Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Original “Parent Trap:” Two Sisters, Two Houses


by HOOKEDONHOUSES on JANUARY 31, 2010

The Parent Trap movie poster

Disney’s original Parent Trap movie premiered in 1961 with Hayley Mills playing both of the leading roles. If one Hayley Mills had been so good in Pollyanna, then two of her had to be even better, right? The Parent Trap had her playing twin sisters Susan and Sharon. Separated at birth, they rediscovered each other at a summer camp and then plotted to get their parents back together.

After I covered the 1998 remake with Lindsay Lohan, I got a lot of requests to post photos of the original. It was fun to watch it again and see how well it has held up over the years. Yes, some of the effects are cheesy (like when they “walk through a park” while fake-looking footage of the park rolls behind them on a screen), but the story and characters are still a pleasure to watch.

The Boston Townhouse

townhouse-exterior

We don’t spend a lot of time in the Boston townhouse that Sharon lives in with her mother and grandparents. This is the most we see of the exterior–a brief glimpse of the street as Susan pulls up to it for the first time.

townhouse 2

The luminous Maureen O’Hara plays their mother Maggie, who inexplicably gave up one of her twin daughters at birth to her ex-husband Mitch (Brian Keith in his first comedy). It’s one of those “suspension of disbelief” things…

townhouse-Maureen O'Hara staircase

Hayley Mills says that at times she would be so confused about which girl she was playing from scene to scene that “I was only saved by the wig.” If she had the short wig on, she knew she was Susan, the “tomboy” twin from California. Her real hair was long like the “proper” twin Sharon’s, but, she points out in the movie commentary, in some scenes it looks as bad as a wig.

After Susan chops Sharon’s hair off at summer camp so they’ll “match,” they both have the short wig on for the rest of the movie. It became even harder for Mills to remember who she was playing from scene to scene.

townhouse 1

In the remake, one of the twins lives in London instead of Boston. Natasha Richardson was perfect in Maureen O’Hara’s role.

townhouse dining room

They struggled to find the right title for the movie. It was originally supposed to be His and Hers, but that was already taken by another studio. They resorted to running a contest and thousands of titles came in. None of them worked, either.

Some of the titles that almost made the cut:

  • Susan and I
  • We Belong Together
  • For Now, For Always
  • Petticoats and Blue Jeans

Hard to imagine the movie with any of those, isn’t it? It just wouldn’t have been the same. Writer-director David Swift recalls that one day, Walt Disney walked in and announced that they were going with The Parent Trap, and that was that. Discussion over.

townhouse-chess

The upstairs hallway (look at that red carpet!):

townhouse-upstairs hallway-Hayley

The movie especially struck a chord with children of divorce. Hayley Mills says that she still hears from fans who tell her that watching the girls work to get their parents back together was “empowering” for them because they felt so helpless in their own lives when their parents separated.

townhouse-Maureen O'Hara bedroom vanity

The Ranch:

Parent Trap Ranch exterior 1

Welcome to Golden Oak Ranch, where Mitch (Brian Keith) and his daughter Susan lived in the Carmel Valley.

This was actually some land owned by Disney south of Carmel on Placerita Canyon Road. They built a shell of a house on the property with nothing but exterior walls and a roof. The interiors were all created on a soundstage.

Parent Trap Ranch exterior-front

Parent Trap Ranch exterior 2

Parent Trap Ranch exterior-car

Ranch porch

The Great Room:

ranch-great room 1

Sharon–posing as Susan–explores the ranch for the first time. She’s understandably awestruck by it all.

ranch-living room

There was a scene on the golf course in which her real-life father John Mills played Mitch’s caddy, but it ended up on the cutting-room floor.

ranch-living room-stairs-wide

The fireplace is huge:

Ranch-great room fireplace

Ranch-great room

One of the great things about the house is how it’s connected to outdoor living spaces. The doors always seem to be open to the courtyard and covered patio:

Ranch-great room sofa

Ranch-great room 2

The Hallway Leading to the Courtyard:

ranch-hall to courtyard

The girls covered the doorway to the courtyard while they planned the private dinner and “show” for their parents. Who can forget the charmingly awful duet, “Let’s Get Together”? (Warning: Once you hear the song, it’ll be stuck in your head all day long!)

The Dining Room:

ranch-dining room

Susan’s Bedroom:

Ranch-Susan's bedroom 1

Ranch-Susan's bedroom 2

Ranch-Susan's bedroom 3

Ranch-Susan's bedroom 4

Master Bath:

Ranch-master bath

June Parker Beck, who edits Maureen O’Hara’s official website, tells me: “I get so many letters from people who want to go to California and see the house where it was filmed. Maureen doesn’t remember much about the structure. Stars are just taken to the shoot for that day–do their thing and go home.”

Ranch-master bath 2

I read a comment on a message board that questioned why everyone apparently had to share this bathroom. Didn’t a house this size have more than one?

Ranch-master bath 3

The Kitchen:

Ranch-kitchen

I love this kitchen with all the big windows overlooking the courtyard.

Ranch-kitchen 2

Ranch-kitchen 3

How charming was Brian Keith in this role? Swift says Keith was nervous about it because he’d never done comedy before, but he was perfect as Mitch:

Ranch-kitchen 4

In the DVD commentary, director David Swift says he has always regretted that he didn’t have wardrobe give Maureen O’Hara something “sexier” to wear in this scene. He felt it made her look a little plain, and too much like a “housewife.”

Ranch-kitchen 5

I only wish I looked this “homely” while cooking dinner in my kitchen…

Ranch-kitchen 8

Ranch-kitchen 6

Ranch-kitchen 9

O’Hara was 41 when she shot this movie. Joanna Barnes, who played Mitch’s younger girlfriend Vicki, was only 27. But Vicki almost looked older because of the way they styled her hair and clothes:

Joanna Barnes-Vicki

Joanna Barnes went on to become an accomplished writer. She also appeared in the Parent Trapremake, playing Meredith’s mother Vicki (Meredith is the younger woman in the newer version).

Joanna Barnes (Vicki) today

The Courtyard:

Ranch courtyard 1

Ranch courtyard 2

Ranch-courtyard from overhead

The back of the house with the balcony (I would’ve killed to have a balcony like this off my bedroom when I was a girl–heck, I still would!):

Ranch-back exterior balcony

The screenplay was written by David Swift, who also wrote Pollyanna. Disney had bought the rights to a short story published in Germany called “Lisa and Lottie” by Erich Kästner and asked Swift to adapt it for American audiences.

Lisa and Lottie cover

One of the challenges of making Parent Trap was finding an actress who looked enough like Hayley to play her twin in scenes where she’d only be seen from the back or side.

Susan Henning was cast and had to sign a contract promising to never tell anyone she was in the movie. Years later, Henning was interviewed for the Special Features on the Parent Trap DVD and was allowed to tell her story. She appeared in scenes like this (that’s the back of her head):

Ranch-Family by stairs with double

Susan had the same dress and shoe size as Hayley, but they gave her a rubber nose to wear. She says they also put a roll of tissue paper under her lip to make it stick out a little and padded her bra. After a few days of filming, however, they decided that the girls looked enough alike that the “extras” weren’t really needed.

Here’s a photo taken on set that shows the girls filming a scene together (Susan is on the left; Hayley on the right):

Susan Henning-Hayley Mills

After filming each scene, they would switch places and do it again–this time with Hayley acting out the other twin’s role. Susan Henning as she looks today (via the Special Features on the DVD):

Susan Henning today

Henning says that she taught Mills how to talk with American slang, and Mills recalls how close the two of them became both on and off the set.

There is a wonderful commentary on the DVD with Hayley Mills and writer-director David Swift reminiscing about the making of The Parent Trap. Swift died a few years later, so we’re fortunate to have so many of his stories recorded.

David Swift-writer and director

Swift said that Disney spoiled him for working with other studios. They gave him free reign on both Pollyanna and The Parent Trap to do what he wanted.

The other thing that comes out in the interviews and commentary is what a lovely and gracious person Mills is.

Hayley Mills today

She says she grew up hanging out on movie sets because her father is the famous British actor Sir John Mills. “Studios were my playground.” Her mother was a successful playwright. Mills says that “Walt Disney loved my mother. She made him laugh.”

Ranch-wedding

Brian Keith, who died in 1997, once said:

“I’ve made I don’t know how many pictures. Forty, I guess. I’ve seen only about a half dozen of them. We made Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) in Rome last spring. I really enjoyed working with Liz and Brando and that great director, John Huston.

“But the kind of picture I enjoy seeing is something like The Parent Trap (1961). That was a charming thing with Hayley Mills playing my twin daughters. I saw that four times. I even took my wife’s parents to see it. I like it so much I forgot I was in it, as a matter of fact.”

wedding-final shot-twins

The final shot of the movie has the girls as bridesmaids in their parents’ wedding, with the ranch in the background.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed researching it! If you have any requests for other movies or TV shows, leave them here.

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all the others I’ve featured, fromPollyanna to the Parent Trap remake.

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