Starring Disney movie staple Fred MacMurray, “The Happiest Millionaire” is the movie in which Lesley Ann Warren made her big screen debut. Playing Cordie Drexel-Biddle, the oldest child and only daughter of an eccentric millionaire, she brings to life the real Cordie, who wrote a book about her childhood memories upon which this movie is based.
Mr. Biddle (MacMurray) is an unusual man to say the least. He teaches a Bible school/boxing class in a converted stable in the back yard, and a whole room of his house is dedicated to his pet alligators. Mrs. Biddle (Greer Garson) is a refined, elegant lady who looks lovingly upon her husband’s eccentricities. When John Lawless (Tommy Steele) arrives from Ireland, looking for a job, he’s not at all sure he’ll fit in with the family. He needn’t have worried – they’re just laid back enough for him.
Cordie is worried that she’ll never have a boyfriend. She’s been taught how to box, not how to flirt, and the boys just don’t understand that she’s different. Worried that her chances of matrimony are nil, she asks to go to a girls’ boarding school, and while there, attends a party held by her aunt, who lives nearby. There she meets Angie Duke (John Davidson) who is immediately taken with her artless ways (he doesn’t even seem to mind her really outrageous hair styles.) They start seeing each other and soon are infatuated.
But on the very night they come home to announce their engagement, Mr. Biddle makes a terrible discovery. The new parlor maid left the windows open and all his alligators have been frozen solid in their tubs of water. His favorite, George, is chopped out with an ax and set in front of the fireplace to thaw out. Believing him dead, Mr. Biddle takes a moment out of his ministrations to take the news that his only daughter is getting married, but the next thing they know, George is wandering around the house, causing all sorts of trouble.
As the wedding date draws closer, Cordie finds her future mother-in-law to be overbearing and intolerable, and thinks she may have to call off the wedding. But it’s John Davidson, after all, and who could resist those dimples?
A charming movie, it’s not one of Disney’s best, but it’s one you’ll enjoy with your family.
This film was rated G.
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