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Spotlight On: Walt's British Films

 

Walt Disney’s first four entirely live action films were Treasure Island, The Story of Robin Hood, The Sword and the Rose and Roy Roy, the Highland Rogue. All four are full of action, adventure, and fun. That won’t shock anyone. But all four were also made in Great Britain. And, without understanding a peculiar bit of economics, that’s a little more surprising.

After World War II, the British government was somewhat short on cash. A decision was made that movie-makers couldn’t take the profits they made from their films out of Great Britain. The Disney Studio already had a large hoard of these so-called "frozen assets" in England. One solution, of course, was to actually spend that money there.

"The first thought," Walt later recalled, "was I should start a cartoon studio there. And I didn’t think I could because you have to train artists for it or else import them ... So I had this story of 'Treasure Island' I wanted to do and I suggested we go over and do 'Treasure Island'." (For more of Walt's recollections of his British Films, visit this month's Walt's Thoughts).


Walt chats with Robert Newton

Walt chats with Robert Newton ("Long John Silver")
on the set of 'Treasure Island"

As film critic, historian, and author Leonard Maltin says, "First off, you had a great story, which you know will still be remade in the twenty-first century and still be read. He found the ideal actor to play Long John Silver, Robert Newton, who played it several times afterwards, he was so identified with the part. It gave a good role to his young discovery Bobby Driscoll, who’d done so well for Walt in 'Song of the South' ... And [he] put a really rousing, rollicking, good, old-fashioned boy’s adventure tale on film."

It also gave Walt the opportunity to spend a few months abroad. He took Lillian, Diane, and Sharon with him and they had a wonderful time together -- with the exception of a trip to the famous Strasbourg Clock in France. Walt had seen this mechanical marvel when he was in France after World War I, and was very eager for his family to share this wonderful experience. So, on a particularly hot day, he sent his wife and two daughters into a tiny church to do so. The church gradually filled up with tourists and the Disneys were pushed up to the base of the clock, which necessitated craning their necks to see anything. The big event was to come at noon, when the clock would chime. But Sharon, who was about 12, began to feel claustrophic. Tears ran down her cheeks. And by the time the little family got outside, she was thoroughly miserable.

Where was Walt? As Diane recalled some years later, "He had seen the clock. And it was so crowded that he figured there wasn’t room for him ... He was outside taking pictures ... But we had to see it ... So we came out and my sister was in a terrible hysterical state and mother and I were very irate and irritable and hot under the collar. And Daddy was furious. He had built it up so much and then we didn’t get the full enjoyment of it."

The original advertisement for "Treasure Island"
The original advertisement for "Treasure Island"
upon its release in 1950

 

When "Treasure Island" was released in July 1950 it was both a commercial and a critical success. Of course, of the four early British films, "Treasure Island" has remained the most famous, not least of all because it was Walt’s very first all-live-action film. But there are certainly delights to be found in the remaining three -- particularly "Robin Hood" and "The Sword and the Rose" which came out in 1952 and 1953.

Maltin: "Those costume pictures and swashbucklers that he made in the early '50s were notable for several reasons. One was, it brought him into association with a talented young director named Ken Annakin and Annakin would go on to direct a number of other films for Walt, most notably "Swiss Family Robinson" [See the Video] but also "Third Man on the Mountain" and other movies. And so that was a strong and positive association that emerged from his English period.

"And the other thing was the serendipitous hiring of a very talented matte artist named Peter Ellenshaw, who was able to create scenes and settings that looked real but weren’t. And whose talent was so prodigious that he finally wound up working for Walt here in Hollywood and spent the rest of his career at the Walt Disney Studio.

"The other thing to be said about those swashbucklers is that they’re great fun. I think "The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men" is one of the really unsung Walt Disney movies. It’s a delightful film that rests in the shadow of the later animated "Robin Hood" (which was made after Walt’s death). It’s a wonderful movie in its own right and it’s got great villainy and great action scenes, great imagination, partly because they were trying not to copy the Errol Flynn movie. They didn’t want to do the same thing that had been done before.

"And Walt’s producer, Perce Pearce, and his director, Ken Annakin, found wonderful British actors. The casts of those films are just terrific and so I’d like to see those films be better known. I think they’re awfully good. ‘The Sword and the Rose’ is a wonderful film, a terrific piece of historical fiction, and ‘Robin Hood’ is a delight."

Maltin is somewhat less enthusiastic about "Rob Roy," which he feels is the least of these four films. But, as he writes in his book "The Disney Films": "More significant than anything else is the fact that with this film, Disney suspended operations in England and decided to make his live-action films at home."

 


For more about Walt's British pictures, be sure to visit this month's Theater, Interview with Ken Annakin and Walt's Thoughts.

 

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