Pollyanna (1960 film)
Pollyanna is a 1960 American comedy-drama film starring child actress Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, and Richard Egan in a story about a cheerful orphan changing the outlook of a small town. The film was written and directed by David Swift, based on the 1913 novel Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. The film won Hayley Mills an Academy Juvenile Award. It was the last film of actor Adolphe Menjou.
Pollyanna was Hayley Mills' first of six films for Disney, and the directorial debut of David Swift.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The novel had been filmed before, notably with Mary Pickford, in 1920. The book continued to sell 35,000 copies per year by the late 1950s. Disney announced in June 1959 that he would make the film with Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, and Karl Malden, and David Swift as screenwriter and director.[3]
Swift was best known at the time for his work in television. He said: "It was the first time anyone would take a $2.5 million chance on me. Trust Disney to do it."[1]
Casting[edit]
Disney put Mills into the cast after seeing her in the British film Tiger Bay. He watched the film to see the most recent performance by her father, John Mills, who was to star in the studio's Swiss Family Robinson. Disney then offered Miss Mills the lead in Pollyanna. Her accent was explained by turning Pollyanna's parents into missionaries from the British West Indies.[4]
Disney said the cast was the most important in the studio's history, including names such as Wyman, Malden, and Richard Egan.[5]
Swift commented on casting: "The cast scared me. Veterans of scores of movies, some of them. I was afraid they'd say 'TV man, go home'. But they didn't. It was a happy set; everybody worked his head off for me."[1]
Script[edit]
Swift said in working on the script that, to work against the "saccharine" nature of the material, he would spend a few hours every day first working on a horror play called The Deadly. He would then work on Pollyanna.[1]
Swift said: "In the book, Pollyanna was so filled with happiness and light that I wanted to kick her. In the old days, she came on like Betty Hutton. Now, she is shy. We have an adult drag advice out of her."[6]
Swift also decided to remove a key plot point of the book, where Pollyanna was hit by a car and had to learn how to walk. He called this "Too coincidental. Too pat."[6]
Swift added that "instead of making her the 'glad girl' of the book, we've simmered her cheerfulness down to merely emphasize the things-could-be-worse attitude."[4]
Shooting[edit]
Pollyanna began filming in August 1959.[4]
The film was shot in Santa Rosa, California, with the Mableton Mansion at 1015 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa serving as the exterior and grounds of Aunt Polly's house. Other California locations included Napa Valley and Petaluma. Interiors were filmed at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The book sets the town of Harrington in Vermont, but the film places Harrington in Maryland; Baltimore is mentioned several times throughout the script. Aunt Polly and Pollyanna take the train to Baltimore at the end of the film, possibly headed to Johns Hopkins Hospital due to the delicacy of the operation needed (Johns Hopkins opened in 1889, and the story takes place in the 1900s).[7]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Disney reported in 1960 that the film made a profit "but not nearly what we expected".[8]
Jerry Griswold wrote in The New York Times on October 25, 1987: "An attempt was made to resuscitate Pollyanna in 1960 when Walt Disney released a movie based on the book. Time, Newsweek, and other major reviewers agreed that such an enterprise promised to be a disaster – a tearjerker of a story presented by the master of schmaltz; what surprised the critics (their opinions were unanimous) was that it was his best live-action film ever. But few had reckoned the curse of the book's by-then-saccharine reputation. When the movie failed to bring in half of the $6 million that was expected, Disney opined, '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'".[9]
The film has continued to be popular on television and home media. It is available to stream on Disney+.[10]
Awards and honors[edit]
Hayley Mills won the 1960 Academy Juvenile Award for her performance and also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.