Pollyanna Details

Considering this was his debut, writer/director David Swift made a splendid job of adapting Eleanor H Porter's 1912 children's classic for the screen. Disney spared no expense in re-creating the look and feel of small-town Vermont, and splashed out in no uncertain terms to land such top-line performers as Agnes Moorehead, Karl Malden, Adolphe Menjou and Jane Wyman. They play the cheerless citizens whose lives are transformed by the effervescent orphan Pollyanna (Hayley Mills) and her bottomless supply of “gladness”. Mills won a special Oscar for her spirited performance. If there is a fault, it is that it's a bit too long for most children to take at a single sitting.