Jno.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 13

Jno.

(Disney-RKO Radio) HAT Mr. Disney has done with what he’s got (to borrow words from one of the folksy little songs in his latest production) is a question which may, perhaps, divide his admirers. Those who are exclusively interested in Disney the animator and the colourist may feel that seeing So Dear to My Heart is like assisting at the burial of a talent, for the cartoon content of the film is insignificant and could, I think, have been dispensed with entirely-with some benefit to the human story. But it should not be inferred that the film is a negligible effort. No child, I Teel sure, could fail to enjoy it, and. certainly no sensible adult need distrust the soft impact of its gentle sentimentality. As with most of. the _ sentimental stories which undergo a _ Hollywood metamorphosis, the plot is rubbed smooth with use and positively corusyes with clichés-but those who are parents will know that that is how chil_dren like their stories; and it is no doubt Disney’s. skilful touch that makes the sentiment and the nostalgic overtones acceptable to the older and more disillusioned. In So Dear to My Heart Disney has, however, two admirable subjects for the exercise of his skill as an entertainerBobby Driscoll (the child star of The Window), and a mean-hearted black lamb to whom he is devoted. The story can almost be guessed from that alone: the youngster saves the lamb from an early passage to the meatworks and it grows up to be the plague of the neighbourhood. Nobody loves it but the boy, and he nurses an ambition t@ exhibit it at the County Fair. Of course, that costs money, and Bobby has none (he’s an orphan, arid’ Granny, who ain’t no traipsin’ woman, don’t hold with County Fairs and such): But Bobby finds a wild bees’ hive and sells the honey for twenty dollars, Granny_(Beulah Bondi) relents, they go to the fair, the blaék lamb wins a special award, and the film ends in a mist of tear-dimmed Technicolor. Put as briefly as) that it all sounds pretty hackneyed, but the merit of Disney’s performance is that somehow or ‘other he escapes cheapness. Undoubtedly he is immensely helped by ‘the natural charm oa photogenic of Bobby Driscoll ‘and his lamb, and by some pleasant ‘singing from Burl Ives ("Lavender’s Blue" in particular), but, reverting to the theme-song, what he has done with what he’s got does do him credit. | " ' Of course, all that leaves unanswered the larger question, what is Disney the cartoonist doing with what he’s got? So Dear to My Heart, with its complete divorce of the animated and "live" sequences does look like a retreat, or an admission of the animator’s, limitations, but it is as well to bear in. mind ‘the high cost of full-length cattoons-and, the need for Disney (who is,now very

big business) to finance them by excursions into other fields. That he is cccasionally tempted into by-paths is no indication that he has lost his way.