CAUGHT IN A MERRY MARITAL MIX-UP!

Two 13-year-old girls learn at summer camp that not only do they look alike, but they’re actually twins who were separated at birth; together, they hatch a plan.

Hayley Mills reunited with her Pollyanna (1960) director for another splashy Disney production that became a hit. At heart, it’s really a cruel story that’s treated as a funny contrivance, but we soon choose to ignore the improbability thanks to a double dose of Mills’s charm; the girls’ scheme to get mom and dad back together again (and frighten off competition) is amusing enough.

Long, but summery, sweet and well paced.

1961-U.S. 128 min. Color. Written and directed by David Swift. Novel: Erich Kästner (”Das doppelten Lottchen”). Songs: Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman. Editing: Philip W. Anderson. Cast: Hayley Mills (Susan Evers/Sharon McKendrick), Brian Keith (Mitchell ”Mitch” Evers), Maureen O’Hara (Margaret ”Maggie” McKendrick), Joanna Barnes, Charlie Ruggles, Cathleen Nesbitt, Leo G. Carroll. 

Trivia: Followed by three TV movies, starting with The Parent Trap II (1986). Remade as The Parent Trap (1998). 

Last word: “Great credit goes to the director, David Swift, because he kept it fun and he didn’t let me see the sweat and the stress, if we were running over or anything like that. I had a photographic double called Susan Henning, and she was a very nice, sweet girl. We had fun together. She was also an actress. It was split-screen in its infancy. There were very few films that had been done like that. It was quite basic, but it was very effective. I would play one side of the screen as say Susan, and then go and change my clothes and play the scene with my double as Sharon. It was actually very confusing, at times. When Sharon was pretending to be Susan, and Susan was pretending to be Sharon, I couldn’t quite remember whose voice I was supposed to have and what accent I was supposed to have, so the accent wavered a little bit.” (Mills, Collider)