On Sunday evenings throughout the month of December, TCM is showcasing Disney’s Family Classics, a 26-film series of the studio’s live-action films, which were made under the watchful eye of Walt Disney. To kick off the series, the Movie Morlocks are devoting the entire week to blogging about Disney films, from December 1 -7. Blog entries will not be exclusive to the live-action films being shown in the series; some  posts will be devoted to animation. 

The common thread for each post revolves around the many Disney films that include scenes of extreme tragedy or horror in which death or disaster befalls the characters. The life-changing events cause such emotional trauma for the characters that they can be gut-wrenching for viewers because the tragedy and grief are so profound, or the evil encountered so dark. One thinks of the death of Bambi’s mother, or the fate of Old Yeller as the most well-known examples, though many other moments such as these exist in the old Disney films from back in the day. These moments make the old Disney films memorable, even haunting, in a way that more recent ones are not. 

 The Internet abounds with uninformed opinions regarding these infamous scenes.  Reading them made me wonder if the public perception of Disney films is too narrow. Perhaps the Disney machine’s incessant branding of itself as the purveyors of “wholesome entertainment” has gone too far. Many people seem to have stereotyped all Disney films to be solely  about goodness , innocence, and happy times, perhaps embodied by the Amy Adams character in the studio’s gentle, self-deprecating jab at itself, Enchanted. Whenever these viewers-turned-Internet-scribes discuss Bambi, Old Yeller, The Black Cauldron, or other films with disturbing sequences, they inevitably describe them as “uncharacteristically dark” or “dark for a Disney movie” or “surprisingly dark.” But, the truth is that these moments were not uncharacteristic or surprising in those Disney films supervised by Walt. Modern audiences don’t seem to know that for every  Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, there’s a Three Lives of Thomasina or a Greyfriar’s Bobby, which explore death and loss.

  While some on the Internet perceive Disney films to be filled with nothing but sunshine and lollipops, other blog-spots and discussion boards are rife with comments by parents who fear their little ones will be adversely affected by the tragedy in Disney movies. According to these commentators, some movies are “anti-Mom” because so many characters have no mothers in the films; or, Old Yeller is a kind of cinematic child abuse because of famously powerful climax. Good grief! Pondering these discussion boards left me so bewildered and frustrated at the sheer ignorance of these comments that I had to stop reading. I suspect that some of these parents use Disney movies as a baby-sitter;  when the kids become upset or are sparked to ask a difficult question, the parents are angry  because they are unprepared to discuss a difficult issue when they really only wanted their child to be entertained for a few hours.

 Walt’s classics are truly “family films” because they resonate with adults as well as children. The films reach multiple generations, because they deal in universal fears and issues. The films depict themes or events that arouse fears associated with loss, death, cruelty, and change, which haunt adults as well as children, though not necessarily in the same way.  Today, the term “family film” is a marketing ploy to make parents think a film has merit, a moral lesson, or some socially redeeming value. In fact, most are really dumbed-down kids’ films that parents suffer through because their children want to see them.  (Small wonder some parents freak out at Old Yeller.) Superficial, saccharine, or just plain silly, today’s “family films” pale in comparison to the Disney classics that present tragedies and triumphs, nightmares and dreams, the dark and the light in ways that reach both children and adults. Like fairy tales, their genius (Walt’s genius) lies in the multiple layers of meaning, which speak to different ages in different ways.  And, these films should definitely be viewed by families, so that parents and children can bond over the viewing experience, whether they end up talking about loss, grief, responsibility — or just the fun-filled adventures of some interesting characters from another time and place.

 I thought a good place to start the week might be with the movie Pollyanna, which will be shown on TCM on the evening of December 7. The term “Pollyanna” can evoke a negative connotation in our culture, because it signifies someone who is an eternal optimist. When a hopeless optimist is also naïve, then an assumption is made that they are also out of touch with the way the real world works.   I wonder how many people have not watched Pollyanna because they expect the main character to be unrealistically optimistic and the film to be cloyingly sentimental.  The film is sentimental , a trait unappreciated in our contemporary culture, and the character does look on the positive side of life,  but  Pollyanna is … well, she’s no Pollyanna.

 The film is based on the 1913 book by Eleanor H. Porter about  the orphaned girl Pollyanna who goes to live with her namesake aunt in turn-of-the-century Vermont. Wealthy Aunt Polly Harrington quietly wields her  strong influence around the small town named after her family, which has stifled the expression of opinions and views. Aunt Polly and several other residents are unhappy, largely because life has handed them disappointment, loss, or loneliness. Pollyanna breathes life into the town with her refreshing outlook, which she bases on “the glad game.” She learned the game from her father, a minister who taught her to always look for something to be glad about. As she explains the game to one of the town’s residents,  she tells a story about one unfortunate Christmas when she and her father  were so poor that the only present they got was a set of old crutches. Her father decided that they should be glad that they had no need to use them — a story that becomes prophetic in a way. The glad game becomes a memorable part of the movie, and Pollyanna is known as the “Glad Girl.”

JANE WYMAN AS AUNT POLLY

 Yet, Pollyanna actually helps the townspeople more by being straightforward than she does by being optimistic. In a town where people are afraid to go up against Aunt Polly, or the status quo, directness is a valuable commodity. The little girl refuses to feel sorry for Mrs. Snow, a self-absorbed hypochondriac who dotes on people’s sympathy, telling her off when the old lady declines to help raise money for a new orphanage. Pollyanna explains to the local minister, who preaches fire and brimstone at the behest of Aunt Polly, that if you look for the bad in people, then you will find it. The minister then realizes that he will reach more people if he explores the joy in religion as opposed to blame and accusation. Pollyanna’s candor breaks through a veil of malaise hanging over the town that occurs when people feel inhibited, constrained, or beaten down by life.

 In reviews or descriptions of the film or character, critics tend to over-emphasize Pollyanna’s optimism at the expense of considering Aunt Polly’s quiet tyranny over the town because of her money and position. I think they are missing part of the point. Much has been made of Walt Disney’s sentimental populism in which he glorified small-town America where ordinary folks played out the virtues of democracy. He not only believed in “Main Street,” he recreated it at Disneyland and Disney World — an icon of nostalgia for a way of life long gone by the time Walt built his version. Pollyanna was one of his favorite films, and it would be easy to see it as another nostalgic yearning for the values of Main Street; however, the character of Aunt Polly and the way she dominates the town reveals a dark side to small-town America where a privileged few can dictate a community’s direction, ambiance, and civic purpose, stifling new ideas and dissent. She represents the rigidity of the status quo, which Pollyanna breaks through by telling it like it is, not by being optimistic. Of course, Harrington, Vermont, is a beautifully rendered re-creation of small-town America from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Walt Disney hired respected art director Robert Clatworthy and acclaimed costume designer Walter Plunkett from other studios to make Harrington look lovely and inviting. So, Pollyanna is no harsh critique of provincialism . . .  but it is not mindless nostalgia either.

UP ON THE ROOF

 [Spoiler alert] The most disturbing sequence is undoubtedly Pollyanna’s fall from the roof, resulting in her paralysis. I first saw this movie on the TV series Disney’s Wonderful World of Color when I was a little kid.  Because of the film’s length (132 minutes), its showing was stretched out over three weeks.  For two weeks, I was charmed by Hayley Mills as Pollyanna and amused by the antics of her friend Jimmy Bean, played by Kevin Corcoran, one of my favorite Disney actors. Then on the third week, Pollyanna fell from the roof while trying to sneak back into the house after going to the charity bizarre, which had been forbidden by Aunt Polly.  It was frightening to see an active little girl — someone like me — unable to run, climb, or freely roam the environs of this lovely small town. I kept expecting that she would be “fixed” by the end of the film, and we would see her triumphantly walk again, because movies were supposed to end happily by tying up all loose ends and rewarding the good characters who did the right thing.  But, Pollyanna does not walk again during the course of the movie; instead she is shown leaving by train to the big city for an operation that may restore her ability to walk.  The film ends on that note. For a little kid NOT to see the finality of Pollyanna walking again was haunting.  It bothered me long after the movie was over, and I was conscious — even fearful sometimes — that something like that could happen to anyone, even me. But, it also made me think differently about a boy in my class who had been stricken by polio and could barely walk with the aid of leg braces. Most of the time, he was carried to and from the classroom, and the rest of us tended to shy away from him because we couldn’t relate.  After Pollyanna, I felt empathy for him and I tried to be a better classmate, though in retrospect, I am sure it was not enough.

A TRAGIC FATE

 In viewing Pollyanna this time around, I found the sequence still disturbing but for additional reasons. Pollyanna is carrying her new doll as she climbs the tree, jumps over to the pitched roof, and tries to squeeze into her window. She drops the doll a few feet from the window and falls while trying to retrieve it. Pollyanna, who earlier had talked about being too poor to own a doll, had won the prize at the bizarre. The doll represents something she had always wanted and finally got; but that feeling of satisfaction and joy over finally getting your heart’s desire was all too brief. In the next sequence, it was completely destroyed by one life-altering moment.  As an adult, who has recently experienced triumph and loss within an incredibly short span of time, I could see the cruel irony of this part of the story. That the doll and her accident are connected for Pollyanna in a cause-and-effect relationship is a heart-breaking detail.

 As for Pollyanna’s optimism, it wasn’t eternal.  While she had endured poverty and the death of her parents with her spirit intact, the accident and subsequent paralysis was that final blow that robbed her of her youthful optimism. The adults in the film whom Pollyanna helped had been beaten down by life’s hardships and misfortunes — loneliness, disappointment, loss — and the little girl reminded them of the power of a positive outlook. But, they had to be reminded; it no longer came automatically as it had when they were young and innocent like Pollyanna. At the end, the townspeople of Harrington return the favor for Pollyanna by reminding her of the good in the world, of the good that she herself has brought to the community.  But, like them, she had to be reminded; like them, she has lost some of the innocence that had made the glad game so easy to play.

WITH KEVIN CORCORAN

Pollyanna is famous for the overt sentimentality of the story, the nostalgia of the setting, and the optimism of the title character — and rightly so — but I found these characteristics tempered by themes of loss and disillusionment and examples of life’s cruelties. However, lest I give the impression that Pollyanna is a tragedy of mythic proportions, let me add that it is filled with delightful Disney-like moments in the best sense of the word.

 Sadly, Pollyanna did not do especially well at the box office. The film grossed around $3,750,000 but it had cost over $3,000,000 to make.  Disney felt the connotation of the title Pollyanna may have hurt the film, a fate I think it still suffers from. According to Walt, “I think the picture would have done better with a different title. Girls and women went to it, but men tended to stay away because it sounded sweet and sticky.”