Bon Voyage! *** (1962, Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman, Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran, Deborah Walley) – Classic Movie Review 11,783

Fred MacMurray stars with Tommy Kirk in director James Neilson’s 1962 Disney family comedy Bon Voyage!, as American father and son with other family members played by Jane Wyman, Deborah Walley, and Kevin Corcoran as the Willard family on a European holiday.

That old chestnut, a comedy about an American family’s visit to Europe, is warmed up with the casting of Fred MacMurray as Harry Willard, a dad who takes his wife Katie (Wyman) and sons Elliott (Kirk) and Skipper (Corcoran) to Paris. There our Fred gets into all sorts of problems, including being chatted up by a very un-Disney-like prostitute and getting lost in the sewers.

Bon Voyage! is quite good fun, all brightly filmed on location, and helped along by the likeable performances and jolly title theme song by Disney staff twin songwriters, Robert B Sherman and Richard M Sherman.

It was one of producer Walt Disney’s favourite films; he liked to take his family to Europe and accompanied the film on location. ‘It’s far out for us, but still Disney,’ said Disney. ‘I’m really a gag man and missed the kind of pictures Frank Capra and Harold Lloyd used to make. Since nobody else wanted to do them, I decided to make them myself.’

Bon Voyage! is based by James A Herne and Charles Kenyon on the book by Merrijane Hayes and her husband Joseph A Hayes, his second book after The Desperate Hours, and written after the couple’s trip to Europe.

Filming began on 15 August 1961, partly on location on an ocean cruiser travelling across the Atlantic and in France.

It has an exceptionally long runtime of 130 minutes.

Kirk recalled that MacMurray gave him ‘the biggest dressing-down of my life’ during the filming, one he said he deserved. ‘I really liked him very much, but the feeling wasn’t mutual,’ Kirk said. ‘That hurt me a lot and for a long time I hated him. It’s hard not to hate somebody who doesn’t like you. I was sort of looking for a father figure and I pushed him too hard. He resented it and I guess I was pretty repellent to him, so we didn’t get along. We had a couple of blow-ups on set. He was a nice person, but I was just too demanding. I came on too strong because I desperately wanted to be his friend.’

Tommy Kirk: ‘I thought Jane Wyman was a hard, cold woman.’

Kirk also had trouble with Jane Wyman: ‘I thought Jane Wyman was a hard, cold woman and I got to hate her by the time I was through with Bon Voyage. Of course, she didn’t like me either, so I guess it came natural. She was very mean to me. She went out of her way to be shitty. She was a total bitch and I think she was homophobic. I think she had some suspicion that I was gay and all I can say is that, if she didn’t like me for that, she doesn’t like a lot of people.’

The cast are Fred MacMurray as Harry Willard, Jane Wyman as Katie Willard, Michael Callan as Nick O’Mara, Deborah Walley as Amy Willard, Jessie Royce Landis as Countessa ‘La Comtesse’ DuFresne, Tommy Kirk as Elliott Willard, Georgette Anys as Madame Clebert, Kevin Corcoran as Skipper Willard, Ivan Desny as Rudolph Hunschak, Françoise Prévost as The Girl, Alex Gerry as Horace Bidwell, Howard Smith as Judge Henderson, Max Showalter as The Tight Suit, James Millhollin as Ship’s Librarian, Marcel Hillaire as Sewer Guide, and Richard Wattis as Party Guest.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,783

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Tommy Kirk recalls Fred MacMurray: ‘I really liked him very much, but the feeling wasn’t mutual.’