Cinema: Nobody Here but Us Chickens

Summer Magic. Once upon a time a wicked old witch gave Walt Disney a priceless secret—doubtless in return for a featured role in several of his movies.

The secret: kids may be lured into dark, cool caverns with promises of sugar-coated escapism—escape from the traumas of the Little League, respite from tyranny of the report card, surcease from the torments of the tooth brace and the training bra.

Disney’s latest for the tired Junior Achievement executive is a version of Kate Douglas Wiggin’s 1911 Mother Carey’s Chickens, that durable story of the widow (Dorothy McGuire) and her brood who live as innocent squatters in a big, old-fashioned house in the country. Walt has flossed it up with lively songs, a glossy assortment of period gewgaws (a red Stutz Bearcat, a steam locomotive, a pianola), and Hayley Mills, who bolsters the little plot with elfin enthusiasm.

Will the Careys get the boot when their mysterious absentee landlord discovers that they have been living rent-free in his house all summer? Such a turn of events is unthinkable, and sure enough, nobody thinks of it. Instead, everybody has wholesome fun. Sam, the comic sheep dog, scares prissy Cousin Julia (Deborah Walley) into a conniption; Little Brother cons the barber into shearing off his Buster Brown bangs; there is a lemonade party and a punch-and-pumpkin Halloween housewarming. Burl Ives pipes The Ugly Bug Ball, and a peaceable bestiary of beavers, owls, foxes, deer, spiders, crickets and caterpillars simultaneously stamps the film with the Disney trademark.