Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion

A family of great white hunters living in Africa have their village visited by the titular cross-eyed lion and wacky animal Disney hijinks ensue. It's nothing you haven't already seen dozens of times before, but as usual, Disney pretty consistently makes enjoyable entertainment that's hard to resist. This film was so popular at the time that it spun off into it's own TV series.

The best thing I like about Clarence The Cross-Eyed Lion is that it shows Africa as it is and not Africa as Hollywood made it up in the 30s and 40s. This is the newly emerging independent Africa and the white folk you see here are ruled by the governments of the new countries.

Colonialism goes and independence comes but the work of widower Marshall Thompson and widow Betsy Drake goes on. Thompson has a veterinary clinic for jungle animals and he lives there with his teen daughter Cheryl Miller. Drake is an anthropologist and she studies the primates like Dian Fossey on whom her character is modeled.

The running gag in this film is the lion who's the Ben Turpin of the jungle and has double vision. Which makes him a lousy hunter and he would have doubtless died in the jungle had he not been discovered and taken in by Thompson and Miller and fed like a pet.

Named Clarence he's a gentle soul, but he causes a lot of mischief. In the end though he deals well with Maurice Marsac who leads a band independent soldier of fortune guerrillas.

This is a nice family film and it led to the Daktari TV series.

I laughed at some of the corny setups and jokes and loved the animals. However, this movie made me rethink what passed for family movies back in the 60's (I was a kid then but I'd never seen this movie before today--I wasn't really into animals at 12 years old.) There were some very adult behavior that would never make it into a family film today--all the alcohol drinking and a few Hell's & Damn's thrown in not to mention the raid by troops on poachers. But if you don't have anything else to do and this movie is on, it's not a total waste of time. Betsy Drake is really pretty good in it and Richard Haydn made me laugh some. I've seen Marshall Thompson in better movies but maybe the reason he never was a huge star was because he really wasn't a good actor. I was glad they kept Cheryl Miller's scenes to a minimum.

I admit this movie was not a fantastic watch, but it was mildly amusing for the time and era of the movie. If you are going to critique I think you should carry on a subjective opinion based on not just whether the acting/directing/writing, etc. was good or not but consider what they had to work with at the time. To say that the movie was awful because they made it seem like you could tame a lion with chocolate cake is ridiculous. Lots of movies do not display things that we necessarily agree with, but it does not make them bad movies. I don't agree with cannibalism, but Silence of the Lambs was good, yet I don't see you protesting the implications that the bad guy was killing people to eat. I thought Clarence was a cute movie. No, it wasn't a greatly acted or directed one, but it was cute. One more tiny little suggestion, don't use movies to tell you how to live your life.

Dr. Marsh Tracy (Marshall Thompson) runs an animal care station in the African wild. Julie Harper (Betsy Drake) is studying the local animals. Marsh takes in a troublesome lion who turns out to be cross-eyed. His daughter Paula (Cheryl Miller) loves all the animals and befriends the new lion. The lion does scare away her visiting teacher Rupert Rowbotham (Richard Haydn). Poachers threaten the animals and their protectors.

I am shocked that the actors are really handling these wild animals. That's a good size leopard and it looks like a real attack. This is an MGM film although it seems more like a Disney film. It became the basis for a CBS TV show for four seasons. I've never seen the TV show. It's light comedy family fun. Haydn has a fun comedic role. The lion works. I can see it as a TV show.