Forty years after Mary Pickford made her successful version of Pollyanna, based on the children’s book and a play, Walt Disney turned his creative team to the task. Unless you are a fan or a student of silent movies, you will probably find this newer version more entertaining.

Hayley Mills shines as the cheerful child who teaches an entire town to play the optimistic aGlad Game, and she is bubbly and cute enough to pull it off. I enjoyed the humor and the pace of the story. Not a lot was left off, as it was in the short one hour long silent film.

Disney films always find great character actors, it seems. My favorites among the supporting cast was Mary Grace Canfield as Angelica and Agnes Morehead as Mrs. Snow. The scenes showing the improvement of Mrs. Snow’s outlook on life were patient and earned the heartwarming feeling they produced.


I found it interesting that the movie had a sentimental ending as you would expect, but it didn’t quite tie it all up in a bow as you usually find in a Disney movie, and indeed as was done in the Masterpiece Theater PBS version done forty years after this one.