“Pollyanna” has become a byword for obnoxious, willfully obtuse sunniness, but Pollyanna herself, at least as portrayed by Hayley Mills in the 1960 Disney film, deserves better. Plenty of that is down to a smart script–also by Swift, the man behind The Parent Trap and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying–which grounds Pollyanna and her “glad game” in a mostly realistic world of small town power tensions and power squabbles, but even more of it is down to Mills, one of the most endearing child stars of all time.
Pollyanna has a simple story. An orphan moves to an unhappy town genteelly (but unofficially) ruled over by her frosty, mannered Aunt Polly (Jane Wyman). Pollyanna spreads good cheer, a bright-side philosophy, and an appreciation for the small pleasures of life, and this helps transform Harrington into a better, happier place.1
Sure, from that, you can understand why it feels axiomatic that this kid would be unbelievably annoying. But Mills gives her an incredible natural warmth and a believable childishness, one that especially comes out–temperamentally so–when she’s interacting with another child, Kevin Corcoran’s Jimmy Bean. Her occasional bursts of bossiness and lip-chewing mulling help sell her as a real child, one who can’t always live up to the aspirations towards the gladness instilled by her minister father. She’s good–brave and empathetic–but she’s not actually a goody two-shoes. She’ll lie rather than snitch, but she’ll let someone twist about a bit before she makes that clear. All of this captures that Pollyanna’s cheerfulness, like her father’s, is a conscious choice, one that it’s sometimes a lot harder to make than others. That makes it a practice, and framing it that way makes it more believable to see others adopting it.
The cast around Mills is also very good, with Agnes Moorehead and Karl Malden probably taking my favorite roles. Moorehead is a hypochondriac who’s become tyrannical in her supposed illness, and while Pollyanna brightens her sickroom life, it’s realizing she’s hurt Pollyanna–that her luxuriating in her prospective death has become too much for this recent orphan to handle–that really changes her. Malden plays the town’s minister, whose fire-and-brimstone sermon was the only thing I remembered about this from my childhood viewing (yes, I was scared of Pollyanna). Reverend Ford isn’t always a hellfire preacher at heart, though: he’s repeatedly coaxed into it by a micromanaging Aunt Polly who encourages him to see the town as a flock in the worst sense, a group to be mistrusted and managed, not celebrated and cared for. Ford gets owned–and transformed–by Pollyanna in absentia, and the moment packs a surprising amount of punch. I don’t know how well children at the time appreciated an adult suddenly confronting the last few wasted, uselessly subservient years of his life, but it’s good to have moments in family movies that their young audiences can grow into. You’ll recognize these disappointments when they come for you one day, kids!
Pollyanna is streaming on Disney+.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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What did we watch?
Serial Experiments Lain, Episode Three, “Psyche”
To my surprise, this carries on immediately after the plot of the previous episode, with Lain dealing with the fallout from the club shooting. Specifically, it’s the social fallout; she’s become a little cool for it. The fascinating thing about this series is that Lain is detached from everyone around her but nobody is really cold or unfriendly; if anything, they’re a little too sincere and loud for her (there’s also one guy who is uncomfortably older than her and hits on her, thinking she’s someone older dressed young). She receives a strange device in the mail and, when at the club, finds some kids who can explain it to her.
Lain is effectively haunted by the internet here; I’m reminded of Walt and Jesse in early Breaking Bad trying to run away from cooking meth. Lain’s curiosity and fear keep bumping up against each other; it’s as if she’s actively stalked by it. Finding the kids is a mixture of soothing and even more confusing; she’s given a bit of an explanation, and they seem smug and knowledgeable. There’s a fascinating moment where one of the boys seems contemptuous of her naivete about the internet as someone else is talking. The ending is a rather visually dramatic moment of her embracing the new technology.
There’s also a tiny bit of plot, with men that have strange tech on their faces seem to be following her.
Live Music – everyone’s favourite folk-tinged jangle-rockers The Tubs, the third time I’ve seen them and I think probably the best, they have a really fun stage dynamic (the drummer is a Bit of a Character) and the songs are tight and catchy. And yet I still thought maybe the support act was even better, their labelmates (and the Tubs singer’s girlfriend) Spike which is an annoyingly generic stage name but she did some great lofi synthpop with some dramatic kinda Kate Bush vibes on top of the punchy synth basslines. Good gig.
Twilight Zone, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” – a title so familiar I’m surprised it didn’t come to me in Simpsons parody (as far as I can see?), I guess it’s just an episode that has a big reputation. And I thought it was pretty excellent, if maybe not quite as wonderfully unsettling as the previous one.
Woo, live music! Less so generic band names. (In their defense, how many band names are left?)
Fair point, but Discogs lists over 170 artists named “Spike” so you know, maybe throw another word in there?
Always Sunny, “Mac and Dennis Tear Their ACLs” – Another great cutaway in the cold open! Much funnier than last week’s episode with Charlie trying to deal with Mac and Dennis’ dysfunctions and there’s the gag that, in fact, two people holding a ladder can get in pretty much anywhere. I am also a sucker for jokes about JAG, a truly baffling show to make it on air and past multiple seasons that I watched as a kid. (Charlie immediately going “No!” when Dennis and Mac say it’s a brilliant show.)
Oh right, I watched that as well. Really great opening scene after the titles as well, to the point where I started to wonder if that was going to be the whole episode – just one long episode of Charlie being the adult between Mac and Dennis. I was also struck by how Rob Mac and Glenn Howerton seemed to be making their performances a little more complex than they needed to be for no reason, which made it funnier.
The conscious attempts at wry smiles made the performances.
NCIS is a spinoff of JAG!
Me and my sister had a big Hayley Mills phase as kids, which included this, The Parent Trap, and the far darker than expected Moonspinners! I don’t remember Pollyanna well compared to the Parent Trap however. Was too negative a kid to love Pollyanna’s glad game.
Pollyanna was the consensus Mills in my house growing up, although it was more a favourite of my sisters I definitely feel like Karl Malden’s fire and brimstone made an impression on me.
Hayley Mills was, oddly, one of the judges for the mad alternative miss world pageant thing I went to a couple of weeks ago. I guess she must hang out in eccentric elderly artist circles? Good for her.
She was the psych in Trap! Which was her first movie role in maybe forty years.
The Moonspinners is probably my second favorite Disney historical period film from this era, second only to In Search of the Castaways.
I don’t remember a lot of it besides (1) the eerie title theme song and (2) Eli Wallach being scary as hell, his usual sweaty, menacing 60’s self but in a kids film.
I have seen this movie so often that I expressed surprise while posting a different article to see that someone else had uploaded an image from it. Though weirdly, Childhood Gillian had mentally pegged one of the characters, who is played by the Chief from Get Smart, as black, because Childhood Gillian couldn’t conceive of a town with no black people in it.
I agree that Pollyanna herself gets a bum rap. Aside from her delightfully attitude when she’s trying to be more mature than Jimmy Bean, it’s worth noting that the Glad Game was a deliberate attempt on her father’s part to deal with the fact that frankly their life kinda sucked. She’s never in her life had a doll. It’s implicit that her parents’ relationship was not approved of, and while Aunt Polly lived in luxury and dominated the hell out of that town–the hero of the movie is social responsibility!–Pollyanna was living a life so limited that she had to figure out why to be glad she’d gotten crutches in the missionary barrel.