Summer Magic

Nostalgia can be a funny thing. While thinking back to one’s youth, our natural tendency is to recall things somewhat more fondly than life really played out. We #ChildrenOfThe90z can already attest to this - witness the bewildering fondness for (and plans to sequelize) 1996's Space Jam. Stranger still is that most interesting of phenomena, cultural nostalgia. As Walt Disney Productions grew beyond the creation of animated shorts and features, the manufacturing of a shared sense of nostalgia became central to its creative output. A stroll down the Main Streets of either Disneyland or The Magic Kingdom will surely make guests feel a certain warm familiarity; this is despite the fact that the quaint turn-of-the-20th-century small town setting is several generations removed from their own experience. A prime filmic example of this "Disneyfied Americana" can be seen in 1963’s Summer Magic.

It's Britney Hayley, bitch...

Based on the 1911 novel Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin, Summer Magic tells the story of a recently destitute family from Boston that moves to the small town of Beulah, Maine, taking up residence in an uninhabited home at the insistence of its jolly caretaker, Osh Popham (played by Burl Ives.) Looking over a synopsis of the original novel, it’s clear that screenwriter Sally Benson and director James Neilson (who’d directed the previous year’s Bon Voyage! and would go on to helm The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin) cherry-picked only certain elements from the story. The central conceit of the once well-off widow and her children was no doubt introduced in order to cast Hayley Mills as eldest child Nancy, passing her English accent off as upper-crust Bostonian.

Okay grups - get off'a my truck, or bonk on the head!

Mills, in the fourth of her six film roles for Disney (and only three years after Pollyanna,) is already maturing into a young woman. Appearing very much more like an older adolescent rather than a child, the frilly dresses and oversized hair-bows required for the role are starting to look a bit silly on her. Playing the family’s matriarch, Margaret, is Disney mainstay Dorothy McGuire, exuding warmth and kindness to such a degree that one begins to wonder why she never becomes cross with any of her children (even when they act like total turds.) Young Eddie Hodges (star of Michael Curtiz’ 1960 adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) plays middle-child Gilly with a believable smirk, while the youngest Carey son, Peter, is portrayed by little Jimmy Mathers (brother of Leave It To Beaver’s Jerry.) Mathers, unfortunately, is one of the worst child actors I’ve yet encountered, blaring out every line of dialogue in the same shrill monotone regardless of what sentiment he’s supposed to be emoting.

Wilby Daniels sneaks into another Disney production...

Crashing the film halfway through is Gidget Goes Hawaiian actress Deborah Walley as snooty cousin Julia. Her stay with the just-settled family gives the thus-far wistful film a needed shot in the arm; her over-the-top snobbery and ultra-delicate temperament play well against the increasingly rural Carey clan. Her first night sees Nancy and Gilly teasing their uptight relative about the supposed “dangerous wild animals” that stalk the homestead by night. Wackiness soon ensues when young Peter’s pet Sheepdog jumps into Julia's bed, interrupting her restless sleep and sending the hysterical young lady into fits of screaming sobs.


Hmm ... I see puberty hasn't quite reached you yet, dear.

The big gooey center of the cast is the velvet-voiced “Holly Jolly Christmas” crooner Burl Ives, playing town optimist Osh Popham (whose name sounds like something you'd order at Krispy Kreme.) Acting as a reassuring friend to the wayward Careys, Popham dedicates himself to helping them fix up the yellow house they’ve settled in, free of charge. This comes much to the chagrin of his negative-nelly wife, played with welcomed sick-and-tired snark by Una Merkel, making her second appearance with Hayley Mills following her role as housemaid Verbena in The Parent Trap. Ives, looking very much like the goateed teddy bear he plays, naturally performs a pair of the movies best songs, including the classics “Ugly Bug Ball” and “On The Front Porch” (which I’ll return to shortly.) “Ugly Bug Ball,” which accompanies a scene of Osh and Peter playing with a caterpillar (a scene which serves no purpose beyond providing a setting for this song,) is a memorable Disney favorite. It should be mentioned, though, that the song’s instrumentation (which I assume is non-diegetic within the story) does not fit the turn-of-the-century setting at all; it’s rhythmic guitars and Hammond organ sounding more like an early ’60s rave-up than something from “ragtime.”


You like gladiator movies, Petie boy?

Speaking of music, #DisneyLegends Robert and Richard Sherman provide the film’s seven songs. I’d personally rank this film somewhere in the middle of the Sherman brother’s work for Disney - never reaching the heights of Mary Poppins, but certainly better than the dreck they had to scrape up for The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. Early in the film, I was worried that I’d be in for another avalanche of mediocre Sherman tunes when the cast belted out the film’s first pair of songs (the utterly-forgettable “Flitterin’” and “Beautiful Beulah”) in less than ten minutes, before the Careys had even moved out of their Boston home. Luckily, the remaining five numbers were more evenly spaced out. The film's title song, performed by Dorothy McGuire, is sung over a lovely montage of images that recall the heady nostalgia of summer (a boat floating amongst lily-pads in a pond, fireflies at twilight, etc.) This soon gives way to an extended instrumental rendition accompanied by a somewhat random collection of scenes depicting animals in the woods, almost like they needed to use up some extra True-Life Adventures footage.

How the hell are we all siblings!?

The next song takes us back to the lower end of the barrel, as Gilly and Nancy make up a song about cousin Julia called “Pink of Perfection.” The faces Hodges and Mills pull while singing (scrunching their brows to “try and think up” rhyming insults) don’t do this middling ditty any favors. Likewise, the catchy “Femininity” (sung by Mills and Walley’s characters as they work to “gussy up” a neighbor girl,) is sung by the actors as if it were meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Having heard the song on a handful of Disney music compilations before, I had always assumed that it was meant as a mockery of old-fashioned "beau-landing" attitudes. In context, however, the song is unfortunately played as a straight-up anthem to kowtowing.

No, no dear - this is how to do the Macarena...

By far the best song in the movie, and one of the best in Disney’s live-action canon, is the Burl Ives-fronted “On the Front Porch.” The scene in which the song is performed sees most of the film’s main cast gathered on said porch - some sitting back in rocking chairs, others lounging on the steps - slowly joining in the chorus as the sunset gives way to a warm summer evening. That the momentum of the film comes to a halt here is anything but detrimental; far from it, actually. This single sequence feels like the films locus, as if it were the reason for whole production to exist. There's something almost hypnotic about the effect this sequence has; the nearly perfect tone struck between the languid visuals, the song’s vivid lyrics, and Ives and company’s tranquil vocals that most closely captures the “summer magic” of the film’s title - that just out-of-reach sense-memory that exists in the back of one’s mind. I would argue that, despite the film’s relative obscurity to most audiences, this solitary scene represents the epicenter of Disney’s entire non-animated output. Mention of the phrase “Disneyesque” brings about an imagined scene that closely resembles the one which actually exists here - of friends and family sitting upon an old porch in some vague point in America's past, singing along together in dwindling summer twilight.


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Though quite an entertaining film, Summer Magic is naturally not without flaws. Beyond the strange use of True-Life Adventure-style nature footage and handful of forgettable songs, there’s also the matter of the film’s conclusion - or rather the lack thereof. As the film flits toward it’s end, the long-absent owner of the Carey’s adopted home, Tom Hamilton (bland n’ handsome Peter Brown,) returns to town. It seems that lovable old Osh had acted without Mr. Hamilton’s consent in renting his house out free-of-charge. Hamilton discreetly crashes the Carey’s big Fall party, and confronts Nancy. Just when it looks like the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan, Hamilton asks her to dance, apparently taking a fancy to her. And that’s it - the camera pans back over the house, and it’s over. We are not given any clue as to what happens next, or if anyone besides Osh and Nancy are to learn the truth. What’s most frustrating about this is not that the film ends without a real conclusion (like Saludos Amigos, which stopped just when it started to get good,) but that the studio apparently felt that this actually was a conclusion. Handsome owner has shown up and is hot for Haley: done! Well, we know nothing about this hunk. What are his intentions? Does he plan to marry Nancy and run away with her? Does he think he automatically owns anything (or anyone) residing in the house? Is he going to have a fling with Nancy and then evict her family?

O wondered why her hands were tied, as she was ready to obey her lover...

While Summer Magic is one of Disney’s lesser-known movies, it’s also one of their benchmarks - the kind of movie one feels like they’ve seen at some point, whether or not that’s actually the case. In spite of its flaws, all the elements come together well in creating a fun and nostalgic film that sits amongst that rare and valuable collection of Disney treasures (So Dear To My Heart and Main Street USA among them) that defines Walt Disney’s own vision of Americana.