Walt Disney Art Classics Convention 2004 - Part 2
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Leaving Medfield’s first feature, Kurtti and Tieman quoted Walt Disney’s famous dictum: I don’t do sequels. You can’t top pigs with pigs. (He said this to distributors of the 1930s who wanted more cartoons of the Three Little Pigs.) Nonetheless, two years after the Absent Minded Professor had its successful run, Son of Flubber appeared. In a 1963 radio spot, the announcer asked the rhetorical question, “Son of Flubber—how’s that for an original comedy?�? The spot also promised sixteen of Hollywood’s top comics.

Again, numerous photos of cast members were shown. One back lot “candid�? showed Fred MacMurray, relaxing between takes with his script, seated in front of the house from Swamp Fox. William Demarest, who would later play Uncle Charley in MacMurray’s long running TV series My Three Sons was seen on Disney’s “business street.�? (Jeff Kurtti did a fairly accurate presentation of the title sequence of My Three Sons at this juncture, complete with tapping foot and swinging hands.)

But when a photo of veteran comic Paul Lynde (playing a radio announcer) appeared, the presentation stopped cold. Kurtti and Tieman then reverently enacted favorite Paul Lynde quips from The Hollywood Squares. An example: “Paul, why do motorcyclists wear black leather?�? “Because the taffeta wrinkles so easily.�?

After looking at color publicity shots (for the black and white film), a shot of the football game was shown.

Son of Flubber’s football game was the counterpart of the basketball game in Son of Flubber.

Amazingly, the sequence was shot inside Disney’s Soundstage 2. Kurtti and Tieman pointed out that at the time, it was the largest soundstage in Hollywood. (It had been built for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.)

They also commented that product placement was very big in films—even back when Son of Flubber was in production. There followed a series of shots of “flubber�? based products, including: “Flubbernut�? gum, “Flub�? detergent, “Flubberchex�? cereal, the “Flubbercycle,�? “Le Flubberge�? perfume, “Flubber-Up�? soft drink, and finally, for headache relief, “Flubberin.�?