Toon Talk: Pollyanna Vault Disney 2-Disc DVD
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Toon Talk Trivia:
- While David Swift never directed for Disney after The Parent Trap, he did co-write Candleshoe and the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.
- Jane Wyman won an Oscar for Johnny Belinda in 1948. Her other Disney role was as wife to Fred MacMurray and mother to Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran in Bon Voyage!
- Hayley Mills won a special Academy Award for her leading role in Pollyanna (a fact oddly underplayed throughout this entire set). She quickly became a Disney favorite, starring in The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways, Summer Magic, The Moon-Spinners and That Darn Cat! On television, she appeared in Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life; The Disneyland 10th Anniversary Show; Back Home; Good Morning, Miss Bliss; as well as the three Parent Trap television sequels: The Parent Trap II, The Parent Trap III and The Parent Trap Hawaiian Honeymoon. She was named a Disney Legend in 1998.
- Karl Malden, another Oscar-winner for A Streetcar Named Desire, also appeared in The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin.
- Best known as Betty Schaefer opposite William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, Nancy Olson also starred as Fred MacMurray’s wife, in The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber. In addition to the features Smith and Snowball Express, Olson also had an uncredited cameo in the Professor remake, Flubber.
- Pollyanna was the last film role in a long career for famed actor Adolphe Menjou.
- Donald Crisp also appeared on television in Greyfriars Bobby.
- Agnes Moorehead, best remembered as Endora on Bewitched, also starred in the Disney television program The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove.
- James Drury (George Dodds) co-starred in Toby Tyler, Ten Who Dared and Elfego Baca.
- Reta Shaw played a lot of Disney domestics, including Mary Poppins’ Mrs. Brill and Escape to Witch Mountain’s Mrs. Grindley.
- Mary Grace Canfield appeared in several Nick at Nite favorites as Green Acres and Bewitched, as well as Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Special Toon Talk History:
“The segments featuring the train station at the beginning and ending of Pollyanna
were filmed on the Southern Pacific’s Calistoga branch in Saint Helena,
California. Today, this route is known as the Napa Valley Wine Train, offering fine dining
with classic wines aboard restored dining cars, and this is where the Wine Train turns
around before heading back to Napa Valley. The station seen in the film is still there,
all though it has suffered from years of neglect.
The locomotive seen in the film has a fair amount of history, with its own tales to tell. The American Locomotive Company built number 94 for the Western Pacific Railroad in 1909. It was capable of speeds of 70 miles per hour with an eight-car passenger train. In September of 1910, it was used on a special train that celebrated the opening of the railroad. The WP ran from Salt Lake City, Utah to Oakland, California. In the early 1990s, the 94 was repainted, removing the last traces of the film’s paint job, specifically the words “Watertown and Eastern”. The 94 is one of five WP surviving locomotives, now in storage at a Northern California railroad museum.
The observation car seen on the train used for Pollyanna is on display today at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, California. The classic wooden car was the private railroad car of historian, author and bon vivant Lucius Beebe and partner Charles Clegg.”
-- Very special thanks to Laughing Place reader Roger Colton for contributing this information.
Final Word:
“Without Hayley, I don’t see how we could of made this film.”
-- David Swift, in Pollyanna: Making a Masterpiece.
Coming Soon in Toon Talk
- Meet the ‘best doggone dog in the West’ in Old Yeller, another Vault Disney collection DVD, now available.
Discuss It
Related Links
- Purchase Polyanna 2-Disc DVD from The LaughingPlace Store
- Purchase Pollanna standard VHS from The LaughingPlace Store
- List of all Toon Talk articles
-- Kirby C. Holt
Kirby, a former Walt Disney World Resort Cast Member (and Trivia Champ), is a lifelong Disney fan and film buff. He is also an avid list maker and chronic ellipsis user ...
Took Talk: Disney Film & Video Reviews by Kirby C. Holt is posted whenever there's something new to review.
The opinions expressed by our Kirby C. Holt, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted June 6, 2002