The Lion, the Witch and the Bedpost

 

I have often answered the question that pops up occasionally in questionnaires, "What is the first movie you ever saw in the theater?", with the fact that there probably was one or two before Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but that is the one I remember specifically seeing in a theater. The fact of the matter is that the director of this film, Robert Stevenson, also directed Mary Poppins, That Darn Cat! and The Love Bug all between the time I was born and today's movie, all of which I saw as a kid.

However, remember this was the time when Sunday night programming include The Wonderful World of Disney and it's highly likely I saw all of those on TV rather than in a theater. To my credit on that thought, my sister also thinks this was the first movie we saw in a theater environment. (I concede any argument on childhood memories to her because she often has a better memory...)

Robert Stevenson directed many movies in his long career, and starting from about 1957, he almost exclusively did movies for Walt Disney Studios.  If you've been a reader for long enough, you might remember I did a piece on Old Yeller. That was a Stevenson movie, too.  Again, if you are in my age bracket, many of his films may be in your wheelhouse of memories of favorite childhood films. Besides the movies already mention in the first paragraph, he also directed Johnny Tremain, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, The Absent-Minded Professor and it's sequel, Son of Flubber, Herbie Rides Again (a sequel to The Love Bug) and The Shaggy D.A. 

There are some interesting possibilities as to what this movie could have been. You may know Angela Lansbury stars as our heroine/witch. But some of the other actresses considered for the role were Lynn Redgrave and Julie Andrews. One of the things I found out while doing the research for this blog entry is that Andrews turned the part down because she was afraid of being typecast, but later had a change of heart and became willing to do it.  But by then Lansbury had already been given the role.

For the part of Dr. Emelius Browne, Peter Ustinov was considered, and Dick van Dyke had also been a possibility. But like Andrews, van Dyke turned the part down because he considered it to close to the character he played in Mary Poppins. 

The film garnered fairly positive reviews and was the #9 movie in terms of box office sales for the year. Considering that it was released in the same month as A Clockwork Orange, Diamonds are Forever and Dirty Harry, three movies that placed higher in terms of ticket sales, and still managed to come in the top ten, I'd say that's pretty good.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971):

 In 1940 England, in a little village called Pepperinge Eye, many children are being shipped from London to be housed in something like refugee houses.  The basic premise of this is that it is at the height of WWII and Germany's bombings of London. I am guessing that the children all have parents who stayed behind to face the dangers that the Nazis are perpetuating on British soil, but have sent the children away for their own protection. It doesn't really make much sense that they are being sent to live with total strangers, but then this is a different era. Most people are good by nature, (especially in Disney movies. what?) so they will be safer with these total strangers in an unfamiliar territory than facing the threat of Hitler's Luftwaffe and their incendiary bombs.

 

All of the children have been doled out except three kids, two boys and a girl, all from the same family. You don't find out until a little later in the movie that the children, Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul (Roy Snart) are actually orphans whose parents have died and were living with their aunt at the time, but even the aunt is now dead as a result of the bombings.  So they actually have no home to return to even if they could go back.

 

Into this mix comes a sweet but slightly daffy woman named Miss Price (Angela Lansbury). Miss Price is not entirely with the program of housing the children, but she is essentially forced to do so by the town leaders because she has a big house and lives all by herself. She reluctantly agrees, but only until some other situation for them can be achieved. It turns out that Miss Price is an apprentice witch.  She has been taking witch casting spells classes via a correspondence course (and if the first thing that comes to mind is those companies that will make you a full-fledged pastor via mail, you're not far off...) At the same time as she is taking the children in, she has also taken possession of her witch's broom, which will enable her to fly. 

 

Sure enough, the children see her flying and Charlie, being an opportunistic little brat, decides he is going to blackmail Miss Price for better living conditions.

 

Miss Price gets the kids to agree by giving them a gift, a bed knob she has imbued with a magical spell that, when used properly, will enable them to fly. There is some convoluted spell involved which only the youngest boy, Paul, is able to make it work (because it was his bed knob...) At about this time Miss Price discovers that the final page of her spell book is missing a page or two. This is disconcerting because Miss Price had plans to use that final spell, called "Substitutionary Locomotion". Essentially this spell would animate previously inanimate objects, giving these things the ability to move on their own power. What Miss Price's plan was is not entirely well-thought out (or at least not entirely made clear to the audience), but somehow, apparently, she expected to be able to use the spell to defeat the Nazis. And to make matters worse, she receives a telegram from the correspondence college saying that it is closing up shop for the duration of the war. In an effort to get the missing pages she has Paul use his new magical device to take the bed to London to find the man in charge of the correspondence school, Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson). 

 

It turns out that Browne is a charlatan.  He didn't really  have any idea those spells were effective.  He just found them in an old book.  In other words he was bilking his "students" for what he assumed were basically just nonsense words. He reminds me of Dr. Zachary Smith from Lost in Space, a guy who is trying to use any means necessary to gain an advantage over his unsuspecting audience.

 

It turns out that, since Professor Browne has no idea what that final spell was, they have to seek out the guy from whom he bought the original book, a Mr. Bookman (Sam Jaffe). Mr. Bookman has been seeking the same spell, but since he only had the second half of the book, he doesn't know much more than Miss Price and Browne. But Paul (remember young Paul?) has the solution.  He has a comic book he found in Miss Price's house which mentions a fabled land called  Namboombu. On this fabled island the animals have all become anthropomorphic, able to think and talk. And on this island is a medallion that contains the words to the final spell.

The crew uses the magic bed to go to this island, and thus we get an extended sequence where they interact with animated animals led by a lion, King Leonidas. The King wants to get rid of the human interlopers but Browne manages to save them by volunteering to be a referee for a soccer game between two teams, one of which is led by the King. A long extended sequence involves each team trying to score a goal on the other and win the game. At the same time the human crew are trying to figure out how to get the medallion that the King wears, which contains the words of the spell, away from him.

 

Eventually they do get the medallion and return to the real world where, surprise, a crew of Nazi soldiers has taken over the town.  Now equipped with the medallion and the spill of Substitutionary Locomation, Miss Price animates a horde of suits of armor to attack them and drive them off.

The movie ends in classic Disney style with everyone going off in an "all's well that ends well fashion. But there are a few things that really stand out as a bit confusing to me.  And Roger Ebert in his review at the time also points it out.  In Disney tradition you usually had an evil dragon or a wicked witch or some other "fantasy" bad guy for the children to root against, and they usually showed up fairly early and were instrumental in leading the side of good to accomplish their own goals.  Here the bad guys don't show up until the movie is almost over.  And the bad guys are... Nazis? I mean really, is that the kind of bad guy children would understand?

The second thing I never got: what was the point of the clergyman, Mr. Jelk (Roddy McDowell)? McDowell seems to be abhorrently underused in this film. And he got third place billing in the credits.  From what I read there was another plot going on that was cut out in which Mr. Jelk was a bit more obviously materialistic, trying to wangle a marriage with Miss Price just to get her farm. (Snidely Whiplash???) 

 

The third thing that stuck out was the length of time this movie takes to reach it's conclusion. I mean, typically a children's movie tops out at about an hour and a half in length.  This one stretches out to nearly two and a half hours. I don't really remember at this late a date whether I followed along with this movie for it's entire duration at age 9, but I wonder if kids these days or even then could stay with it.  The animated soccer game seems to be much longer than necessary and even some of the earlier scenes in London seem to be padding the movie beyond what I would think was acceptable.

As far as an adult watching it, it's not completely bad, but even as an adult I thought there was way too much extra stuff going on here.  I could have edited several scenes down considerably and not lost a bit of plot line. Still, if you have children with a good amount of patience for extraneous stuff, it's decent enough.

Well, folks, time to rev up the Plymouth for the drive home. Sure wouldn't mind a car that could fly by itself like the bed in this movie, but one must make do for the war effort...

Quiggy