Walt's Thoughts in Audio The Comedies Walt talks about his comedy pictures of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. The Absent-Minded Professor The story behind The Absent-Minded Professor The Shaggy Dog Pollyanna The Parent Trap The Absent-Minded Professor "Did you know a reviewer tried to read something into it?. . . Crazy guy . . . A kind of satire on our social structure here. Set up the way it is. The red tape in Washington . . . But it wasn't. It was just a gag picture. It started out I had two basic little situations when I started." (Click to hear Walt) The story behind The Absent-Minded Professor "A writer by the name of Sam Taylor who wrote some little short stories . . . during the war . . . They were just little short stories called 'Letters to the President,' and they were having a rubber shortage. So he told about how this fellow had invented this synthetic rubber and he had the gag of the rubber bouncing higher and things. That was one. Then he wrote another one about the gasoline shortage so he had this fellow, he got an induction coil and he put it in his car and as he rode along the power line he kicked the power you see and he could fly with it. Well, I took the two and combined them together. And that was all they were -- little short stories. And I made flubber do the flying too, you see." (Click to hear Walt) The Shaggy Dog "Well it’s parallel to a thing I did about two years ago before this called The Shaggy Dog. That was very successful. It was one of the biggest grossing, probably be one of the ten biggest (grossing films…) It would be the first twenty, that’s domestic gross. Ten million bucks. (How much do these things cost?) They all cost about a million and a half. The Professor cost about two and a quarter million.” (Click to hear Walt) Pollyanna "Pollyanna, yes, but the connotation of Pollyana hurt us. We brought it up so that it was not the icky, sticky Pollyanna that people began to make fun of, but the title Pollyanna kept a lot of people away. Kept the men away. We did well. That was one of the disappointments last year. See, they said, 'Oh, this is great. This is great. This is going to do 'Shaggy Dog' business. And they estimated on that and as it turned out it did very good business -- about 3 1/2 million dollars in this country -- maybe more than that. But still, it was disappointing." (Click to hear Walt) The Parent Trap "And following that I did go to England, with the little Mills girl. I did the third one with her. That's a good picture . . .It has that appeal -- it goes right down the line. It appeals to the youngsters because here are two teenagers plotting and scheming to get their parents together again. And it has very strong appeal that way. And it has a very definite strong appeal with the adults and with men." (Click to hear Walt)   Click to play audio