Taglines: Pop’s love affair is a 3-ring circus!
The Parent Trap movie storyline. Thirteen-year-olds prim and proper Bostonian Sharon McKendrick (Hayley Mills) and tomboyish Californian Susan Evers (Hayley Mills) meet at summer camp. It’s hate at first sight, as besides the differing length of their hair, they look exactly the same. After the girls carry out one battle after another against each other, the camp administrators ultimately place the two in solitary confinement, the two eating, sleeping, and playing only with each other.
It is during this confinement that they finally get a chance to know each other and learn that they are indeed twins, separated when they were babies when their parents, Maggie McKendrick (Maureen O’Hara) and Mitch Evers (Brian Keith), divorced. Wanting to get to know and ultimately love the parent they never met, Sharon and Susan decide to switch places, Sharon will go to California and pretend to be Susan, and Susan will go to Boston and pretend to be Sharon.
The other thing they believe is that their parents still love each other, why else had neither ever remarried. The two parents would ultimately have to “un-switch” them, when the girls hope their parents will fall in love all over again. Sharon and Susan are initially able to carry off the ruse, but in California, their plan hits a snag.
When Mitch introduces his daughter to a young woman named Vicky Robinson (Joanna Barnes), Vicky, who aspires to be the second Mrs. Mitchell Evers. Sharon and the domestics in the Evers household think Vicky is merely a gold digger out for Mitch’s money. Sharon and Susan have to figure out a way to get rid of Vicky and bring Maggie to California more quickly than planned, so that their parents can reconcile, and the foursome can be one big happy family.
The Parent Trap is a 1961 Walt Disney Technicolor romantic comedy film directed by David Swift. It stars Hayley Mills (in a dual role), Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith is a story about teenage twins on a quest to reunite their divorced parents. The screenplay by the film’s director David Swift was based upon the 1949 book Lottie and Lisa (German: Das Doppelte Lottchen) by Erich Kästner.
The Parent Trap was nominated for two Academy Awards, was broadcast on television, saw three television sequels, was remade in 1998 with Lindsay Lohan, and has been released on digital stereo LaserDisc format in 1986 as well as VHS and DVD in 2002. The Parent Trap was Hayley Mills’s second film in the series of six for Disney.
Richard and Robert Sherman provided the songs, which, besides the title song “The Parent Trap”, includes “For Now, For Always”, and “Let’s Get Together”. “Let’s Get Together” (sung by Annette Funicello) is heard playing from a record player at the summer camp; the tune is reprised by the twins when they restage their parents’ first date and that version is sung double-tracked by Hayley Mills. (Hayley’s own single of the song, credited to “Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills,” reached #8 on the US charts.) The film’s title song was performed by Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello, who were both on the studio lot shooting Babes in Toyland at the time.
The Parent Trap (1961)
Directed by: David Swift
Starring: Hayley Mills, Brian Keith, Maureen O’Hara, Joanna Barnes, Charlie Ruggles, Cathleen Nesbitt, Una Merkel, Leo G. Carroll, Linda Watkins, Ruth McDevitt, Nancy Kulp, Susan Henning
Screenplay by: David Swift
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Lucien Ballard
Film Editing by: Philip W. Anderson
Costume Design by: Bill Thomas
Set Decoration by: Hal Gausman, Emile Kuri
Art Direction by: Carroll Clark, Robert Clatworthy
Music by: Paul J. Smith
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Distribution
Release Date: June 21, 1961
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