Welcome to my weekly discussion of the animated films of the Walt Disney Studio. I’m proceeding mostly chronologically. We’ve done all the animated ones so we have moved on to the live-action films. The title comes from a quote from Walt, “I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”
Title: The Gnome-mobile
Year: 1967
Source materials: The Gnomobile by Upton Sinclair
Box office: $4,000,000
Plot: D.J. Mulrooney, a well-known executive officer of a timber-trading company, is going to Seattle to sell 50,000 acres of timberland and takes his customized 1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II on the trip. In a brief conversation with his company’s head of security, Ralph Yarby, we learn that the car was purchased after D.J. earned his first $1 million. His first stop is the airport, where he picks up his grandchildren Elizabeth and Rodney who are to accompany D.J. on his trip to Seattle.
Traveling north from San Francisco, the trio detour to Redwood National Park where D.J. has endowed a grove of Redwood trees. There they encounter a gnome called Jasper who has “a terrible problem”. They also are introduced to Jasper’s 943-year-old grandfather Knobby who, like D.J., is passionate and short-tempered. Jasper’s “terrible problem” is that Knobby is suffering from a sickness called “fading”, or becoming semi-transparent. D.J. diagnoses this as Knobby’s losing the will to live. The reason for this “fading” is that Knobby fears that he and Jasper are the last two of their Gnome kind, and Knobby wants Jasper to find a bride before Knobby dies.
Knobby harbors immense hatred for humans because of the human’s logging damage to the forests and the livelihood of gnomes. D.J. Mulrooney is startled when Knobby exclaims that the worst loggers were “Mulrooney’s Marauders”. But the gnomes agree to go along with the trio and seek other gnomes. As they leave together, the children rename the Rolls-Royce “the Gnome-Mobile”.
Jasper and his grandfather are kidnapped by Horatio Quaxton, a freak show owner, while D.J. is committed to an asylum by Yarby, who has heard about the gnomes and deems his boss insane. Rodney and Elizabeth rescue D.J., rescue Jasper from Quaxton, and then set out to find Knobby.
They arrive in the woods to find Knobby delighted with the presence of a thriving community of gnomes. Jasper is recognized by Rufus the Gnome King as “the eligible gnome” to a large number of young females of his race, who compete in a contest to determine which one will marry him. He is smitten with one lovely, timid girl-gnome named Violet and they end up together. D.J. gives as a wedding present the rights to the 50,000 acres of forest that were to be sold for logging, which become a haven for the gnomes.
Songs: Richard and Robert Sherman wrote the title song
Cast: Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice return as Rodney and Elizabeth. 1 They are even credited as “The Mary Poppins children” Norman Grabowski returns as a nurse. Ed Wynn returns for his final role as Rufus.
Walter Brennan as D.J. Mulrooney and Knobby. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1936, 1938, and 1940. 2 Come and Get It, Kentucky, and The Westerner His many films include Wedding Night, Bride of Frankenstein, The Three Godfathers, Sargeant York, Pride of the Yankees and Bad Day at Black Rock. He starred in the television series The Real McCoys. Richard Deacon as Ralph Yarby. He is best known for playing supporting roles in television shows such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave It To Beaver, and The Jack Benny Program and films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Birds, and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.
Tom Lowell as Jasper. He appeared in That Darn Cat, The Manchurian Candidate, and Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Sean McClory as Horatio Quaxton. He appeared in The Quiet Man, Them! and voiced the hound in Mary Poppins. He guest starred in many television Westerns including The Californians.
Jerome Cowan as Dr. Ramsey. He appeared in several filns but is probably best remembered for playing Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon and Thomas Mara in Miracle on 34th Street. Charles Lane as Dr. Scoggins. Lane appeared in many films, including You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It’s a Wonderful Life, Riding High, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Gil Lamb as Gas Attendant. He appeared in Bells Are Ringing, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Bye Bye Birdie, Blackbeard’s Ghost, The Shakiest Gun in the West, The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, and The Love Bug. Maudie Prickett as Katie Barrett. She is known for playing Elsie in North by Northwest. She appeared on television in Hazel, The Andy Griffith Show, Myrtle on Mayberry R.F.D., Get Smart, Dragnet and Bewitched.
Critical Reception:
- Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, calling the special effects “fascinating” and reporting that the kids in the audience “got their money’s worth.”
- Howard Thompson of The New York Times described it as “a good-natured but heavy-handed little comedy,” finding that “the action and light-hearted spirit sag under a crisscross jumble of slapstick and broadly handled locomotion that flattens the fun.”
- Film critic Leonard Maltin rates this as one of Disney’s best comedy-fantasy films, and states that it is a “mystery” why the film is not better known. He says it deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed by a new generation, especially younger children.
My take: Unlike Darby O’Gill, the special effects don’t really hold up. Rather than using forced perspective, they used the sodium vapor process to show the little people. I will say I enjoyed the Sadie Hawkins-like finale.
Next Week: Brennan returns with a young Kurt Russell in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band