Welcome to another Movie Monday, when I feature the sets from our favorite films. When I was in the 2nd grade, we watched the Disney movie “Pollyanna” on a giant screen in the gymnasium at school, and I will never forget it. I loved the house so much that for years I fantasized about growing up to live in one just like it someday.
I also liked the positive, feel-good message of the movie, and how Pollyanna changed so many lives in the small town. I hadn’t seen the movie in years until my blogging friend Derek recently sent me a photo of the real house used in it. It led me to watch it again, and the sets did not disappoint. They were just as wonderful as I remembered.
After 11-year old Pollyanna is orphaned, she goes to live with her stern and humorless Aunt Polly (Jane Wyman), who lives in this three-story mansion.
Believe it or not, here is the actual house they used in the film:
It’s known as the McDonald Mansion and was built in the late 1870s by Col. Mark Lindsay McDonald, owner of Santa Rosa’s water company. According to About.com, the Stick-Eastlake style (a type of Victorian architecture) was meant to evoke the plantations along the Mississippi.
7/11 UPDATE: A reader named Robert Ruiz sent me some beautiful photos of the house that he took today. Here’s how it looks now:
It’s a gorgeous home. (Thanks, Robert!)
The interior sets were elaborate. Hayley Mills says she had a great time running around and exploring them between scenes, adding that there were several rooms that they never even filmed in.
The screenplay was written by David Swift, who came from an animation background. He painted illustrations of how he envisioned the houses and various sets to look.
The illustration above shows how Swift wanted the entry hall to look (from the DVD special features). It’s amazing how closely the sets resembled what he imagined:
Over 300 girls auditioned for the role of Pollyanna. Panic was setting in as they couldn’t find the right actress for the part. Then Hayley Mills was spotted in a British film called “Tiger Bay” and brought in at the last moment, just as another actress was about to be signed. It’s hard to imagine the movie with anyone else in that role.
Pollyanna enters the house for the first time and looks around. She has lived as the daughter of a poor missionary family until now, so this is going to be a whole new kind of life for her.
Aunt Polly opens the front doors:
This is one of the illustrations that writer-director David Swift showed to the set designers (above). You can see how the kitchen appeared in the film (below):
A note of trivia about writer-director David Swift: he also wrote the screenplays for both “Parent Trap” movies.
I love this old photo taken of the dining room during the film’s production because it shows the lighting above the ceiling line:
You can see the illustration painted of the room (above) and how it appeared in the film (below) with exacting detail:
A wide shot of Aunt Polly’s bedroom (the bed is to the right):
If you’ve seen it, then you know the movie tends to go on and on. It wasn’t just because people had longer attention spans in 1960, however.
Director David Swift says that even he thought it ran too long and wanted to edit a lot of the scenes to pare them down. But Walt Disney loved every minute of it and refused to let Swift cut a thing.
Hayley Mills (in the DVD special features) says that she learned life lessons from “Pollyanna” that have stayed with her today about being positive in the face of adversity.
Thanks to Derek of Derek M Design for sending me the house photo that inspired this post!
Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all the others I’ve featured, fromThe Parent Trap to Gone With the Wind.
After posting about the Father of the Bride house recently, several readers asked if it was the same house used in the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It is in Pasadena near the FOTB house and does look a lot like it, but it’s not the same one. Here’s the house used in Mr. & Mrs. Smith:
And the Father of the Bride house (interior photos here):
Hollywood loves these kinds of houses. It seems to be the Classic American House. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, it worked really well to have John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) living in such a traditional home. It was an effective cover for who they really are: paid assassins.
When you step inside the traditional home, the interiors are a complete surprise–just like the characters who live in them.
Jane balances on the arms of a chair to adjust the new drapes:
A photo of them filming in the dining room (from the Special Features on the DVD):
Angelina’s character, Jane Smith, reminds me of Bree Hodge in “Desperate Housewives” (Marcia Cross). She’s a woman who is in complete control of her home, preparing gourmet meals that hit the table precisely at 7:00 each night. Meanwhile, her personal life is in a shambles. For one thing, her husband doesn’t know she’s in the same business he is, and the secrets have driven a wedge between them.
Mrs. Smith has a double oven in the kitchen. The lower one opens to reveal her stash of weaponry. How cool is that? Also cool: the tile on the wall around it.
2/11 UPDATE: I just received an e-mail from artist Shelley Brown who tells me she painted the “Eggs” painting in the kitchen. For more information about her work, you can contact her at srbrown25@gmail.com.
The sets were designed by Victor Zolfo, who also worked on films like “The Case of Benjamin Button,” another Brad Pitt vehicle. He receives fan mail from all over the world from people who love the rooms he created for this movie. And I can understand why.
It’s hard to imagine this movie with any other combination of actors. Nicole Kidman and Johnny Depp were originally cast as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. When Depp backed out, Pitt was brought on board. When Kidman dropped out, Gwen Stefani and Catherine Zeta-Jones were reportedly considered for the role.
Another bit of trivia: Brad Pitt had to leave the Mr. & Mrs. Smith set for three months to filmOceans 12.
I found the destruction scenes hard to watch. At the end of the movie, Angelina’s character tells their marriage counselor, “We redid the house together.”
To read more about the Super Couple, check out the French Chateau they stayed in last summer and their $60 million rental on Long Island.
Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all of the others I’ve featured, from “You’ve Got Mail” to “Something’s Gotta Give.”
