Disney Plus-Or-Minus: One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing
Oh dear.
This column is no stranger to racial stereotypes and offensive caricatures. From the forbidden tales of Uncle Remus to the many, many non-Native Americans in movies like The Light In The Forest and Tonka to the broad, cartoonish Asians of The Ugly Dachshund and The Love Bug, Disney just did not have a good track record when it came to depicting minorities. Sometimes their intentions were good and I think it’s important to keep that in mind. But it’s hard to mount a spirited defense of Peter Ustinov and others going full yellowface in One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing.
Ustinov was undeniably a talented actor, as well as a gifted writer and director. His first Disney movie, Blackbeard’s Ghost, remains one of the studio’s best live-action comedies. As a voice actor, he’s one of the highlights of Robin Hood. But he was also one of those actors, usually British and usually most active in the 1950s through 70s, that had zero compunction about darkening their skin or taping back their eyes to play Arabs or Hispanics or Indians or whatever. This appears to be his first stab at playing Chinese but it wouldn’t be his last. In 1981, he’d star in Charlie Chan And The Curse Of The Dragon Queen, a truly terrible movie I saw in the theatre and immediately regretted.
And look, I am not one of those people who has an immediate kneejerk reaction against actors playing outside their race. Peter Sellers’ performance as Hrundi V. Bakshi in Blake Edwards’ The Party is one of the funniest things you’ll ever see. But yellowface performances like this and Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s and too many others are rooted in truly ugly stereotypes. They’re lazy and stupid and simply not funny. And considering Disney hired actual Asian people like Mako and Benson Fong to caricature themselves in earlier films, I’m surprised they resorted to it here.
It's all the more disappointing because One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing starts off promisingly. Robert Stevenson is back as director and that’s always a good sign. This would be the last film for veteran writer/producer Bill Walsh. Walsh has been a constant presence in this column ever since The Littlest Outlaw all the way back in 1955. Since then, he’d received a pair of Oscar nominations for Mary Poppins and produced some of Disney’s best and most popular films. He passed away on January 27, 1975, at the age of 61, not long after returning from the London shoot of One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. In 1991, he was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend.
Walsh based his script on the 1970 novel The Great Dinosaur Robbery by David Forrest. Forrest was the joint pseudonym of British writers Robert Forrest-Webb and David Eliades. Walsh made a lot of changes to make the adult-oriented book more kid-friendly. In addition, the setting was changed from contemporary New York City to 1920s London and the title became a reference to the great Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger film One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing, which also featured Ustinov. The authors were reportedly less than happy with these changes but they certainly shouldn’t have been surprised.
If you’re going to watch One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (and, to be clear, I don’t recommend it), I’d suggest watching the first ten to fifteen minutes and switching it off. The title sequence is truly delightful, presented in a limited, cut-out style animation resembling Edward Gorey. The accompanying music by Ron Goodwin is a banger, ranking right up there with Disney’s best. Goodwin was a British composer who’d done the music for Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. His first Disney assignment had been the TV production Diamonds On Wheels. We’ll hear his work in this column again.
The movie proper opens with the elderly Lord Southmere (British TV star Derek Nimmo) addressing us directly from his library. He recounts a tale from his youth, escaping from China (and across the Himalayas with an assist from a yeti) in possession of “Lotus X”, a top-secret and highly coveted formula for something or other. Arriving in London, he is targeted by Chinese operative Hnup Wan (Ustinov), his number two, Quon (Clive Revill, who used to be the Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back before George Lucas decided to make everything “special”), and his hulking bodyguard, Fan Choy (Bernard Bresslaw from the Carry On series).
Southmere tries to elude his pursuers by slipping into the Natural History Museum. Injured and trapped, he secures the microfilm in a dinosaur exhibit currently closed to visitors. Before succumbing to his injuries, he’s discovered by his old nanny, Hettie (Helen Hayes, continuing the bizarre late career victory lap she started in Herbie Rides Again). Southmere asks her to retrieve the formula but passes out before he can tell her where exactly he hid it.
Hnup Wan takes Southmere captive, locking him up in his secret headquarters beneath a nightclub called The Reluctant Dragon (cute). Meanwhile, Hettie enlists the assistance of one of her fellow nannies, Emily (Joan Sims, another Carry On alumna). Finding it difficult to conduct a thorough search of an entire dinosaur skeleton on their own, they pull in a crack team of nannies to examine it after hours. Most of them leave after a few hours but a young thrillseeker named Susan (Natasha Pyne) signs up for the duration.
Back at The Reluctant Dragon, Southmere’s injuries have given him a case of amnesia. Unable to get the exact location out of him, Hnup Wan decides to break into the museum and steal the entire dinosaur. But once they get the brontosaurus loaded onto the back of their lorry, Hettie and her friends sneak in and swipe the dinosaur from the thieves. The Chinese slowly pursue them through the foggy London streets but eventually, the ladies lose them.
While the nannies search for the formula, the Chinese head to Hettie’s employer’s house. She isn’t there, of course. Instead, they kidnap her young charges, Lord Castleberry and his brother, Truscott (Andrew Dove and Max Harris, a couple of child actors who didn’t continue in the business much past this). Hearing Southmere’s description, they realize everyone’s been searching the wrong dinosaur. Sure enough, the Chinese find the formula hidden on the diplodocus skeleton, pay the kids handsomely for their help and send them on their way.
After hearing what the kids have done, Hettie assembles her Nanny Squad to rescue Southmere. Needless to say, a nightclub full of spies, assassins and ninjas is no match for a team of middle-aged-to-elderly child care providers. They free Southmere, who reveals that he isn’t a spy at all. He’s a restauranteur and Lotus X is simply a recipe for a particularly delicious wonton soup. Cue the sad trombone.
Even without the casually racist performances of Ustinov, Revill and the other pseudo-Chinese, there wouldn’t be a lot to recommend One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. Shaggy dog stories can be fun (talking about the trope here, not The Shaggy Dog, which is unquestionably fun). But all the extraneous business has to be funny and compelling in order to make it work. And none of this is compelling and not enough of it is funny.
Which is not to say that it’s a complete wash. That early cameo by the Abominable Snowman got my hopes up for a weirder, sillier movie than what it turned out to be. Derek Nimmo is fun as the unflappable, stiff-upper-lip English gentleman. And if you’re an Anglophile, the cast is filled out with familiar British faces, including Max Wall, Roy Kinnear, Kathleen Byron and Jon Pertwee, who had just wrapped up his stint as the Third Doctor on Doctor Who.
For a lot of us, one of the most recognizable characters in the film is the dinosaur itself. The movie was shot at Elstree Studios in England. About a year later, George Lucas and crew arrived to shoot a little sci-fi movie called Star Wars. The art department raided Elstree’s storage and brought Disney’s dinosaur with them to Tunisia. That’s it in the background when C-3PO waves down the Jawas’ Sandcrawler.
One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing hit theatres July 9, 1975, only a week after they’d released The Apple Dumpling Gang. Both movies were chasing the same audience and Don Knotts and Tim Conway won. The dinosaur movie quickly faded from memory. It will come as no surprise to discover that One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing is currently missing from Disney+. Despite the movie’s failure, we have not yet seen the last of either Peter Ustinov or Miss Helen Hayes in this column. Hopefully next time, Ustinov will play something a little less cringey.
VERDICT: Disney Minus
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