L'été magique

My sister and I discovered this movie at least 20 years ago, and fell in love with it instantly. It is just utterly delightful. Hayley Mills plays the oldest daughter of a newly impoverished family that moves to an old yellow house in Maine. Dorothy McGuire plays the widowed mother; Burl Ives is at his incomparable best in the role of Osh Popham, the town's general factotum married to what has to be the gloomiest woman in the state of Maine, if not the United States. Based on the book "Mother Carey's Chickens," by Kate Douglas Wiggin, the story was well adapted for the screen, maintaining the integrity and heart of the novel while making the cast a little more manageable. This truly is a feel good movie that you'll want to add to your collection.

This movie is a remake of a movie called Mother Carey's Chickens (1938) Anne Shirley as Nancy Carey, Ruby Keeler as Kitty Carey, James Ellison as Ralph Thurston, Fay Bainter as Mrs. Carey, Walter Brennan as Mr. Popham, and Donnie Dunagan as Peter Carey.

Both are really good family movies. Summer Magic is more on the musical end and Mother Carey's Chickens is more of the romance side. Both have a lot of love, kindness and care one for another.

I have fond memories of watching this movie on TV when I was about 7 years old. Looking back on it now, it's pretty typical Disney family-fare from the early 60s. Hayley Mills is cute, as usual, as the older sister in the Carey family. Eddie Hodges is not bad either as her brother. Burl Ives is enjoyable. His "Ugly Bug Ball" sequence with little Jimmy Mathers is cute, corny and memorable. Deborah Walley is fun as cousin Julia, and it's fun to see her and Mills irritating each other. There are some cute songs in here, by the Sherman brothers, but you have to wonder what they were thinking when they wrote them. In addition to the aforementioned "Ugly Bug Ball", we have two of the oddest inclusions in the Disney catalog: "Femininity" (where Walley and Mills teach Wendy Turner how to act like a woman!) and "The Pink of Perfection" (Mills' and Hodges' duet, in reference to Walley's snooty character).

Harmless, good, clean fun for the most part, but not in the same league as "Mary Poppins".

Good or bad, happy or sad, come what may this will always be the most magical of the movies I saw in a theater as a child. Already charmed by its Disney-Norman Rockwell-Hallmark look at the Ragtime Age; this 12 year old boy was simply bowled over 30 minutes into the film by his first glimpse of Deborah Walley. Walley was already a teen queen from her "Gidget" film but had escaped my too-young-to-notice teen actresses consciousness until that day at the theater.

In her period costume this vision was the original "Pretty in Pink" and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And might explain my lifelong preference for redheads.

At its core "Summer Magic" is a Disney fairy tale cloaked in a "too-good-to-be-true" production design. If the term expressionist nostalgia ever applied to a film it is this one. Disney simply took basic plot elements form the novel and film "Mother Carey's Chickens" (1938), threw in a bunch of "Cinderella" elements, and had Dorothy McGuire softly reprise her performance in "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn".

If you can't find something here with which to connect, whether it is wistful identification or distanced examination of the film language elements, then you are probably already pretty much used up. Liking this film now is just having the willingness to exercise a little self-knowing whimsy.

Cinderella-wise you have a fairy prince, a glass slipper, a wicked step-sister, a wardrobe transformation scene, cute animals, a coach, songs, and a ball.

The songs are along the lines of those seen recently in "Enchanted" but without the elaborate special effects. A couple of these, "Pink of Perfection" and "Femininity", have been popping in and out of my head ever since 1963. Those two and "Ugly Bug Ball" have held up surprisingly well. "Flitterin" and "Beautiful Beulah" are decent if not especially memorable.

"On the Front Porch" was weak then and hasn't improved with age; it should have been trimmed from the film as that is the film's weakest (insert "boring" here) scene. The sequence should be of interest to film students as it is the only time the director has real difficulty keeping the cast focused; definitely a post-production challenge for the editor who did some damage control but could not salvage anything worth keeping.

Viewing the film today I found Wendy Turner (as Lallie Joy Popham-Virginia Weidler's role in the 1938 film) a revelation. Turner's is the most authentic performance; which is interesting because she was originally cast as the youngest of the three girls simply because she was slightly shorter than the 5' 2" Walley, not much was expected of this novice. Her ability to take acting for the camera direction must have been a pleasant surprise for James Neilson. She gets to do an ugly duckling wardrobe transformation sequence worthy of "Cinderella".

As often happened with Disney, elements were included to insure that it appealed to the widest demographic. So you have a shaggy sheep dog (where have I seen that before?), you have a couple of handsome young television actors (Peter Brown and James Stacy), you have a Moochie Corcoran hammy kid, you have the comedy relief of acting veterans Una Merkel and Burl Ives to appeal to parents, and you have liberal use of Disney's stock nature footage.

Although I was too dazzled by Walley to pay much attention to Hayley Mills this was probably her best performance for Disney, it was certainly the most difficult part she was given. Her acting was more polished than it had been in "Pollyanna" and the out-of-place English accent taught us young Disney viewers all about the concept of suspension of disbelief.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Many films are criticized for what they are not, rather than what they are. "Summer Magic" is not a critical, gritty look at the turn-of-the-century life in rural Maine. It is a good-natured, fun film that you don't have to worry about letting your children watch. Hayley Mills is a delight as the ever-optimistic Nancy Carey who misrepresents her family's situation in order to win the sympathy of Mr. Popham, a rural Maine postmaster, general store owner, sheriff, etc. who allows them to rent a house he doesn't own. The plot is complicated by the unanticipated visit of Nancy's snobby cousin, Julia, the dour nagging of Mr. Popham's doom-and-gloom wife, Mariah, and the ultimate arrival of the house's true owner at a most inconvenient moment. Burl Ives as the laconically good-natured Mr. Popham is a absolute treat to watch. And the climax of the film (which I won't reveal here)makes me laugh out loud no matter how many times I've seen it. Those looking for a good family film should look no further.