The Barefoot Executive

The Barefoot Executive
March 17, 1971
Disney
Children's, Comedy
DVD
B+

This was one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid, but I don't think it's just nostalgia that made me enjoy it so much this time.  For one thing, it's really funny, not just the satire of television but even some of the slapstick.  (I could've done with less of the "ledge" scene though.)  For another, there's actually a consideration of ethics, with Kurt Russell (20 on the day this was released but playing a 21-year-old), as mailboy Steve Post (ha ha, pun), lying and cheating his way to the top of the network, but then realizing that love-- of his girlfriend and of the title character-- and self-respect matter more than money, fame, and success, so the three of them ride off together on a motorcycle, a later '60s version of what the Beach Boys sang of in The Monkey's Uncle: a bride, a groom, a chimpanzee.

Yes, it's another Disney chimp movie, with the simian this time picking programs that will be ratings successes.  (One is Laugh-Out.  There are lots of little digs at current or at least recent shows.)  Raffles is left in the care of Steve's girlfriend, who is played by 20-year-old Heather North, the future Daphne of Scooby-Doo, when her Italian neighbors can't take him on their move to San Francisco.  I mention this detail because no one ever points out that maybe the Bernaduccis deserve the million-dollar check for raising the chimp to be a TV critic.  The movie is full of holes and implausibilities and WTF moments, but I'm not putting it in the fantasy genre.  (It's not like it's a talking chimp.)

Steve, who initially dislikes the chimp, finds out Raffles's talent, and switches him with a look-alike.  (Again, you expect some sort of pay-off, like that Steve will sell the Raffles impostor for the big check, but, no, the second chimp disappears from the movie after awhile, his fate unknown.)  Steve becomes network vice-president, before Joe Flynn, as Russell's boss Francis X. Wilbanks, and Harry Morgan, as Flynn's boss E. J. Crampton, with the help of Wilbanks's nephew Roger, foil his scheme.  Roger is played by 22-year-old John Ritter in his big-screen debut, and he's wonderful.  He's cast against type, somehow both nerdy and slimy, but he has a proto-Jack-Tripper moment when he dashes down the hall and leaps over a desk, after figuring out who Post's mysterious roomie is.

The movie has other future and past TV stars, like Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers), who has a larger role here than he did as Wampers in The One and Only...Family Band, this time as the "simple" asthmatic chauffeur for Joe Flynn.  Bill Daily, in between I Dream of Jeanie and The Bob Newhart Show, has a not-much-of-a-stretch cameo as a navigator.  Dr. Bellows, Hayden Rorke, also shows up.

Alan Hewitt, who was Professor Shattuck in the Merlin Jones movies, plays Farnsworth here.  This time Arthur Tovey plays a man at the baseball game, Herb Vigran a fireman.  James B. Douglas (later Buddy Didlo, no, that's not a typo, in The Gong Show Movie), Peter Paul Eastman (a newspaperman in The Love God?), George N. Neise (Ben Milford in Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady), and Jeffrey Sayre (a senator in Skidoo) play TV executives.  Sponsor Glenn Dixon was a family member in The Love God?

Beulah Bondi (Jimmy Stewart's mother in It's a Wonderful Life) appears in a clip from So Dear to My Heart (1948, I've never seen it).  Newscaster Ed Reimers basically plays himself, as he did in Sgt. Deadhead (which also involved a chimp).  Bruce Rhodewalt was Clarke in The Perils of Pauline and plays Jason R. Wilbanks.  Hank Jones played the town delivery boy in Family Band and is Stan here (the guy who sees the chimp going up and down the mail elevator).

Policeman Peter Renoudet was a Dakota townsman in Family Band and would be a roller derby ticket-taker in The Shaggy D.A.  Iris Adrian, who was Mary Lou in Go West and a French soubrette in The Road to Zanzibar, was pushing 60 when she played the irate woman shopper, but she would go on to other Disney films, like Freaky Friday.

I must note that the sort of title song, "He's Gonna Make It" (it says "barefoot" but not "executive"), doesn't have very many lyrics, but what it has manage to be both delightful and embarrassing in the use of '60s slang, with this sentence being the best/worst:  "When they start rapping that he's too young/ He makes his mind up/ That he'll wind up/ Number one/ And the whole wide world will know that he's around/ Though other cats get uptight and try to put him down!"

The Monkey's Uncle

The Monkey's Uncle
August 18, 1965
Disney
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
C+

The title and some early scenes suggest that this is going to be sort of a teen version of Bedtime for Bonzo, but Merlin's quasi-adoption of Stanley the chimp is less of the focus than various threats to football at Midvale College.  At least that title allows for one of the better title songs of the '60s, sung by Annette and the Beach Boys, with Sherman Brothers lyrics like this:

Annette: I'd live in a jungle gym in order to be with him.  I love the monkey's uncle, and I wish I were the monkey's aunt!
Beach Boys: Monkey's aunt!....

Annette: On the day he marries me
All: What a nutty family tree!
Mike: A bride!
Brian: A groom!
Beach Boys:  A chimpanzee!

That right there raises the movie from a C to a C+.  (This will be far from the last time that the Beach Boys will do a title song that's much better than the movie it's attached to.)

This time, Merlin's misadventures are slightly more realistic, although "man-powered flight" fueled by an adrenaline smoothie pushes this back into sci-fi.  The first half of the movie is about sleep-learning through LPs.  Questionable ethics again pop up, with the judge urging Merlin to find "an honest way to cheat" on exams, for football player Norm and another idiot jock.  Merlin gets some sexist dialogue about Jennifer being stupid and illogical, you know, feminine.  There's a sort of rival for Jennifer, but because this is Disney, we're cheated of a moment when the girl is supposed to come out of the shower, presumably in a towel.  (By the time of Enchanted, it would be a whole other world of course.)

You'll notice that Annette not only looks non-pregnant, but her hair still has red highlights.  This was actually filmed in '64 (I think shortly before or after Uncle Walt found out that Tommy Kirk was gay), but not released for awhile.

Arthur O'Connell, Darius Green III here, was a reporter in Citizen Kane, and more recently played Gidget's first film father.  Similarly, Frank Faylen, who's the anti-football Mr. Dearborne, was Ernie the cabdriver in It's a Wonderful Life, but he's probably better known as Dobie Gillis's TV dad.  Leon Ames is back as Judge Holmsby, with a much larger role than before.  Connie Gilchrist again plays Holmsby's housekeeper.

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones
March 25, 1964
Disney
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
C+

By this point in their careers, the two young leads were such Disney veterans that she's known in the credits as simply "Annette," and both are recognizably caricatured in the opening cartoon, which is set to Annette singing the title tune.  They'd done some earlier movies together and have a nice, easy-going chemistry.  Unfortunately, they're not given much to work with.  To begin with, Merlin (played by Kirk) is supposed to be a science nerd, but the two main things he experiments with-- mind-reading and hypnosis-- are more in the nature of pseudoscience.  Yes, misadventures ensue, including some questionable ethics.  Not only does a judge nag Merlin into hypnotizing him to commit a misdemeanor (chimp-napping), but the Science professor not only tricks Merlin into harmless activities like eating a raw potato (telling him it's an apple) and drinking water (telling him it's whiskey), but he has Merlin kiss "the first pretty girl he sees."  Jennifer (Annette) is jealous it's not her, but no one in the class seems to have a problem with the girl being kissed against her will!

Still, there are some mildly amusing moments, like when Kirk eavesdrops on the thoughts of other students in the library, including a beatnik poet.  It's never explained how he doesn't hear everyone in the vicinity, or for that matter how when the Science teacher says Merlin will hear only his voice, Merlin misses all the professor's asides to the class.  My favorite bit, as someone who much prefers cats to dogs, is when Merlin hypnotizes his cat to stand up to the bully neighbor dog.

This was originally made to possibly air as two hour-long (including commercials) Disney TV programs, but reedited for theatrical release it proved popular enough to merit a sequel, The Monkey's Uncle (although as Merlin insists, Stanley is a chimp, not a monkey).  Uncle would have some of the cast besides Tommy and Annette reprising their roles:  Norman Grabowski as the jock Norman, Leon Ames as Judge Holmsby, and Connie Gilchrist as the judge's housekeeper.  (He was the father in Meet Me in St. Louis, while she was Norah Muldoon in Auntie Mame.)  The Augusts would also co-write Uncle's screenplay, while Bill Walsh would co-write Mary Poppins, which would feature the voice of Dal McKennon, who's Detective Hutchins here.  Robert Stevenson would direct both Poppins and Uncle.  Burt Mustin, the elderly bailiff, then 80, would do a lot of television and appear in Mame a decade after this.