"Disneyland" I Captured the King of the Leprechauns (1959)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Directors:

Harry Keller
Robert Stevenson

Writer:

Lawrence Edward Watkin (writer)

TV Series:

"Disneyland" (1954)

Original Air Date:

29 May 1959 (Season 5, Episode 26)

Genre:

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

Plot:

At the urging of Pat O'Brien, Walt Disney takes a trip to Ireland in search of actual leprechauns to appear in his "Irish picture", the result being Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959). |

Plot Keywords:

Donald Duck | Walt Disney | Disneyland | Variety | Tomorrowland

Cast

Pat O'Brien	...	Himself
Albert Sharpe	...	Darby O'Gill
Sean Connery	...	Michael MacBride
Janet Munro	...	Katie O'Gill
Jimmy O'Dea	...	King Brian
Kieron Moore	...	Pony Sugrue
Denis O'Dea	...	Father Murphy
J.G. Devlin	...	Tom Kerrigan
Jack MacGowran	...	Phadrig Oge
Farrell Pelly	...	Paddy Scanlon
Nora O'Mahoney	...	Molly Malloy (as Nora O'Mahony)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Walt Disney	...	Himself - Host

Runtime:

49 min

Movie Connections:

Featured in Studio Tour (2002) (V)

Elaborate promo for Walt's upcoming "Darby O'Gill"

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

For a TV episode, very well-produced (in black-and-white -- unlike the expensive Technicolor feature "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" which it was promoting.)

The episode is included on the "Darby" DVD, and it's a revelation. Pat O'Brien was well used, and Walt himself was a pretty good actor. The story is wonderfully nonsensical: O'Brien convinces Walt to go to Ireland and use actual leprechauns, rather than have his artists draw them. In Ireland, Walt meets a Dublin librarian who talks about the legends, then he sits in on a storytelling scene with the "real" Darby (Albert Sharpe). Later Darby leads Walt to the old ruins to meet leprechaun Phadric Oge (Jack McGowran) and then King Brian himself (Jimmy O'Dea), where he decides to film both Darby and Brian as characters in his film. There are also scenes lifted from the movie, featuring Sean Connery, Janet Munro, Estelle Winwood, Kieron Moore and others...all of which Walt speaks of as if he had filmed them for a documentary. He then returns to California, where O'Brien has the temerity to act shocked and disbelieving that Walt actually met the little people.

All in all, an elaborate promo episode of Walt Disney Presents, featuring Walt in the same painstaking camera set-ups used in the movie to blend the full-sized Darby and the foot-high leprechauns -- a process done all in one shot without optical work, using forced perspective, as explained on an excellent featurette on the same DVD.