"Disneyland" The Adventures of Gallegher: Part 1 (1965)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Byron Paul

Writers:

Richard Harding Davis (book)
Maurice Tombragel (writer)

TV Series:

"Disneyland" (1954)

Original Air Date:

24 January 1965 (Season 11, Episode 15)

Genre:

Animation | Action | Adventure | Biography | Drama | Family | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Western

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Character Name In Title | Donald Duck | Walt Disney | Disneyland | Variety

Cast

Edmond O'Brien	...	Crowley
Roger Mobley	...	Gallegher
Ray Teal	...	Snead
Harvey Korman	...	Brownie
Sean McClory	...	Officer Madden
Richard Derr	...	Mr. Dwyer
Bryan Russell	...	Bootblack
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Donald Losby	...	Country Boy
Philip Ober	...	Hade

Runtime:

USA:55 min (3 episodes, originally shown on "Wonderful World of Color")

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Filming Locations:

Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Walt Disney Productions

Trivia:

This was originally premiered as three episodes on Walt Disney's television show.

Nice Disney Product

Back in the day I remember the Gallegher series as one of the best of the Walt Disney TV productions. No doubt helped by the great cast that the Magic Kingdom people assembled for it.

Gallegher is a character created by turn of the last century newspaper reporter and sometime novelist Richard Harding Davis. Gallegher is a teenage boy, winningly played by Roger Mobley who's working at a newspaper edited by Edmond O'Brien with one of the other reporters being a pre-Carol Burnett Harvey Korman.

It wasn't uncommon in the 1890s to have kids not finish high school,let alone go to college, and to be joining the work force at a tender age. Hey, Gallegher could be working in a factory at this time, not uncommon then. Instead he's got a great instinct for newspaper reporting as he proved time and again.

I particularly liked the fact that Disney occasionally had references in the script to indicate what was happening in the real world that would have been of interest to young Gallegher. I recall references to star baseball catcher Buck Ewing of the New York Giants and to the James J. Corbett-Joe Choynski heavyweight championship fight.

Roger Mobley turned out to have had as interesting a life as Gallegher. At certain points in time he was a Green Beret, a police officer, and a minister. Hollywood and acting was not the be-all, end-all for him.

The Disney channel stopped running Gallegher and all the other Disney productions from when Walt was still with us. That's a pity, I hope they change their minds or get some of it out on video.