So Dear to My Heart *** (1948, Burl Ives, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey Sr, Luana Patten, Bobby Driscoll) – Classic Movie Review 12,085

Director Harold D Schuster’s 1948 Walt Disney American live-action animated feature children’s film So Dear To My Heart is based on the story Midnight and Jeremiah by Sterling North. It stars Burl Ives, Beulah Bondi, Harry Carey Sr, Luana Patten, and Bobby Driscoll, who received a special Juvenile Award from the Academy as ‘the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949’ for So Dear to My Heart and The Window.

So Dear To My Heart is a Disney live-action and animation story concerning a kid who finds a motherless lamb, and together they discover the marvels of turn-of-the-last-century farm life. It is an attempt to repeat the earlier 1946 Disney success of Song of the South, which also combines animation and live action,  starring, as in the earlier film, child star Driscoll (as Jeremiah Kincaid), along with Ives giving an engaging turn as Uncle Hiram.

The most enjoyable segments of this family feature are without exception the animated sequences, directed by Hamilton Luske, which use the cream of the Disney talent to create an all-singing and all-dancing farmyard of friendly creatures.

Mild and old-fashioned as it may be, So Dear To My Heart is guaranteed to enthrall small children and nostalgic adults.

Child star Driscoll gives a stupendous performance that helped him to win a special Oscar for the most outstanding juvenile actor of 1949 at the 1950 Academy Awards, for So Dear to My Heart and The Window (1949). He played Johnny in Song of the South (1946), Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island (1950) and an unhappy outcast youngster in When I Grow Up (1951), and voiced Peter Pan (1953). But, after his Disney career, he later fell on bad times and drugs, dying impoverished and ending up in an unmarked pauper’s grave in 1968, aged only 31.

It is based on the 1943 Sterling North book Midnight and Jeremiah, which was revised by North to take in the film’s story amendments and then re-issued under the same title as the film.

It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Burl Ives’s version of the 17th-century English folk song ‘Lavender Blue’ but lost to ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ from Neptune’s Daughter.

The film was a personal favorite of Walt Disney, as it re-creates one of the most memorable times of his life, growing up on a small farm in the American Midwest at the turn of the 20th century. Disney recalled: ‘So Dear was especially close to me. Why, that’s the life my brother and I grew up with as kids out in Missouri.’

He intended it to be the first all live-action Disney feature film, but distributor RKO Radio Pictures convinced him that audiences expected animation when they saw the word ‘Disney’, so it combines animation and live action.

It is the final film appearance of Harry Carey Sr. A long-time cigar smoker, he died in 1947 at the age of 69 from coronary thrombosis.

The train depot was relocated to Ward Kimball’s Grizzly Flats Railroad in his backyard. After it closed, Disney producer John Lasseter relocated it to the Justi Creek Railway.

It cost $1.5 million and returned cinema rentals of $2,775,000 by 1951. It was re-released in 1964, and later on video and DVD.

The cast are Bobby Driscoll as Jerry Kincaid, Luana Patten as Tildy, Burl Ives as Uncle Hiram Douglas, Beulah Bondi as Granny Kincaid, Harry Carey Sr as Head Judge at County Fair, Raymond Bond as Pete Grundy, Storekeeper, Walter Soderling as Grampa Meeker, Matt Willis as Horse Trainer Mr Burns, Spelman B Collins as Judge, and Bob Haymes as Singer Bob Haymes.

The voice cast are John Beal as Adult Jeremiah/ Narrator, Ken Carson as The Owl, Bob Stanton as Danny, Marion Darlington as Whistling Sound Effects, Clarence Nash as Vocal Sound Effects, and The Rhythmaires as Vocal Ensemble/ Bluebirds.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,085

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