Savage Sam | |
---|---|
Directed by | Norman Tokar |
Written by |
|
Based on | Savage Sam by Fred Gipson |
Produced by | Bill Anderson (co-producer) |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Edward Colman |
Edited by | Grant K. Smith |
Music by | Oliver Wallace |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Buena Vista Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 103 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $3,000,000 (U.S./Canada) [1] |
Savage Sam is a 1963 American Western film sequel to Old Yeller based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Fred Gipson. Norman Tokar directed the live-action film, which was released by Walt Disney Productions on June 1, 1963. It did not enjoy the success of the original. [2]
In 1870, 18-year-old Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk) is left in charge of his precocious 12-year-old brother, Arliss (Kevin Corcoran), on the family farm in Southwest Texas, while their parents visit an ailing grandmother. While Arliss and his dog, Savage Sam, are tracking a bobcat, Travis is warned by Bud Searcy (Jeff York) that renegade Apaches are in the area. When Travis joins Bud's 17-year-old granddaughter, Lisbeth (Marta Kristen), in a search for Arliss, all three are captured by a band of Apaches led by a Comanche. The boys' Uncle Beck Coates (Brian Keith) witnesses the scene and manages to wound the Indian leader, but Beck's horse is shot by one of the braves, allowing the Comanche and his followers to escape with the captives. Beck alerts the U. S. Cavalry, but the Indians split into three groups and ride for the hills; in the confusion, Travis escapes but is knocked unconscious and left to die. Beck and his posse of five find Travis and his dog, set out in pursuit of the other captives, and eventually find the Indians in a valley fighting over Lisbeth. Although posse member Pack Underwood (Royal Dano), bent on revenge for the massacre of his family, fires a shot that alerts the Indians to their planned ambush, the youngsters are saved and the renegades captured.
Walt Disney bought the film rights to the novel in September 1961, prior to its publication in February 1962. The price was $25,000. [3]
Gipson was then hired to write the screenplay. He started in October at $1,250 a week. [4] Gipson was an alcoholic by this time and he was frequently incapacitated by rages. [5]
On June 14, 1962, Mike Gipson, Fred Gipson's son, found the Gipson family dog, the inspiration for Savage Sam, chained and clubbed to death in a shed behind the new family home. The next day, Mike returned to university in shock, and committed suicide that weekend. Gipson's wife would leave him a month after the premiere of Savage Sam. [6]
It was one of the first films from director Norman Tokar. Walt Disney said: "I got him from TV. I like young talent. When people get to be institutions, they direct pictures with their left hand and do something else with their right". [7]
Pat Hogan appears as tribesman Broken Nose. Dean Fredericks, formerly Steve Canyon on NBC, played a Comanche chief in this film.
Filming started August 6, 1962. [8] It was mostly shot around the San Fernando Valley. [9]
The film received poor reviews and fell short of box office expectations, paling in comparison with Old Yeller. According to Gipson's biographer, "criticized as clichéd and overdirected, the production was especially faulted for inconsistency with Gipson's tone". [10]
The Washington Post called it a "dogged, listless effort". [11] Los Angeles Times called it "action melodrama with a formula plot". [12] The Chicago Tribune said "the members of the cast are all capable enough, but they are all handicapped by a lurid plot which looks like it was made up by all the action scenes in a bunch of old television scripts". [13]
Annette Joanne Funicello was an American actress and singer. Funicello began her professional career as a child performer at the age of twelve. She was one of the most popular Mouseketeers on the original Mickey Mouse Club. In her teenage years, she recorded under the name Annette, and had a successful career as a pop singer. Her most notable singles are "O Dio Mio", "First Name Initial", "Tall Paul", and "Pineapple Princess". During the mid-1960s, she established herself as a film actress, popularizing the successful "Beach Party" genre alongside co-star Frankie Avalon.
Old Yeller is a 1956 children's novel written by Fred Gipson and illustrated by Carl Burger. It received a Newbery Honor in 1957. The title is taken from the name of the yellow dog who is the center of the book's story. In 1957, Walt Disney released a film adaptation starring Tommy Kirk, Fess Parker, Dorothy McGuire, Kevin Corcoran, Jeff York, and Beverly Washburn.
The Shaggy Dog is a 1959 American fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and loosely based on the 1923 novel The Hound of Florence by Felix Salten. Directed by Charles Barton from a screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Bill Walsh, the film stars Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk, Jean Hagen, Kevin Corcoran, Tim Considine, Roberta Shore, and Annette Funicello. The film follows a teenage boy named Wilby Daniels who, by the power of an enchanted ring of the Borgias, is transformed into a shaggy Old English Sheepdog.
Thomas Lee Kirk was an American actor, best known for his performances in films made by Walt Disney Studios such as Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, The Absent-Minded Professor, and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as well as the beach-party films of the mid-1960s. He frequently appeared as a love interest for Annette Funicello or as part of a family with Kevin Corcoran as his younger brother and Fred MacMurray as his father.
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones is a 1964 American science-fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. The film stars Tommy Kirk as a college student who experiments with mindreading and hypnotism, leading to incidents with a local judge. Annette Funicello plays his girlfriend and sings the film's title song, with Leon Ames, Stuart Erwin, Alan Hewitt, Connie Gilchrist and Dallas McKennon in the film's supporting cast.
Old Yeller is a 1957 American Western drama film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney. It stars Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker, with Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran. It is about a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas. The film is based upon the 1956 novel of the same name by Fred Gipson. Gipson also co-wrote the screenplay along with William Tunberg.
Frederick Benjamin "Fred" Gipson was an American writer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the 1956 novel Old Yeller, which became a popular 1957 Walt Disney film. Gipson was born on a farm near Mason in the Texas Hill Country, the son of Beck Gipson and Emma Deishler. After working at a variety of farming and ranching jobs, he enrolled in 1933 at the University of Texas at Austin. There he wrote for the Daily Texan and The Ranger, but he left school before graduating to become a newspaper journalist.
Royal Edward Dano Sr. was an American actor. In a career spanning 46 years, he was perhaps best known for playing cowboys, villains, and Abraham Lincoln. Dano also provided the voice of the Audio-Animatronic Lincoln for Walt Disney's Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction at the 1964 World's Fair, as well as Lincoln's voice at the "Hall of Presidents" attraction at Disney's Magic Kingdom in 1971.
Jerome Courtland was an American actor, director and producer. He acted in films in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and in television in the 1950s and 1960s. Courtland also appeared on Broadway in the musical Flahooley in the early 1950s. He directed and produced television series in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He served in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Norman Tokar was an American director, actor and occasionally writer and producer of serial television and feature films, who directed many of the early episodes of Leave it to Beaver, and found his greatest success directing over a dozen films for Walt Disney Productions, spanning the 1950s to the 1970s.
Kevin Anthony "Moochie" Corcoran was an American child actor, director and producer. He appeared in numerous Disney projects between 1957 and 1963, leading him to be honored as a Disney Legend in 2006. His nickname, Moochie, established him as an irrepressible character in film.
Jeff York, aka Granville Owen, was an American film and television actor who began his career in the late 1930s using his given name, Granville Owen Scofield. He was also sometimes credited as Jeff Yorke. He died in 1995, at age 83.
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Moon Pilot is a 1962 American Technicolor science fiction comedy film from Walt Disney Productions, released through Buena Vista Distribution, directed by James Neilson, and starring Tom Tryon, Brian Keith, Edmond O'Brien, Dany Saval, and Tommy Kirk. The film is based on Robert Buckner's 1960 novel Starfire, and reflects Disney's interest in America's space program during John F. Kennedy's presidential era in the early 1960s.
Bon Voyage! is a 1962 American comedy film directed by James Neilson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It stars Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman, Deborah Walley, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran as the Willard family on a European holiday.
Hound-Dog Man is a 1959 American musical comedy drama film directed by Don Siegel, based on the 1947 novel by Fred Gipson, and starring Fabian, Carol Lynley, and Stuart Whitman.
Little Arliss (1978) is the third book centered on the Coates family of frontier Texas by Fred Gipson. It follows Old Yeller (1956) and Savage Sam (1962), and focuses on Little Arliss, the youngest member of the family. Like the first two novels, it is told in the first person, this time by Arliss, instead of Travis.
Savage Sam is a 1962 children's novel written by Fred Gipson, his second book concerning the Coates family of frontier Texas in the late 1860s. It is a sequel to 1956's Old Yeller. It was inspired by the story of former Apache captive Herman Lehmann, whom Gipson had seen give an exhibition when he was a child. It was adapted into a motion picture of the same name.
"Escapade in Florence" is a two-part episode of the The Magical World of Disney television show which was released theatrically in some countries. Walt Disney described it as a "two-part teenage comedy adventure" which was "international in flavor". The show first aired on September 30 and October 7, 1962, and was repeated in June 1963 and June 1969.
The Desert Horseman is a 1946 American Western film directed by Ray Nazarro and written by Sherman L. Lowe. The film stars Charles Starrett, Adele Roberts, Walt Shrum and Smiley Burnette. The film was released on July 11, 1946, by Columbia Pictures.