Dean Jones | Brothers' Ink Productions

David Swift had notable credits as an animator, director, writer, producer, musician and actor…it’s as if there was nothing he couldn’t do! David started out as an animator for Disney’s early films from Snow White to Peter Pan, but then soon moved over as a writer for a bunch of TV shows like Norby and Mister Peepers and then moved again to directing.

As a writer-director he started with a hit right out of the gate when he made the feature films Pollyanna for Disney in 1960 and then followed it up with The Parent Trap in 1961. Both films starred Haley Mills and both are still amazing family films! According to director David Swift, after looking at 362 girls for the part of Pollyanna, they still did not have anyone to play the part. One day, Walt Disney’s wife Lilly went shopping with Disney studio head Bill Anderson’s wife while they were in London on business. The two ladies saw Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay (1959) and thought she was perfect for the role of Pollyanna. The two men didn’t listen to them, but they were so persistent that the men finally agreed to watch the movie and immediately decided to cast Hayley.

There’s a lot of very fine character actors in these films as well with Jane Wyman, Adolphe Menjou, Nancy Olsen, Karl Malden, Kevin Corcorin and Agnes Moorehead in Pollyanna and Brian Keith, Maureen O’Hara, Charles Ruggles, and Joanna Barnes in The Parent Trap. He has a real talent for putting together very talented casts. He continued this trend with Under the Yum Yum Tree in 1963 with Jack Lemmon, Carol Lynley, Dean Jones, Paul Lynde, Edie Adams, Imogene Coca, and Bill Bixby and with How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying in 1967 with Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee, and Michele Lee.The original Broadway production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” opened at the Forty-sixth Street Theater in New York on October 14, 1961, ran for 1417 performances and won the 1962 Tony Awards for the Best Musical and Book and was nominated for Best Score. Robert Morse (Winner of the 1962 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical), Rudy Vallee, Ruth Kobart and Sammy Smith recreated their stage roles for the movie version.

I also want to mention that he wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite Disney movies of the 70’s…Candleshoe, in 1977 starring Jodie Foster, Helen Hayes, David Niven, and Leo McKern. Interestingly enough, I loved Jodie Foster in this, but she’s the reason he ultimately didn’t direct this film. He developed this project for Disney for several years and was intially set to direct it. However, he felt Jodie Foster (then one of the most popular teenage actresses in the country) was all wrong for the part of Casey and stepped down. I believe he was wrong, as she’s great in this movie.

Final of four cinema movies that Jodie Foster made with the Walt Disney Pictures studios during the 1970s. The feature films include Candleshoe (1977),Freaky Friday (1976), One Little Indian (1973) and Napoleon and Samantha (1972). During this period, Foster also made a fifth Disney feature title, but made for television, it being the tele-movie Menace on the Mountain (1970), the first of the 70s era batch.

Now here’s an actor, I never fully thought ever got his due. He was utterly brilliant in several films, mostly Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Mary Poppins and The Love Bug for Disney, but also a few others. He played the foil in so many of these films, and was so believable and real that he was never fully embraced for his contribution for the success of these films. For these films to be as successful as they were they had to have a bad guy that was convincing and despicable. He could come off as slimy and snooty and arrogant, and so much of it was so totally opposite of his true lovable persona off-screen.

Of the more than 50 motion pictures he appeared in during his career, however, his most popular role was as the rigid and positively clueless father George Banks in Mary Poppins. As Ed Weiner wrote in TV Guide, “Of all the movie moments we hold dear from childhood and revisit most often with our children on video, Tomlinson as a changed and suddenly life-loving George Banks happily singing ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ is one of the sweetest.” Tomlinson also voices several of the animated characters that Bert and Mary Poppins encounter in the chalk drawing, including a penguin waiter and the jockey who allows Mary Poppins to pass on her carousel horse. He also voices the Parrot Umbrella Handle at the end of the movie. Robert Stevenson who directed Mary Poppins, liked working with Tomlinson so much that he cast him in two more of his movies; The Love Bug (1968) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

Tomlinson was a generous and gregarious man by nature and had some famous life-long friends, like Peter Sellers. Peter Sellers and David performed in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu and David brought out the best in Sellers. He said of him, “The only person I want to see is David,” Sellers remarked in hospital shortly before his death. This was the last film for both of them as David would retire and was only seen on the stage after that. Another friend, Griff Rhys Jones said of him, “His was an act, a good one, supplemented by an outrageous baby face and upswept eyebrows. The reality was a sympathetic and understanding man. He was as funny off as he was on, which was invariably very funny indeed.”

Craig Brown also tells a great story about Tomlinson, “Many years later, I became friends with David Tomlinson, the marvellous English character actor who played Mr Banks. We were once having lunch in a crowded restaurant with David, when our little son asked him if he would sing: Let’s Go Fly A Kite. Without hesitating, David, who was then in his late 70s, launched in to a hearty rendition at the very top of his voice. The restaurant came to a standstill. When he came to an end, everyone burst into applause.”

Read more about Mary Poppins from Craig Brown: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2111741/When-Mary-Poppins.html#ixzz4CE52227E

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