Pollyanna **** (1960, Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Richard Egan, Karl Malden, Nancy Olson, Adolphe Menjou, Donald Crisp, Agnes Moorehead) – Classic Movie Review 7356

Writer-director David Swift’s 1960 children’s movie Pollyanna is Hayley Mills’s first film for Walt Disney, playing the title’s ever-optimistic Pollyanna, a tween girl who goes to live with her intimidating aunt Polly (Jane Wyman) and changes the bitter lives of sad Mr Pendergast (Adolphe Menjou), cross Mrs Snow (Agnes Moorehead), and the wronged Reverend Paul Ford (Karl Malden).

Based on the novel by Eleanor H Porter, Pollyanna is memorable as a film chock-full of charm and very welcome old-time performers.

But ultimately it is Hayley who makes it special – and she won a 1961 special Oscar, the Juvenile Award for the most outstanding juvenile performance during 1960, as well as a 1961 Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female. Back home, the best the Bafta folk could do was a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best British Actress, which they repeated the following year for Whistle Down the Wind (1961).

Also in the cast are Richard Egan, Nancy Olson, Donald Crisp, Reta Shaw, Leora Dana, Kevin Corcoran, James Drury, Anne Seymour and Edward Platt.

Pollyanna has come to mean an excessively or blindly optimistic person from the name of the child heroine created by the American writer Eleanor Porter (1868–1920).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7356

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