Summer Magic *** (1963, Hayley Mills, Dorothy McGuire, Burl Ives, Deborah Walley, Peter Brown) – Classic Movie Review 7353

Director James Neilson’s 1963 teen movie Summer Magic stars Walt Disney’s number one star at the time, Hayley Mills, who in real life grows up to celebrate her 17th birthday (on 18 April 1963) but in the film is breezing through her 16th summer and enjoying a romance with Tom Hamilton (Peter Brown), the mysterious older man who owns an old house in Maine and is initially absent in Europe.

In Disney’s adaptation of Kate Douglas Wiggin’s novel Mother Carey’s Chickens, Hayley’s character Nancy Carey takes over the rundown home in the Maine countryside with her Bostonian widowed mom (Dorothy McGuire), sister Julia (Deborah Walley) and two brothers (Eddie Hodges, James Mathers) in 1912. Happily, Burl Ives (Big Daddy) is around to co-star as postmaster Osh Popham and to sing the film’s hit, ‘The Ugly Bug Ball’, one of several sweet songs by Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman.

Neilson’s movie is a prettily filmed, gently likeable children’s saga with Sally Benson’s crafted screenplay making the best of Kate Douglas Wiggin’s book Mother Carey’s Chickens, previously filmed as Mother Carey’s Chickens in 1938 with Anne Shirley.

Also in the cast are Darren McGavin, Deborah Walley, Una Merkel, Eddie Hodges, Michael J Pollard, O Z Whitehead, Eddie Quillan, James Stacy, Harry Holcombe and Hilda Plowright.

Summer Magic is directed by James Neilson, runs 110 minutes, is made by Walt Disney Productions, is released by Buena Vista, is written by Sally Benson, based on Kate Douglas Wiggin’s novel Mother Carey’s Chickens, is shot in Technicolor by William Snyder, is produced by Ron Miller and is scored by Buddy Baker.

Neilson and Mills re-united for The Moon-Spinners (1964).

RIP Peter Brown (Pierre Lind de Lappe), 5 October 1935 – 21 March 2016, best known as Deputy Johnny McKay opposite John Russell as Marshal Dan Troop in the 1958-1962 Western TV show Lawman.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7353

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