will give him and for Doris to sell the property using her past real estate experience.
Edward is agreeable but feels suspicious about it all, especially when Doris says they will need to take an insurance policy out on him for half a mil. He doesn’t, however, seem to feel suspicious about Doris and later that night at home when he gets a call, he asks his land lady if it is a woman calling. It is clear he’s hopeful Doris will be calling soon and about a lot more than business.
Doris does call another day and asks him to meet her a hotel room. From there he’s laying it on heavy, flirting all over the place, but she lets him know she’s not interested. She’s only interested in business. Edward (sort of a horny jerk if you ask me) leaves but later that night Doris pulls up outside his apartment.
She says something flirty and then before we know it, he’s in the car practically shoving his tongue own her throat.
All is going well with their little liaisons and business dealings until Edward meets Doris’s sister, Madge (Claudia Barrett). Madge thinks he’s just lovely and starts hitting on him. She invites him to dinner in front of Doris and Gus and because he doesn’t want Gus to know about his affair with Doris, he agrees.
During dinner Madge drops a bombshell and says that Gus is Doris’s second husband because her first husband died a few years ago in an accident. What’s weird is that Doris and Gus were in a business with him too and when he died Gus and Doris got the insurance money since they’d taken out a policy on each of them for the business.
Edward is incensed. He had a feeling Doris and Gus were up to something and now he knows what it is. They really do want to kill him and get the money for the insurance policy they took out in his name.
He’s still thinking about this when Doris calls and says she wants to show him something.
He reluctantly agrees and she drives him up on a hill. She shows him some property she says will be great for development but when she goes to park, the brake slips and the car keeps rolling. She gets it in park and says she’s going to go get the property owner because he said he would show them around.
After she leaves, though, with Edward sitting in the passenger side, the car starts to roll toward a bank with a long drop and Edward just barely stops it.
That cinches it for him. Doris and Gus are in on this together and they are going to kill him.
I won’t give away the ending but most of the rest of the 70 minute movie (yes, it’s that short) will be Edward waffling back and forth between suspecting the couple and being in love with Doris while Madge is in love with Edward and knows all about the affair. Later she also knows about Edward’s suspicions.
This is a dark movie and it took the path I thought it might but I did think there might be more of a plot twist toward the end. Actually, there did seem to be a bit of a plot twist based on something said by a character right at the end but I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into it or not.
I will share that I did read Cat’s review (found on her blog Cat’s Wire) before finishing this post up and I have to agree that I did not really connect with or like the main character.
I don’t think I would have cried much if he had been murdered (okay, so I gave a little away here…..he isn’t murdered). He was very unlikable and rude. He wanted to have his little fling with Doris but also keep her and her husband from killing him. He was sort of ruled by his privates to me and it severely affected his judgment. And though there were some good lines in this one – the writing overall was just not very strong.
I liked Angela’s performance and thought she succeeded once again in pulling off playing someone evil and making it hard for the viewer to figure out if she was really in love with Edward or not.
I listened to an interview with Angela last week when writing about The Picture of Dorian Gray, and she said she made a lot of not-so-great movies over the years. This may be one of them she was referring to.
The movie was directed by Paul Guilfoyle, for those who care about such things. The film was restored in 2021 and resulted in a few noir crime movie buffs blogging about it.
One of those, Michael Barrett from the site Pop Matters, wrote: “You’d have to know me to understand how unlikely it is that I’d never heard of this picture, but the commentary by scholar Jason A. Ney points out that this film is so obscure, it’s not listed in most noir references, despite the presence of a major star. So this might count as more of a rediscovery than restoration.”
About the acting and plot he writes, “The film runs only 76 minutes, but a bunch of stuff happens at a nice clip, sometimes too quickly for us to analyze how much adds up, with some elements more obvious than others. In a sense, everyone is clumsy and transparent, and that feels reasonably credible. The story mixes common sense (e.g., going to the cops and the insurance company) with devious cupidity and lust amongst tawdry, small-minded people.”
Glenn Erickson on Trailers from Hell wrote: “Filmed in 1954, producer Hank McCune’s A Life at Stake is notable for its fairly competent production and a decent if somewhat thrill-challenged screenplay — and the fact that it stars an actress one wouldn’t think would be associated with an 11-day cheapie thriller. The great Angela Lansbury is the odd star out on a list of creatives that reads like a call sheet for ambitious Hollywood underachievers, all thirsting for the right show to get their career in motion.”
I have to agree with Erickson when he writes: “The movie generates some tension but can’t quite convince us that Ed Shaw is as helpless as presented.”
I enjoyed Erickson’s entire review and background so if you would like to know even more about the film and Angela’s role in it, please check it out.
Some facts and trivia:
- “The unusual convertible Doris Hillman (Dame Angela Lansbury) drove was a Kaiser Darrin. Only 435 production Darrins and six prototypes were built. Its entry doors slid on tracks into the front fender wells behind the front wheels, which was patented in 1946, had no side windows and a three-position Landau top. The car’s only criticism by enthusiasts was the front grill, which looked like it “wanted to give you a kiss.” (Source: imdb)
- This was an independent feature produced by Hank McCune, who briefly starred in his own free-wheeling TV sitcom, The Hank McCune Show. (source: Pop Matters)
- McCune created the story and hired people from his television series, including writer Russ Bender and supporting actor Frank Maxwell. (source: Pop Matters)
- The director’s wife, Kathleen Mulqueen, plays Shaw’s mom-like secretary. (source: Pop Matters)
- Directly from imbd.com: “In the first scene, Edward Shaw (Keith Andes) roams about his room in the boarding house wearing only form-fitting pajama bottoms and stripped to the waist, giving audiences ample chance to view his impressive musculature from every conceivable angle. In a comic twist, an attorney enters the room, and one of his first lines of dialogue to Edward is “Come now, you’re not the first man to lose his shirt!””
- In order to please the Italian music unions, an agreed number of American films had to be re-scored by Italian composers for release in Italy. A bit of irony is that Les Baxter had his original music replaced by Costantino Ferri, Baxter himself would later join AIP and re-score over a dozen movies previously done by Italian composers. (Source: imbd)
- When Edward Shaw (Keith Andes) gets into a taxi after leaving his office, in the background, the old Sunset Theatre is seen, which was located on Western Avenue just north of Sunset Boulevard; the double feature shown on the marquee is Da Vinci also Julius Caesar (with Marlon Brando) , which dates the shot as May 1954. The theatre no longer exists. The intersection has been redeveloped.
Left on my Summer of Angela list for August are:
August 22 – I’ve decided to substitute A Long Hot Summer for All Fall Down for a couple reasons — I’ve watched A Long Hot Summer before and it will allow me to admire Paul (Newman) again and I watched a preview for the film and this annoying kid kept calling the main character Barry-Barry and that just seemed super, super annoying. Plus, I’ve heard it is a dark film. I originally wanted to watch it because I’ve never seen a Warren Beatty film (don’t you dare ever remind me of Dick Tracy! Never! Ever! I would like to burn that memory out of my brain with the end of a cigarette! My brother and I walked out of that film and I have never attempted to watch it again and I still have PTSD!). I can always watch another Warren Beatty film instead.
August 29 – Something for Everyone
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched, you can find them here:
Sources:
https://www.popmatters.com/paul-guilfoyle-life-at-stake
Summer of Angela Summer of Angela: Please Murder Me (with tiny spoilers but not big ones)
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.
I switched some things up a couple of weeks ago and slid The Pirates of the Penzance and this week’s movie, Please Murder Me, in place of a couple of TV movies Angela was in. I do have an interest now in watching one of the ones I replaced, so I may do that on my own.
This week’s movie starred Angela with Raymond Burr. It was short, sweet, and to the point, and very good. My husband watched it with me and said this movie would be considered a “B-movie” back in the day, but it was a very good B-movie to me.
I have been remiss in sharing where I have found these movies to watch so I do want to share that this one is free on Tubi and YouTube. The reproduction quality isn’t the best because it is a “b movie” and is now in the public domain. This means people can put this movie up wherever they want and not get hit with a copyright claim. I’ve found a lot of cool movies that way through YouTube and Tubi.
The movie seems to show, no matter where you find it, lines down the middle and sides from the old film. I am not sure if there are cleaner copies out there or not.
The description of this movie is that Raymond Burr portrays a lawyer who finds out his client, who he just got off for murder, is actually guilty. There is a lot more to it than that, but that’s the bottom line.
According to TCM.com, the movie’s screenplay was based on a teleplay by E. A. Dupont and David Chantler on Big Town (CBS, 1954).
It was directed by Peter Godfrey.
The movie starts with Raymond walking down a street, going into an office, and then speaking into a tape recorder (reel-to-reel) telling whoever hears the recording that in 55 minutes he will be dead.
We then have a flashback that will encompass the bulk of the movie.
That flashback consists of us learning that Burr’s character, Craig Carlson, is in love with his best friend’s wife Myra Leeds (Angela). We find this out because Craig tells Joe Leeds (Dick Foran) and says that he and Myra are going to be married and Craig would like Joe to divorce her.
Joe is oddly calm about this and as he leaves Craig’s law office, says he needs some time to think.
Before long we are in the Leeds’ apartment and Joe Leeds has met his maker. He’s under a sheet and Myra is being questioned by a plain-clothes cop who clearly thinks her self-defense story is absolutely garbage.
Myra says that Joe lunged at her, furious that she told him she wanted a divorce, and that she, terrified that he was going to kill her, shot him.
Uh-huh. Are we, the viewers, buying this?
Well, yes, I was because I hadn’t read the synopsis of this film before I watched it so I thought she might actually be telling the truth but…..not really sure.
Craig has, of course, volunteered to be Myra’s defense attorney.
It isn’t too much of a spoiler to say (since all the descriptions online already say this) that after the trial Craig discovers that Myra wasn’t being very truthful.
The problem is that in the United States a defendant can’t be tried twice because of the concept of “double jeopardy.”
Now Craig has to figure out how to make Myra pay for what she did to her husband and his best friend. Craig already felt guilty about having an affair and now the guilt is insurmountable and has a hefty helping of betrayal piled on.
I have only seen Raymond Burr in the old Perry Mason episodes and Rear Window but have enjoyed his acting in both and I enjoyed his acting in this movie as well.
He mainly played villains in the beginning of his career.
Here he portrayed a bit of a darker Perry Mason or as the author at Heart of Noir stated “a three-dimensional, complex lead role” who is “both a home wrecker and a cuckold, which demands of him quite a balancing act of emotions.”
Overall, I liked this movie and I enjoyed both Raymond and Angela’s performance.
I read a piece of trivia that I will share below that involves Angela taking the job because she needed the money and she may have only done it for the money, but she seemed to put her all in it.
I really enjoyed her performance, even if it was toned down from what she would show in films such as The Manchurian Candidate. One might say this role was a good preparation Eleanor Shaw.
I loved the use of light and shadow in the film. I am a huge fan of black and white photography and films that use shadow and light to highlight what the photographer or director wants the viewer to focus on.
In this one, there was a lot of shadow around the subjects with light hitting their eyes or whole face during tense scenes when a secret was about to be revealed or a confrontation was had.
My husband and I agree on some points about the movie.
There could have been more explanation of the plot. There was some missing information throughout which led to rushed scenes.
“Instead of being only an hour and 14 minutes it could have been an hour and 45 minutes,” my husband said.
This would have given us time for a bit more background and exposition. We both agree that these minor issues didn’t take away from the overall story, however.
I like what Heart of Noir said about the movie: “From the pre-credits opening scene of an unidentified man walking the city sidewalk past scummy-looking bars and peep shows, the film oozes with economy, bland interiors and soupy darkness combining with overhead shots and Dutch angles to disorient the viewer and create an occasional dream-like feeling.”
I also enjoyed this assessment by PopOptiq: “The picture earns its fatalistic conclusion with a gut-punch plot resolution to Craig’s tireless mission to expose Myra. If anything, the film is yet another reminder of the range both Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury had as actors. Both became legends through very different projects on television, making this reunion, before their popularity erupted, all the more interesting a time capsule.”
Trivia or facts:
- According to Angela Lansbury’s authorized biography, this movie was filmed in an abandoned supermarket near Yucca and Franklin Streets in Los Angeles. Lansbury and her husband Peter Shaw were at a low financial point in their marriage and they needed the money. After the film was finished, she applied for unemployment insurance. (source IMdB) (An insert by me here: her husband was Peter Shaw and she played Eleanor Shaw in a movie? Like…weird!)
- The film was made the same year that Raymond Burr auditioned for the role of Perry Mason.
- Lamont Johnson’s who plays . . . well, I’m not going to tell you so I don’t spoil anymore of the story …. Is in this movie and this was his last movie as an actor before he became a full-time director. He mainly directed stage and television productions.
- The opening credits featured the cast, writers, director and producers. The crew appeared in the closing credits. (source TCM.com)
- Please Murder Me was the first film made by Gross-Krasne, Inc., which was run by executive producers Jack J. Gross and Philip N. Krasne. (source TCM.com)
A quote from the movie that I liked, “My whole life has meant just meant three things, my love for Joe, my work, and my love for you. You destroyed them all. How much more is left of me?”
Have you ever seen this one? If so, what did you think?
Cat from Cat’s Wire also watched the movie this past week and wrote about it on her blog here.
For next week, I am switching The Mirror Cracked, based on an Agatha Christie book, for Death on the Nile, based on another Agatha Christie book. I’ve been reading that Death on the Nile is better than The Mirror Cracked..
Here is the full list of movies left to watch for this feature:
July 25: Death on the Nile
August 1 – The Court Jester
August 8 – The Picture of Dorian Gray
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down
August 29 – Something for Everyone
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched you can find them here:
Sources and additional resources:
Please Murder Me: https://heartofnoir.com/film/please-murder-me-1956/
Please Murder Me IBdB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049621/trivia/?ref_=tt_dyk_trv
TCM.com: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/86833/please-murder-me/#overview
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Murder_Me!
‘Please Murder Me’ sees underrated greats Lansbury and Burr go head-to-head: https://www.popoptiq.com/please-murder-me/
Summer of Angela: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies. This week — well, last week — I watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
First, a movie description:
During the Battle of Britain, Miss Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury), a cunning witch-in-training, decides to use her supernatural powers to defeat the Nazi menace. She sets out to accomplish this task with the aid of three inventive children who have been evacuated from the London Blitz. Joined by Emelius Brown (David Tomlinson), the head of Miss Price’s witchcraft training correspondence school, the crew uses an enchanted bed to travel into a fantasy land and foil encroaching German troops.
The children come to live with Eglantine Price not because she wants them to, mind you. She is sort of cohersed into it by a lady from the community who ran out of room for the other children who came from London.
Once there the children decide they are going back to London. Miss Price doesn’t eat normal food (she doesn’t eat any sausages at all!). Miss Price can’t let them go back to London because the city is being bombed but..oddly enough…later in the movie she takes them all back to London via a magical bed. Yes, you read that right. A magical, flying bed.
The movie is based on two novels by Mary Norton, The Magic Bed-Knob (1945) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1957), about the adventures of an apprentice witch and the three children who come to stay with her to escape the bombing of London during World War II.
In some parts, the movie mixes live action and animation, similar to Mary Poppins.
Walt Disney (the man, not the company) purchased the rights to the first book the year it was published, but the movie wouldn’t be made until five years after his death, partially because of Mary Poppins. It took Disney years and years to convince P.L. Travers to give the rights to Mary Poppins. Walt wanted to make a movie based on Bedknobs and Broomsticks but decided he’d hold on to that one if he couldn’t get Mary Poppins. Of course, he did get Mary Poppins so Bedknobs was pushed aside for a bit.
Walt said the stories were very similar, so he wanted to wait to make Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a title that combined both book titles, when the frenzy from Mary Poppins had died down a bit. In the end, Walt died before Bedknobs and Broomsticks was developed and released.
Observer.com says this about the movie: “Bedknobs and Broomsticks is just as unhinged as it sounds. The 1960s through the 1980s was a period of decline for Disney, and the internal drama at the studio plus the Mary Poppins-related delays are evident in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a film that’s all over the place (ironic, as Lansbury called her performance “acting by the numbers;” each scene was storyboarded ahead of time). At first, it strikes the same chord as Chitty Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), but then it veers into West Side Story (1961) territory with extended dance numbers (including dancers in brownface). The scenes where the group travels using Miss Price’s magical bed are bizarrely psychedelic à la the tunnel scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which premiered the same year. And the arcs featuring a mix of live action and animation, particularly the soccer scene on the cartoon island of Naboombu, feel like precursors to future hits like Space Jam (1996).”
Who is in it:
The movie stars Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson (the father in Mary Poppins, incidentally) and three wonderful child actors Ian Weighill, Roy Snart, and Cindy O’Callaghan.
Highlights for me:
The children in this movie were absolutely amazing. They were hilarious, quick-witted and delivered their lines perfectly.
In one scene, the oldest boy decides he’s going to blackmail Miss Price into giving them better food (not vegetarian food that she eats) by telling her that the kids know she’s a witch. They know this because when they were trying to sneak out of the house to go back to London, they saw her trying to ride a broom for the first time and falling off into a bush.
“What we have here is an opportunity,” he says when he sees her fall off her broom. “She don’t want us to tell anyone she’s a witch so….”
Oh gosh, the kid is so funny in his delivery. His sister isn’t very pleased with him trying to manipulate Miss Price, by the way, and Miss Price isn’t easily manipulated so it doesn’t really work.
Angela, of course, was very good in this movie. I have to agree with some reviews that said she wasn’t as animated in the movie as she could have been. However, later in life she talked about how technical these types of movies have to be, adding that it is hard to improvise or do anything that breaks too much from the script when the movie is storyboarded so exact for the technical aspects.
There was one song that sort of made my eyebrows raise: Portobello Road. Mainly because of the women who come up to the professor on Portobello Road and seem to be flirting with him. They are dressed in brightly colored dresses that have a certain “look” to them. These same women are in the background of the song flirting with the soldiers and even get their own break out dance moment. As my mom would say, “Oh. Oh my!”
I’m really surprised they put “those type of women” in the movie, which was, clearly, meant for children. I kept looking for any commentary online about this and did find some, but mainly from bloggers.
“I mean, it wasn’t until this viewing that I worked out that, yes, those are prostitutes attempting to pick up Professor Browne and not just friendly women,” Gillianred on The Solute.com wrote. “Which is . . . not something I expected from a Disney movie. But if you look at what they’re wearing and exactly how they size him up, it seems to me that, yup, they’re wondering if he’s got a few bob in his pocket to spare for a little bit of fun.”
I also enjoyed all the different cultures represented during the Portobello Road song. Soldiers who fought for the British during World War II were shown dancing in their own moments during the song, including Scottish, Indian, and Jamaica. Online there was at least one site that called this scene racist but I guess I didn’t see it that way. I just thought it was nice they were representing the other countries who fought with England.
I also felt that the Jamaican section in particular was very respectful because they were dancing to traditional music, the Jamaican women had the best dresses of anyone else in the dance sequence and everyone around them was clapping and enjoying themselves.
The children were even enjoying watching the dances and weren’t making fun of them, but trying to mimic them and try to dance like the people. To me the sequence is a chance to talk to children about the differences between culture. While the depictions are not completely accurate, to me, they are an attempt to bring awareness to all of those different countries that fought with the British during that time.
Eglantine’s cat looked like it had died – so that was funny to see. It looked like the cat we had, who we loved dearly, but was 19 when she died and looked awful. She looked like an animatronic cat that had gone through a garbage disposal at that point.
What I thought overall:
I liked this movie a lot but I don’t know that I would watch it again and again. Maybe if I had watched it as a child and had a sentimental connection, I would have loved it. Instead, I only liked it.
I almost loved it, maybe that’s a better way to say it. This was a comfy, cozy movie for me, even if it wasn’t my favorite Disney film. Yes, I know comfy and cozy are essentially the same word. Just go with it.
I loved the humor of the children and how they made the movie. I loved the silliness and the absolute detachment from reality it had , something people in the 40s would have really needed. Since the movie was released in 1971 it would have provided some people a happier way to frame that period, which was so dark for the world, but especially British people.
I’m actually glad children back then couldn’t see movies like this or read books like the Narnia Chronicles. They might have thought they were all going to mansion with professors or witches where they would disappear into a magical land via a wardrobe or fly away to adventure on a bed.
Nazis showing up at the end of the film was awkward and I imagine would have been very scary for children who watched it when really young.
Mr. Brown dreaming of Angela in a revealing acrobat outfit was also…er…interesting. Not inappropriate but a bit strange. In a funny way.
And, of course, the ending when — well, have you seen the film? I hate to give it away but I will say that a spell is cast and very exciting things happen to help make sure there is a happy ending.
If I were to boil down my overall opinion of the movie into one sentence I would say that it was a magical adventure for me that allowed me to escape life stresses and that is exactly what I think the makers of this movie wanted to do.
What Angela said about the movie:
I could not find the source for this again, but at some point, I was watching an interview with Angela and she said that what really made the movie was the children. Their acting was so good and, of course, children love to watch movies with other children in them.
In 1998 Disney released an extended version of the movie, adding in deleted scenes and musical numbers. Interviewed by Disney for the project, Angela said only those who acted in the movie knew what was missing all these years, but they were so glad to add those parts back.
“It was my passport to an entire generation of youngsters,” Angela said in the interview for Disney. “Now those children are all grown up and they are showing Bedknobs and Broomsticks to their kids.”
“To fly is everybody’s dream,” she continued in the interview. “And to have that experience of being suspended and moving freely through the air is a lovely feeling.”
Pullies and wires were used to help Angela and the other actors seem to fly but special effects also came into play.
“It has to do with make believe,” Angela said. “We had to understand that we were interacting with an animated creature, so your hand had to be in a certain position for him to put his hand on yours in the final print.”
A bit of trivia or facts:
- Julie Andrews was offered the role of Miss Price in the movie but declined. When she made up her mind she did want to do it, it was too late. Angela had been offered the role and had accepted.
- The Beautiful Briny was actually written for Mary Poppins, but saved out and filmed for Bedknobs and Broomsticks instead.
- The song A Step in the Right Direction was cut from the movie and the footage could never be found to restore it to the restored version of the movie. Disney did, however, clip together some images and present it on the Disney Channel before airing the movie with all the deleted scenes added back in. (https://youtu.be/J-VwRkQGkAw?si=QpQ0jjsfKoP5H9wa
- In the establishing shot of the animated soccer game, a bear wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt can be spotted in the crowd on the right side of the picture.
- There were differences between the books and the movie. For example, in the first book of the series, the warm is not explicitly mentioned and the children are not orphans but are instead sent to spend the summer with their aunt in the country. It’s heard they meet Eglantine Price, who gives them the magic bedknob in exchange for not revealing she is a witch. In the second book, set two years after the first, the children travel back in time to 1666 before the Great Fire of London and that’s where they meet Emelius Jones (not Brown) and bring him back with them to the future.
- Another difference between the movie and book is that Eglantine ends up traveling back with him to his time and takes the bed with her, which means the children will not have any more adventures or trips.
- From TCM.com: “In an interview filmed for the thirtieth anniversary of the film that was included as added content on the DVD release, Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, the brothers who were the film’s composer-lyricists, stated that they were given the task to write songs for Bedknobs and Broomsticks while the studio awaited permission from author P. L. Travers to film Mary Poppins. In an interview reprinted in a modern source, the brothers reported that Disney assured them that he owned another story about magic for which their songs could be used if Mary Poppins was not produced. According to the Shermans, the song “The Beautiful Briny” actually was written for, but never used in, Mary Poppins.”
- According to 1971 studio production notes, three blocks of Portobello Road as it looked in 1940 were reproduced on Disney Studio soundstages. Among the props used for this sequence were carts rented from A. Keehn, a company that had a monopoly on them, according to set decorator Emile Kuri, who stated that for over a hundred years the company had collected a shilling a day for each barrow rented by vendors on Portobello Road. (Source TCM.com).
- All longer scenes with Roddy McDowall as the local pastor “Mr. Jelk,” were cut from the film and he ended up in only a three-minute clip in the original film.
- The New York Times stated in their review that Angela projected a “healthy sensuality” in the movie. (*giggle*)
- This was the last Disney movie released while Roy O. Disney was still alive. He died a week after its U.S. premiere.
- The armor in the climactic battle with the Nazis was authentic medieval armor, previously used in Camelot (1967) and El Cid (1961). When any item of armor was to be destroyed, exact fiberglass replicas were created and used.
- In this movie, the King of Naboombu’s name is Leo. In official merchandise guidebooks, his full name is King Leonidas, after the Spartan King who died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.
- This was the last Disney-branded movie to receive an Academy Award until The Little Mermaid (1989). Others received nominations, and two Touchstone Pictures movies, The Color of Money (1986) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), received awards before that.
If you want to read a very fun review of this film, I enjoyed this one by Mutant Reviewers Movies: https://mutantreviewersmovies.com/2013/03/25/deneb-does-bedknobs-and-broomsticks/
Cat from Cat’s Wire also watched this one this week and you can find her thoughts here:
Up next in my Summer of Angela is Gaslight.
Here is my full schedule of movies I am watching:
July 4 – Gaslight
July 11 – The Shell Seekers
July 18 – Murder She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle
July 25 – The Mirror Cracked
August 1 – The Court Jester
August 8 The Picture of Dorian Gray
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down
August 29 – Something for Everyone
Additional resources:
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/68329/bedknobs-and-broomsticks#notes
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/68329/bedknobs-and-broomsticks#articles-reviews?articleId=188901
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/68329/bedknobs-and-broomsticks#photos-videos
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066817/trivia/
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
