FEATURE ARTICLE Walt's "The Parent Trap" “After the rave reviews she received for “Pollyanna,” it was clear that the only thing better than one Hayley Mills would be two Hayley Millses,” writes Leonard Maltin in “The Disney Films.” For anyone out there unfamiliar with the 1961 movie called “The Parent Trap,” Mills played twin sisters. The two Hayleys (Sharon and Susan in the movie) meet at a summer camp for the first time – and discover that they’ve been separated for many years. They then set about trying to get their long-divorced parents back together again, so the four of them can live as a happy reunited family. It turns out that their Dad is about to get married again, and so the girls’ task is complicated somewhat. It won’t surprise anyone that all ends happily. “The Parent Trap” was remarkably successful – both among audiences and critics, and has remained one of the most beloved Disney films. “The New York Times” reported that ”the film “should be most appealing to parents as well as children because of the cheerfully persuasive dual performances of Hayley Mills.” Famed actress Lucille Ball (of “I Love Lucy” fame) recalled that her two children insisted on watching “The Parent Trap” with her over and over again – in hopes that it would somehow inspire their Mom to reunite with their father, Desi Arnaz. One exception: The Studio received hundreds of letters after the film came out, complaining that a scene that involved drinking martinis was somehow unsavory. This was indicative of the kind of difficult situation in which Walt found himself at the time. He had created a style of “Disney entertainment,” and efforts to expand its boundaries weren’t greeted happily by audiences. As his son-in-law and close colleague Ron Miller has commented, “He was very frustrated. Walt had created this image and he got locked in.” In 1962, when he saw the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which dealt with prejudice in a small Southern town, he said, “Gee, I’d sure like to make a picture like that.” But he couldn’t. Frustrated or not, Walt sure understood how to create and market the products that audiences wanted from him. According to information assembled by the Disney Archives, “The film was shot mostly in California at various locales, including millionaire Stuyvesant Fish's 5,200-acre ranch in Carmel, Monterey's Pebble Beach golf course, and the Studio's Golden Oak Ranch in Placerita Canyon, where Mitch's ranch was built. It was the design of this set that proved the most popular, and to this day the Walt Disney Archives receives requests for plans of the home's interior design. Of course, there never was such a house -- the set was simply various rooms built on a soundstage.” Central to”The Parent Trap,” of course, was the illusion of twins, both played by the same actress. As Camerman Lucien Ballard told Leonard Maltin, “They’d worked out this whole film using an English process, much like the old blue-backing process, to get the twins into various scenes. It involved double-exposure with the backgrounds and it was very complicated. Plus when you were shooting, you could never tell the girl which light to look into or anything. “I told them it was too complex and asked instead for a double. Usually, they sent relatives out for assignments like that, but I told them this time I wanted a real double, who really looked like Hayley. Finally I found a girl who was the same height, had the same features – everything was the same except her eyes were a different color, but I was able to compensate for that. And at several figures away, you couldn’t tell the difference between the girl and Hayley. So, I did a lot of over the shoulder shots and threw out most of the vapor shots … But Walt made me put some of the trick shots back, because he …. liked technical things.” Mills, of course, wasn’t the only star who contributed to “The Parent Trap.” The Dad was played by Brian Keith, the Mom by Maureen O’Hara and a smaller part – the Reverend Mosby, was played by the inimitable Leo G. Carroll. The music was written by Disney’s in-house songwriting stars, Richard and Robert Sherman, who would contribute hundreds of memorable songs over the years to Disney Films – including those in “Mary Poppins.” In fact, the assignment to work on “The Parent Trap” was the first sign that Walt saw great potential in the team. He handed them a copy of a script called “We Belong Together,” which was the working title for the film that became “The Parent Trap,” and asked them, “Why don’t you try to come up with a title song for it.” They did, and the tune was ultimately sung by former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello along with Tommy Sands. Meanwhile, the song “Let’s Get Together,” sung by Hayley Mills, became a hit and greatly contributed to the success of the motion picture.