Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Bedknobs and Broomsticks a brilliant and bombastic ride
Seven years on from the huge success of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964), which turned out to be the biggest hit in the studio’s history, both critically and financially, the studio committed to a major $20 million production it hoped would emulate Poppins’ popularity.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a thoroughly entertaining fantasy combining live-action with animation.
It is based on two books,
The Magic Bedknob (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947), by English children’s author Mary Norton.
Like most of the Disney films at the time, Bedknobs and Broomsticks opens with a brightly inventive title sequence where the main titles are superimposed over a medieval tapestry.
The story is set in 1940, during the Second World War, and sees an eccentric ladylike spinster, Eglantine Price, become an apprentice witch, with the aim of finding a magic formula that will help England win the war against Nazi Germany.
With the help of three London children she takes in to save from the blitz, she intends to find this formula.
First, she seeks out her amusing but bogus professor of witchcraft, Emelius Brown, and then ventures into Portobello Road in search of the rare formula.
Following a series of adventures flying on a brass bed by invoking a magic travelling spell, they finally discover the spell of substitutionary locomotion that brings inanimate objects to life.
Miss Price uses the spell to raise a ghostly medieval Scottish and English army from the local museum that causes an overwhelming defeat on a band of invading German commandos.
In the hope of cementing the connection of the movie with Mary Poppins, the studio approached Julie Andrews to play Eglantine Price.
She turned it down but later changed her mind and contacted producer-writer
Bill Walsh, who advised her that Angela Lansbury had already been cast in the plum role; a wise choice because the character called for a more mature actress.
In retaining the Britishness
of the story, David Tomlinson, who played the father in Poppins, was cast as Professor Emelius Brown.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is full of ingenious visual ideas, seamlessly blending live actors with superb animation.
This technique is achieved with Disney’s sodium vapour, or yellow screen process, where the live-action sequences are filmed in front of a huge yellow screen.
This footage is then combined with the animation in an optical printer to create the final composite illusion.
In a press interview to promote the release of the movie in 1971, veteran animator Ward Kimball, who was director of animation on the movie, explained his craft: “In the completed film the live actors arrive on a jungle island in search of the magic formula and they meet a lion king who is
mad for soccer.
“Their departure is delayed while David Tomlinson referees a game played by a hodgepodge of animated animals; the defensive True Blues and the offensive-very offensive Dirty Yellows.
“From that brief outline, we created a 22-minute sequence that cost close to a million dollars and took a year to complete.”
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
is a live-action animated tourde-force.
Variety said: “What it may lack in the charm of Mary Poppins it more than measures in inventiveness.
“Indeed, it is doubtful if special effects or animation have ever been bettered or used to greater advantage.”
The classic Disney film went on to win an Academy Award in 1972 for best special visual effects.
Shortly before his death in December 1966, Walt Disney told his creative team of animators, “keep up the good work fellows”, followed by a wink.
At the time Disney left behind a solid management team steeped in the studio’s famous tradition.
And Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a movie Disney would have approved and been proud of.