The Monkey’s Uncle ** (1965, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Leon Ames, Arthur O’Connell, Frank Faylen) – Classic Movie Review 11,786

Director Robert Stevenson’s 1965 comedy film The Monkey’s Uncle is Walt Disney Productions’ slightly less amusing sequel to their surprise hit The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964) and finds Tommy Kirk back as ‘scrambled egghead’ student inventor Merlin Jones, the college crackpot who experiments with a sleep-learning system on a chimp and devises a man-powered flying machine.

The Monkey’s Uncle is the same mild monkey business and scientific slapstick as before, for the young only, though Tommy Kirk is again appealing and so is Annette Funicello as his girlfriend Jennifer, who sings the theme song written by the Disney song-writing duo Richard M Sherman and Robert B Sherman on stage at Disneyland with the Beach Boys and performs it with them over the opening credits. Leon Ames also returns as Judge Holmsby.

Merlin Jones legally adopts his chimpanzee named Stanley in court in a legal arrangement resulting from an experiment to raise Stanley as a human. And so Merlin becomes The Monkey’s Uncle! Merlin’s Midvale College is told that a wealthy man will give a large donation if they succeed in building a man-powered flying machine by a certain date.

Original screenplay credits to Tom August and Helen August were blacklist pseudonyms used by Alfred Lewis Levitt and Helen Levitt. The home video release credits the Levitts.

The film was another big box-office success, earning an amazing $4,000,000 in North America, the same as the original.

The term monkey’s uncle, as in ‘well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle’, is used to express amazement or the impossibility of a situation, as in ‘If two plus two equals five, then I am a monkey’s uncle.’

Funicello looked back on singing with The Beach Boys as the highlight of her Disney film career. She recalled: ‘They were just beginning. They were wonderful guys and I feel fortunate that I was kind of in on the ground floor. We even worked together performing at Disneyland. Little did any of us know how successful they would become! As silly as the song is in places, it really does rock, and with the Beach Boys’ amazing four-part harmonies, I could sing it without echo.’

The cast are Tommy Kirk as Merlin Jones, Annette Funicello as Jennifer, Leon Ames as Judge Holmsby, Arthur O’Connell as Darius Green III, Frank Faylen as Mr. Dearborne, Leon Tyler as Leon, Norm Grabowski as Norman, Cheryl Miller as Lisa, Connie Gilchrist as Mrs. Gossett, Alan Hewitt as Professor Shattuck, Gage Clarke as College President, Mark Goddard as Haywood, Harry Holcombe as Regent, Alexander Lockwood as Regent, Harry Antrim as Regent, Brian Wilson as Himself, Carl Wilson as Himself, Dennis Wilson as Himself, Al Jardine as Himself, and Mike Love as Himself.

Tommy Kirk recalled: ‘The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly.’

It is Tommy Kirk’s last film for the Disney studio. While filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1963, Kirk, then aged 21, was personally fired by Walt Disney. Kirk recalled: ‘The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie, The Monkey’s Uncle, because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio.’

The news of Kirk’s termination from Disney Studios was not made public.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,786

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com