Old Yeller **** (1957, Dorothy McGuire, Fess Parker, Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran, Jeff York, Chuck Connors) – Classic Movie Review 5962

Director Robert Stevenson’s 1957 children’s adventure film Old Yeller is an appealing, good-hearted, robust Walt Disney drama about a boy, Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk), his dog and his folks Katie and Jim Coates (Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker). The action is set in 1850s Texas.

While Parker’s Jim sets off to drive cattle, McGuire’s Katie has to bring up Kirk’s Travis and his brother Arliss (Kevin Corcoran) on her own, that is until stray yellow mongrel dog Yeller arrives uninvited on the scene. The scenario is full of raccoons, snakes, bears, and all kinds of animals.

The hit title song (sung by Jerome Courtland) calls Yeller ‘the best doggone dog in the West’.

The heart-warming screenplay is by Fred Gipson and William Tunberg, based on Gipson’s novel. Charles P Boyle shoots in Technicolor, it is produced by Walt Disney and William H Anderson, scored by Oliver Wallace, Clifford Vaughan and Will Schaefer, and designed by Carroll Clark, Emile Kuri and Fred M MacLean.

The mongrel Old Yeller (though in the book is a Black-Mouthed Cur) is played by a Yellow Labrador Retriever. The dog’s name is ‘Spike’, who also appears in The She-Creature (1956). The ‘wolf’ that fights Old Yeller is played by a German Shepherd.

The Texas-set movie was shot in California.

The 1963 sequel Savage Sam again stars both Kirk and Corcoran.

Also in the cast are Jeff York, Chuck Connors and Beverly Washburn.

It is the first Disney film for both Kirk and Corcoran.

Kevin Corcoran died on 6 October 2015, age 66.

Tommy Kirk in Old Yeller (1957).

Tommy Kirk died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 28 September 2021, at the age of 79.

Thomas Lee Kirk (December 10, 1941 – September 28, 2021) is remembered for his performances in Disney films such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent Minded Professor, and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as well as the beach-party films of the mid-1960s, such as Pajama Party (1964) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966).

Tommy Kirk became Disney’s first choice as an all-American teenager. But the all-American teenager was gay. Tommy Kirk recalled: ‘Disney was the most conservative studio in town. The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go.’ Walt Disney personally fired Kirk.

Beverly Washburn (born 25 November 1943) is the film’s credited cast sole survivor. She began as a child actor aged three and by 16, she had appeared in 10 films and more than 500 TV shows. She is also remembered for the horror film Spider Baby (1967).

It was released in drive-in theatres with Underwater! (1955), starring Jane Russell.

[Spoiler alert] It is central to a Friends episode The One Where Old Yeller ****, where Phoebe says her mother always turned off the movie after Old Yeller saves the family from wolves.

On the strength of this film’s success, 20th Century Fox bought Gipson’s earlier book Hound-Dog Man to film, which they did in 1959 as a vehicle for pop star Fabian.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5962

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