Early in 1903, the
success of the New York production of the musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum's
The Wizard of Oz got composer Victor Herbert and librettist Glen MacDonough thinking. They thought that it might be possible to duplicate that success by applying a Christmas theme to Baum's story and then sprinkling in a few Mother Goose characters. Later that year the resulting show,
Babes in Toyland, was a rousing
success. Thirty years later it was made into a
movie starring two of the greatest motion picture actors of the era, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, produced by
Hal Roach. But this post isn't about either of those productions; it's about the
worst production.
On December 19, 1986, NBC aired a star-studded, made-for-TV movie based on the show. It featured an 11 year old, pot smoking, heavily drinking,
Drew Barrymore in the lead as little Lisa Piper. Complicit with her was
Richard Mulligan as Barnaby Barnicle,
Eileen Brennan as the Widow Hubbard,
Keanu Reeves as Jack-Be-Nimble, and
Pat Morita as the Toy Master. The screenplay was by
Paul Zindel, an excellent
playwright,
screenwriter and
young adult author. Earlier that year
he fared significantly better with the release of
Runaway Train, another script he adapted, this time from a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa.
It's notable that this is not the only terrible production of this story, it was preceeded by the
1960 NBC television version, produced for
The Shirley Temple Show (Formerly
Shirley Temple's Storybook). It was
not well received. Not long after this episode aired the show was cancelled, and Ms. Temple left show business, save for the occasional guest appearance.
Another
disastrous production of this material might be the 1997 MGM animated film, which turns the march of the tin soldiers into a Dante-esque hell, complete with an army of laser-shooting, flying, tin Astroboys with water cannons for hands, driving away demonic goblins. Voices were provided by
Charles Nelson Reilly,
Christopher Plummer,
James Belushi, and
Bronson Pinchot.
A slightly more enjoyable production might be the radically rewritten
Disney film version of 1961, with
Ray Bolger as Barnaby and
Annette Funicello as Mary Contrary.
Bonus material:
How bad did a musical number have to be to be deleted from the 1986 made-for-TV production?
Deleted song 1
Deleted song 2
Deleted song 3
posted by tommasz at 7:21 AM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]