| Bedknobs and Broomsticks | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Robert Stevenson |
| Produced by | Bill Walsh |
| Written by | Novel Mary Norton Screenplay Bill Walsh Don DaGradi Animation Ralph Wright Ted Berman Pete Young |
| Starring | Angela Lansbury David Tomlinson Ian Weighill Cindy O'Callaghan Roy Snart |
| Music by | Richard M. Sherman Robert B. Sherman Irwin Kostal |
| Distributed by | Walt Disney Pictures Buena Vista Distribution |
| Release date(s) | United Kingdom October 7, 1971 United States December 13, 1971 |
| Running time | Theatrical cut 117 minutes Director's cut 139 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 |
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions which combines live action and animation and was released in North America on December 13, 1971. It is based upon the books The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons and Bonfires and Broomsticks by Mary Norton, and stars Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson.
The film is frequently compared to Mary Poppins (1964): combining live action and animation and partly set in the streets of London. It shares some of the cast from Mary Poppins, namely Tomlinson, supporting actor Reginald Owen (in his last film role), a similar filmcrew, songwriters the Sherman Brothers, director Robert Stevenson, art director Peter Ellenshaw, and music director Irwin Kostal.[1][2]
According to film critic Leonard Maltin's book "Disney Films," Leslie Caron, Lynn Redgrave, Judy Carne, and Julie Andrews were all considered for the role of Eglantine Price before the Disney studio decided on Angela Lansbury. David Tomlinson replaced Ron Moody as Emelius Brown due to Moody's busy schedule in England.
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In this musical, an apprentice witch, three Cockney war evacuees, and an illusionist conman travel on a magic bed across war-torn England and beyond, encountering various inhabitants of London, football-playing cartoon animals, and Nazi invaders.
In 1940, with the young men away at World War II, Dorset's only defence is the elderly Home Guard. Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) is a spinster taking a witchcraft correspondence course in the hope of somehow helping the war effort. She is serious, practical and firm. To her annoyance, she is assigned the care of three young siblings evacuated from the London Blitz bombings (she tries to refuse, but due to a government order, she is forced to take the children in). The three, Charlie (Ian Weighill), Carrie (Cindy O'Callaghan) and Paul Rawlins (Roy Snart), discover her witchcraft and Charlie blackmails her. In exchange for their silence, Miss Price casts a spell on a bedknob which Paul pulled off Miss Price's late father's brass bed. The bed can now travel anywhere that Paul tells it.
Miss Price, searching for the substitutiary locomotion spell which makes inanimate objects move of their own accord, uses the flying bed to travel with the children to London in search of Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson), the putative headmaster of the Emilius Brown Correspondence College of Witchcraft. He is revealed as a conman who inadvertently used spells from a book of a real magician, Astoroth. Mr. Browne takes them to "his" town house, which is actually someone else's mansion in an abandoned part of bombed-out London, from whose nursery Paul takes a children's picture book about the Lost Isle of Naboombu.
In possession of half of Astoroth's spellbook, the group travels to Portobello Road's marketplace to seek the other half, where an extensive multicultural dance sequence takes place. A spiv (petty criminal) named Swinburne (Bruce Forsyth) overhears them looking through bookstalls. He later approaches them and takes them at knifepoint to a character called the Bookman (Sam Jaffe), who has the latter half of the book. The completed text tells the legend of the spell but does not give the magic words, which are engraved on a medallion formerly owned by Astoroth. The wizard had used his magic to imbue animals with anthropomorphism but the animals killed Astoroth, stole many of his magical spells and items, and escaped to the Isle of Naboombu, which is described in the children's book which Paul is still carrying. The Bookman tries to grab Paul's book, but they escape on the bed to the mystical island.
They land in the nearby lagoon and find a cartoon realm where fish can talk, and they can breathe underwater. Miss Price and Mr. Browne win first prize in an underwater dance contest, but a giant fishhook pulls the bed and the humans out of the water. An anthropomorphic sailor bear pulls the bed to shore and the group persuade him to take them to see the king, a lion - (King Leonidas) - who is looking for a referee for the royal football match. The king wears a medallion: the Star of Astoroth, which has the words to the sought-after spell engraved upon it. Mr. Browne, claiming to have captained Tottenham Hotspur, referees the game, sustaining substantial comic damage from the animals, and - using what he refers to as the "gypsy switch" - steals the Star of Astoroth from around the king's neck, replacing it with his referee's whistle.
The group use the bed to return home, only to discover that the Star cannot leave the cartoon world; the medallion has vanished from Mr. Browne's pocket. Paul reveals that the words of the spell have been in his nursery book all along. (The words are "Treguna, Mekoides, Trecorum Satis Dee.") Miss Price attempts the spell, but is unable to control it. Mr. Browne is flustered when the children and a villager begin to treat him as a parent and a partner for Miss Price respectively; he hurriedly leaves for the train station.
During the night, a German raiding party invades Miss Price's house. She and the children are taken to the village armory and museum. Mr. Browne discovers Germans at the train station, cutting telephone wires and engaging in other acts of sabotage. After foiling them, he returns to Miss Price's home. Finding it overrun, he breaks into the workshed and turns himself into a rabbit to evade capture and follows the group to the castle. Having been left alone inside the castle, Miss Price casts the substitutiary locomotion spell on the old uniforms and weapons of the castle. The spell is successful, bringing into life everything on display as medieval Knights, Elizabethan Guards, Cavaliers, Redcoats, Highlanders all march off under the command of Miss Price, routing the Germans invaders in a comic action sequence.
The Germans retreat after detonating charges in Miss Price's workshop. The explosion knocks her from the sky, where she had been directing the magical attack astride a flying broomstick. This breaks the spell, and the army collapses as though deflated. The shed in which she keeps her spells is destroyed. Since Eglantine has a rotten memory, she will no longer be able to do magic although she has few regrets as she has been able to perform some small service to the war effort, and, in any event, she felt that she could never be a "proper witch" because of how she felt about poisoned dragon's liver. Mr. Browne enlists in the British Army, promising to return. As he departs down the road, Charlie complains that they won't have any more fun - to which Paul replies, "Well, still got this, en't I?", pulling out the magical glittering bedknob.
The Children:
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The voices of:
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In the book:
Bedknobs and Broomsticks was originally intended to be a large-scale epic holiday release similar to Mary Poppins, but after its premiere, it was shortened from its two and a half-hour length (while the liner notes on the soundtrack reissue in 2002 claims it was closer to three hours) to a more manageable (to movie theatres) two hours. Along with a minor subplot involving Roddy McDowall's character, three songs were removed entirely, and the central dance number "Portobello Road" was shortened by more than six minutes.
Upon rediscovering the removed song "A Step in the Right Direction" on the original soundtrack album, Disney decided to reconstruct the film's original running length. Most of the film material was found, but some segments of "Portobello Road" had to be reconstructed from work prints with digital re-coloration to match the film quality of the main content. The footage for "A Step in the Right Direction" was never located; as of 2009, it remains lost. A reconstruction of "A Step in the Right Direction", using the original music track linked up to existing production stills, was included on the DVD as an extra to convey an idea of what the lost sequence would have looked like. The edit included several newly discovered songs, including "Nobody's Problems", performed by Lansbury. The number had been cut before the premiere of the film. Lansbury had only made a demo recording, singing with a solo piano because the orchestrations would have been added when the picture was scored. When the song was cut, the orchestrations had not yet been added; therefore, it was finally orchestrated, and put together when it was placed back into the film.
The soundtrack for some of the spoken tracks was unrecoverable. Therefore, Lansbury and McDowall re-dubbed their parts, while other actors made ADR dubs for those who were unavailable. Even though David Tomlinson was still alive when the film was being reconstructed, he was in ill-health, and unavailable to provide ADR for Emelius Browne. Elements of the underscoring were either moved or extended when it was necessary to benefit the new material. The extended version of the film was originally released on laserdisc in 1997, and on DVD in 2001 for the 30th anniversary of the film.
The reconstruction additionally marks the first time the film was presented in stereophonic sound. Although the musical score was recorded in stereo, and the soundtrack album was presented that way, the film was released in mono sound.
A shortened version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks was re-released theatrically on April 13, 1979, omitting all but 2 songs "Portobello Road" and "Beautiful Briny Sea".
A new edition DVD called Bedknobs and Broomsticks: Enchanted Musical Edition was released on September 8, 2009. This new single-disc edition contains a new digitally restored and remastered version of the film, the Sherman Brothers Featurette (available on the old DVD), a new Special Effects documentary and the lost song "A Step in the Right Direction".
The film received five Academy Award nominations and won one.[3]
| Bedknobs and Broomsticks | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack by Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman, and Irwin Kostal | |
| Released | 1971 |
| Label | Buena Vista |
Although the film is in mono sound recording, the songs for the film was recorded in stereo. These songs include:
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Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 film from Walt Disney Pictures, starring Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson.
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   | ''Bedknobs and Broomsticks'' 30th Anniversary Edition DVD Review at UltimateDisney.com - Bedknobs and Broomsticks DVD Review |
| | A contemporary, 1971 review - Bedknobs and Broomsticks :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews |
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