The Daily Herald from Provo, Utah • 33

Monday, September 27, 1971 THE HERALD, Provo, Utah TV 11 edknobs and Broomsticks f. i I eafures Wonderland ,1 eJ 7 First it was Mary Poppins, the magical nanny of Walt Disney's EupercalifragUisticexpialidocios movie. Now it is Eglantine Price, student witch and heroine of Walt Disney Productions' bewitching mucial fantasy, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," to be released in November. Like Miss Poppins, Miss Price is a wonder worker. As played by Angela Lansbury, she rides broomsticks, Dies to storybook lands in a handsome brass bed, casts spells left and right, and ultimately calls forth a ghostly army of medieval armor.

"We took the character from a book by Mary Norton," says producer Bill Walsh, who co-produced "Mary Poppins" with Disney. "During World War II there were all kinds of strange happenings in England that someone like Miss Price might have had a hand or a broomstick in. "So we put our imaginations to work and wound up with Bedknobs." Walsh reassembled most of his team from "Mary Poppins" including the Academy Award winning songwriters Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, screenwriter Don DaGradi and director Robert Stevenson.

Then, fcr good measure, he recruited the studio's versatile Ward Kimball as animation director. Getting a bed to fly is one thing. Sailing it under water is another. Tricky business either way, but all in a year's work for Ward Kimball and his cabal of master magicians at Walt Disney studio. Their nifities bit of hocus pocus so far highlights "Bedknobs and a musical fantasy starring Angela 4 -J 'JPv-i Lansbury an apprentice witch, premiering in London on Oct.

7 and opening throughout the United States in November. At one point in the screenplay Miss Lansbury, David Tomlinson, end three British tots make a fanciful flight in a magic bed to the storybook isle of Naboombu, where cartoon animals reign. The bed splashes down in Naboombu lagoon, and before the travellers reach land they are treated to an undersea tour by a cigar-smoking cod. Miss Lansbury and Tomlinson perform a submarine dance to the rippling rhythm of a fish quartet. On the jungle island they meet a lion king who is mad for soccer.

Their departure is delayed while Tomlinson referees a game played by a hodgepodge of animals: the defensive True Blues and the offensive very offensive Dirty Yellows. "From that brief outline," said Ward Kimball, animation director of the production, "we created a 22-minute comedy sequence which cost close to a million dollars and took a year to complete." The result is a masterpieceof compressed comedy (Kimball and his artists packed 130 gags into the soccer game alone) and the most triumphant blend of live action and animation yet seen on film. Human pciors and cartoon characters mingle freely, running into, over, and around each other so smoothly that it is impossible to say where "reality" stops and make-believe begins. Kimball joined Walt Disney's animation department in 1934. A bizarre dresser who anticipated today's spaced out styles 40 years ago, he wore a three-quarter length Fe Manchu robe while discussing the early days and ways of mixing live action with animation.

Jose Carioca, and a cocky rooster named Panchiot danced and clowned with Latin America's top entertainers in "The Three Caballeros." Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear shared the live-action adventures of James Baskett, Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten In "Song of the South," a classic based on the Uncle Remus tales to be released again in 1972. Donald Duck, Jose Carioca and an Aracuan bird cavorted with organist Ethel Smith in "Melody Time." "And that was that until 1964," Kimball said. 'Then came 'Mary Poppins." JuLe Andrews and Dick Van Dyke's jolly holiday among cartoon characters, woodland creatures and dancing penguins set a new high for merging live action with animation. That was the pinnacle until "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." "The technique Is really quite simple once you get the hang of it," Kimball explained. "You photograph the live action with a masked-off camera, then you fill in the masked-off area with animation.

Then you put them together. Presto There you have it live cction and animation combined! 'Of course I might hafve "Of course I might have left out a couple of details," Kimball added. Walt Disney "Bedknobs and Broomstikcs," starring Angela Lansbury, David Tomlinson, Roddy Mc-Dowal and Sam Jaf fe, has been selected as the 1971 Christmas attraction at Radio City Music Hall (in New York City), announcement was made today by James F. Gould, president and managing director of the Music Hall and Irving H. Lud-wig, president of Buena Vista Distribution Company.

"Bedknobs and Broomsticks" is a live-action-animation ui- ALUMINUM STORM DOORS 1-332 thick stK storing window ith 3 lift interlocking inserts. Sizes 32" I' Righ or left swing, and 36" S' Right or left swing. List price 36.57 3 musical about an amateur "Walt pioneered the technique 1f tk If in the twenties," Kimball said, witch, a loveabla humbug and "He made some short subjects three Cockney waifs who 111 td, 1 KNOWN AND LOVED is Alice surrounded by her cartoon friends; Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins" and Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten In "Song of the South. The new creation, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, will fast gain friends, too. CAULKING journey into a world of fantasy aboard a flying four-poster bed.

The Technicolor film will be accompanied on the great stage by the Music Hall's famed two-part Christmas stage presentation. The first part will be the 39th consecutive presentation of "The Nativity." The pageant, which tells the story of the first Christmas, features a cast of more than 100 artists and a troupe of live animals. called 'Alice in Cartoonland' about a little girl in a fantasy world of cartoon creations. "Eventually, Walt had to abandon the series. But he revived the technique briefly in 1940 to let Mickey Mouse upstage Leopold Stokowski in As time went on Disney produced three more films combining cartoon characters with live action.

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