The Happiest Millionaire (Disney) (1967)

Alligator Snaps Up Role In Walt Disney’s “Happiest Millionaire” When Disney talent scouts began their search for Tommy Steele’s dancing partner in the musical comedy, “The Happiest Millionaire?’ an 8-foot, 200-pound alligator named George snapped at the opportunity right away. George, whose name had been Lumphead until stardom came his way, had always found dancing a challenge, mainly because he’s tone deaf and generally lacks a sense of rhythm. Besides, he hadn’t ever done much in movies, except for a close-up in a Tarzan film. In real life, Philadelphia eccentric Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, on whose biography the musical is based, made a hobby of trapping alligators in the Florida Everglades. He brought them back to the City of Brotherly Love as house pets. George, therefore, would have the distinction of being the first alligator ever to portray a domesticated pet in a motion picture. Then, too, “The Happiest Millionaire’’ might provide a substantial boost to the species’ reputation. Alligators are both carnivorous and cannibalistic, and their public image has been sagging of late. Ken Earnest, George’s dramatic coach and curator of the California Alligator Farm in Buena Park, California, says this was the first casting call for an alligator actor since 1958. However, the farm opened its doors in 1907, and is long on theatrical experience. In fact, the Earnest family has been supplying gators for Hollywood productions ever since the days of silent films like “The Perils of Pauline” During this time, many an actor has wrestled with an Earnest alligator, but Tommy Steele is the first person in the world to be able to say he’s danced with one. During production, the fact that George is cold-blooded and eats only once a week was of little comfort to Tommy. “To dance with an alligator, you’ve got to be one of two things — out of work or out of your mind,” he quipped before filming began. By placing a rope around the gator’s head, just behind its eyes, Earnest and choreographer Marc Breaux were able to devise a way for Steele to dance and safely steer the animal at the same time, thereby completing what will certainly become one of the screen’s classic dances. All George could do when asked his reaction to the scene was hiss. However, Steele was a bit more articulate. Said Tommy, ‘One never worried whether the alligator would walk away with the scene. It was whether he’d walk away with you.” Filmed in Technicolor, “The Happiest Millionaire” stars Fred MacMurray, Steele, Greer Garson and Geraldine Page, and introduces Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson. Norman Tokar directed from a screenplay by A J Carothers. Bill Anderson coproduced the Buena Vista release with Walt Disney. Mat HAP 3-B (3 col.) and Mat HAP 2-H (2 col.) Available in standard column widths d coarse screen © 1967 Walt Disney Productions Butler John Lawless (Tommy Steele) builds a lasting friendship with Anthony J. Drexel Biddle’s pet alligator, George, when he falls into the animal’s tank in this scene from Walt Disney’s “The Happiest Millionaire.” Filmed in brilliant Technicolor, the film stars Fred MacMurray, Steele, Greer Garson and Geraldine Page, co-stars Gladys Cooper and Hermione Baddeley, and introduces Lesley Ann Warren and John Davidson. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, whose work on “Mary Poppins” brought them two Academy Awards, have written eleven new songs for the musical comedy. Geraldine Page, 1967 Academy Award Nominee, Turns To Disney Studios For First Screen Musical A 1967 Oscar nominee for her supporting performance in the comedy, “You’re A Big Boy Now,” and winner of TV’s best actress Emmy for her role in “A Christmas Memory,” Geraldine Page appears in her first screen musical in Walt Disney’s ‘The Happiest Millionaire” Starring with Fred MacMurray, Tommy Steele and Greer Garson, she portrays the over-possesSive, socially-conscious Mrs. Duke. “In the screenplay, Mrs. Duke is one of those people who acts in life,” says Geraldine. “She’s aware of the way she looks and of the effect she’s making every moment of her existence. This extra dimension provided an added challenge to my portrayal of her.” Dynamic and award-winning performances are synonomous with the name Geraldine Page. For ‘““Mid-Summer,” her very first starring role on Broadway, she won the coveted Drama Critics’ Award. In Hollywood, she received successive Academy Award nominations for her first three motion pictures — “Hondo” “Summer and Smoke,” and ‘‘Sweet Bird of Youth.”’ Born in Missouri and raised in IIlinois, Miss Page has always been inclined toward the arts, having studied both music and drawing as a child. Her first taste of the theatre did not come until she was seventeen, when she joined a production of ‘Excuse My Dust” at Chicago’s Englewood Methodist Church. “In the second act, I had to confess to telling a lie, and a woman in the audience cried,” she recalls. After playing Jo in “Little Women,” also at church, she remembers “having the distinct feeling that I had found the medium in which I’d work for the rest of my life, and nobody would ever be able to talk me out of it.” Off stage, Gerry (as her friends call her) is the thoroughly dedicated wife of actor Rip Torn. “Before I was introduced to my husband, I was sure he must be one of those terribly synthetic Hollywood figures, who chose © 1967 Walt Disney Productions Mat HAP 1-E (1 col. width — coarse screen) his name through a cheap impulse toward publicity,” muses Miss Page. “T soon discovered that Rip Torn is a devastatingly handsome, intelligent looking, sensitive human being, whose name had been a tradition in the Torn family for years.” They now have three children, a daughter named Angelica and twin boys named Anthony and Jonathan. Greenwich Village, where the Torns still reside, has been “like home” to Geraldine Page ever since she moved to New York to further her acting career. During her first eight years as a resident of Greenwich Village, Miss Page studied drama with Uta Hagen and Mira Rostova, making ends meet by checking hats at Lindy’s, wrapping cones in a thread factory and clerking in a Washington Square book shop. In 1955, Geraldine joined the Actors’ Studio, and went to work days as an accountant and model in a negligee factory. When director Jose Quintero cast her in “Summer and Smoke’ at the Circle in the Square Theatre, she left the negligee factory forever. Since her Broadway debut in “‘MidSummer,” Geraldine Page has created a memorable gallery of emotional ladies in such plays as Gide’s “The Immoralist,” “The Rainmaker,” “The Innkeepers” and “Separate Tables.” Her latest Broadway appearance is with fellow Academy nominee Lynn Redgrave in “Black Comedy.” When asked what roles from the classical repertory she wants to tackle in the future, she replies, “All of ’em, honey, all of ’em.” Filmed in Technicolor, “The Happiest Millionaire” was directed by Norman Tokar from a screenplay by A J Carothers. The film is based upon the book and Broadway play by Cordelia Drexel Biddle and Kyle Crichton. Bill Anderson co-produced with Walt Disney for Buena Vista release. Page9