Thursday, December 3, 2020

Rare Treats: Jack & The Beanstalk (1967)

 If you've ever wondered what was the motivation behind Hanna-Barbera's live-action/animated hybrid adaptation of Huckleberry Finn in 1968, you simply go back about a year and a half or so to 1967's musical adaptation of Jack & The Beanstalk. The classic tale had been adapted for the big & small screens before, with a previous TV adaptation headlined by Joel Grey 11 years earlier. Abbott & Costello did one in 1952 for Warner Bros., instead of Universal, when the latter studio couldn't fund the project.

Producer-director-star Gene Kelly had worked with Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera nearly 20 years earlier, when they animated a dance sequence with Jerry Mouse for "Anchors Aweigh". Yes, this is a rarity in that Hanna & Barbera didn't direct this entry.

Young Bobby Riha plays Jack, but his singing voice is dubbed over by Dick Beals (Frankenstein, Jr., Space Kiddettes, etc), whose previous singing experience is mostly Alka-Seltzer commercials. Kelly is Jeremy, a salesman whom Jack befriends in a deal involving a certain set of beans. Other voices include Ted Cassidy (Frankenstein, Jr., ex-The Addams Family), Leo DeLyon (ex-Top Cat), Janet Waldo (with Marni Nixon doing the singing), and Cliff Norton.

I had faint memories of seeing this as a youth, and seeing the Abbott & Costello version got me thinking about this offering.

Coincidentally, this premiered on a Sunday night, either pre-empting or airing in back of Wonderful World of Disney. Bobby Riha would later act & sing in a Disney movie ("The One & Only Original Family Band"). Gene Kelly would later shill for Sylvania when not on the dais with Dean Martin.

Rating: B.

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