CHILDREN'S CORNER

I 1So Dear To My Heart—The Secret Garden—Diamond City—The Walking Hills
CHILDHOOD rears its winsome
head in the West End cinema this week with Walt Disney and Margaret O'Brien heading the two main teams. It would just happen when most of the children are now back at school but Christmas releases may include these two attractive films—So Dear to My Heart (NEW GALLERY) and The Secret Garden (EMPIRE). Two of the other new films could safely be seen by children in spite of The Walking Hills (LONDON PAVILION) having an " A " certificate. It really contains nothing worse than two men fighting with spades and must establish a record in there being only one revolver among a lot of tough looking guys who go out hacking the Mexican sand dunes to pieces in search of a buried waggon full of gold. Murderous implements though spades may be, they are preferable to barking guns any day. The British picture Diamond City (LEIChSlEft SQUARE THEATRE)--a southern to answer America's westerns—has a "1_1" certificate which gives it the official " all clear " to children. Adults may find this South African pioneering adventure rather a case of " westerns and water ", for it follows the Hollywood formula almost slavishly—dialogue, taproom battles and all, with David Farrar as a too complacent " hero", and Mervyn Johns wasted in the role of a totally ineffective missionary. Even the children may find this a trifle tame after the noise, blood and smoke of the American variety.
THE MIXTURE HAS ITS POINTS Admirers of Walt Disney, among whose company I number myself, are apt to look back nostalgically to the days when he produced those shorter. cartoons (not necessarily comic) which he later abandoned in favour of the full length feature— like Snow White and Barnbi. ()limbo, which has never been excelled, was more of a " long short ". More recently, Mr. Disney has taken to mixing his cartoons with living people like Uncle Remus and the current production So Dear to My Heart. This new departure has thrown his followers into two sharply divided camps—some like the new experiment, others are indignant at being deprived of 90
minutes' unadulterated cartooning. For my own part I prefer the mixture with a few humans thrown in. Ninety or more minutes of moving drawings. no matter how skilfully presented. are trying on the eyes and the story has to be pretty strong to sustain interest during all that time. No one knows this better than Walt Disney himself who splits his full feature into four (or more) completely unconnected episodes. The whole thing tied up with movie finance. When Walt Disney was over here towards the end of the war he told me that he loses money on the short feature. He has a fantastically large staff of artists and technicians and their salary list is astronomical. If Disney has made money it has always been on the by products — toys, picture books, fashioned after the characters he creates.
When you talk to Walt Disney you realise that he is an artist and, even rarer, an idealist. His work for the cinema has always been entirely constructive. He has never played down to the pit nor up to the gallery —and no one has ever been able to duplicate his work.
In So Dear to My Heart there is perhaps less originality than in any previous Disney. In the lonely little boy (played. oh, so efficiently by Bobby Driscoll) who adopts a black Iamb one remembers instantly The Yearling. In the exhibition at the country fair, reminiscences of State Fair conic crowding in. But a firm hold is kept on the sentimental issues. The big emotional moment is handed to Beulah Bondi —that great American actress—and it is in entirely safe hands.
In the cartoon black lamb we can greet another lovely creation by
Disney. As usual the music is a delight and it is good to hear Lavender Blue that has been so woefully crooned at us over the air for these many months, sung straight and firm by pudding-faced Burl Ives without a single sob.
Two Catholic children — big money earners in the MGM studios — Margaret O'Brien and Dean Stockwell— do brilliant work in The Secret Garden. along with Yorkshire-born Brian Roper who was brought over to Hollywood specially to play the part of a Yorkshire lad in this somewhat unreal story by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Not that the children come anywhere near the author's Little Lord Fauntleroy. Indeed, as she makes two of them almost problem types, they may have been a kind of reaction to the little lord.
Those whose childhood reading did not include Mrs. Burnett may like to know that the secret garden had been shut tip and allowed to re vert to the savage state because a tree had fallen and killed the wife of the owner. But all around blooms one of the stately homes of England with tailored trees and turrets. Into the gloomy mansion is introduced Margaret, orphaned in India—a child of character and full of class prejudice. Unearthly wails sweep round the mansion—and these are emitted by second problem child— son of the house who is bedand
tantrum-ridden. Only the country lad—Brian—is sane and he restores the other two to healthy equilibrium.
Dramatic episode deserving special mention is the sudden switch over from black and white to technicolor when the secret garden, under the skilful hands of Brian—comes back into its own.
Adults in the cast include such veterans as Herbert Marshall and Gladys Cooper and there is a joyful bit of character work by Elsa Lancheater as a housemaid.
I had a talk to Brian Roper after the Press show.He is back in England to play in the second Mrs. Miniver film with Walter Pidgeon and Greer Gerson. He, along with other MGM juveniles, had to do three hours' schooling a day at the studio. From him I learned Margaret is not too keen on school and gets out of it when she can; Dean Stockwell is a " terrifically keen Catholic—he always seems to be going to church"; even Elizabeth Taylor has had to go to school till she was 18.