Disney Plus-Or-Minus: The Journey Of Natty Gann
By now it should be clear that, as jealous as Disney may have been over the success of Star Wars, the 70s movie they really wish they had made was The Black Stallion. And frankly, they were right. Based on a beloved classic of children’s literature, The Black Stallion’s themes and story fit squarely within Disney’s wheelhouse. But it had been made with a style and lyrical beauty that had largely eluded the studio over the years. It’s no wonder that the Disney brass pointed at it and said, “Show us how to make that.”
Carroll Ballard, the director of The Black Stallion, delivered the goods with Never Cry Wolf, a thoroughly modern take on the traditional Disney nature movie. Walter Murch, who had helped write early versions of the film, decided to do something completely different with Return To Oz and that movie failed to find its audience. Disney would have better luck with Jeanne Rosenberg, one of the three credited screenwriters on The Black Stallion, and her script for The Journey Of Natty Gann.
Rosenberg graduated from USC with the intention of pursuing a career in documentary filmmaking. She had also been a Black Stallion superfan since she’d been a little girl. When she found out that Ballard was making a film of her favorite book, she was determined to meet with him while the movie was in preproduction in Canada and wrangle a job.
At the meeting, Ballard swiped some notes Rosenberg had been making on the book. Not long after, she got a call inviting her to come work on the script. The screenplay changed on a daily basis as Rosenberg and Melissa Mathison (the future writer of E.T.) continued to turn out new pages even as the cameras were rolling.
After this trial by fire, Rosenberg went to work in the Roger Corman trenches, acting as script supervisor on Piranha and Rock ‘N’ Roll High School. She continued in that capacity on such films as John Carpenter’s The Fog and Joe Dante’s The Howling. Somewhere in there, she wrote another screenplay, Breach Of Contract, a 1982 movie so obscure IMDb doesn’t even assign it a genre. The Journey Of Natty Gann would be her third credit as screenwriter (it will probably not come as a complete shock to hear that Jeanne Rosenberg will be back in this column).
The film was produced by Mike Lobell, whose most recent project had been the Ryan O’Neal comedy So Fine, and directed by Jeremy Kagan. Kagan had quite a bit of television work under his belt, as well as the Henry Winkler vehicle Heroes and the critically acclaimed drama The Chosen starring Robby Benson. He’d also directed The Sting II but hey, they can’t all be gems. Neither Lobell nor Kagan had worked with Disney previously, which was exactly what the studio was looking for at the time.
The production team auditioned hundreds of young actors for the title role. They finally settled on 14-year-old Meredith Salenger, who had made her uncredited debut as one of the orphans in John Huston’s 1982 version of Annie. Salenger would stick with Disney for her next gig, a 1986 episode of The Disney Sunday Movie called My Town, before going on to an impressive career as an actor and voice artist, as well as a professional mediator performing pro-bono conflict resolution in the Los Angeles area. She too will be back in this column eventually.
Kagan surrounded his young star with a who’s who of terrific character actors, including the great Lainie Kazan and Scatman Crothers (last heard from in this column in The Aristocats) in what would be his final live-action film appearance. John Cusack, then best known for teen comedies like Sixteen Candles and The Sure Thing, gets one of his first dramatic roles as Harry, a young drifter who eventually becomes Natty’s traveling companion. And Ray Wise brings the same driven intensity to the role of Natty’s father, Sol, that he would later show to much darker effect as Leland Palmer on Twin Peaks. Wise shares one scene in Natty Gann with his future Twin Peaks costar, Don S. Davis. Davis remains out of focus in the background but there’s no mistaking the voice of Major Garland Briggs.
The film begins in Chicago in the grips of the Great Depression. Sol Gann, like so many others, is out of work and struggling to raise his daughter, Natty, on his own after the death of his wife. When a logging job comes along in Washington, Sol has no choice but to take it, reluctantly leaving Natty in the care of his landlady, Connie (Kazan), until he can save up enough cash to send for her.
It isn’t long before Connie gets fed up with Natty’s rebellious, independent nature. When she overhears Connie on the phone to protective services reporting her as an abandoned child, Natty decides to ride the rails out to Washington and find her dad. It’s on the train out of Chicago where she first meets Harry. He’s understandably skeptical of her ability to make it on her own but offers her some advice for surviving on the road.
At the train’s first stop, Natty hops off to scrounge up some food. She also wanders into a warehouse where an illegal dogfight is taking place (those of you who remember Nikki, Wild Dog Of The North know that this isn’t the first Disney dogfight). A beautiful but uncontrollable wolfdog kills his opponent, then turns on the assembled humans. Natty opens the door to allow the animal to escape. By the way, you may recognize Jed, the canine actor who plays Wolf, as the infected dog who starts all the trouble for Kurt Russell and friends in John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Returning to the train, Natty once again encounters Wolf. She leaves a hunk of food for him, then lets him have the rail car to himself, retreating to the safety of a freight car. Things are finally going her way when an accident derails the train, forcing her to trek through the woods. She runs into Wolf again, who repays her earlier kindness by leaving her a freshly killed rabbit. Seeking shelter from a storm, she shares a cave with Wolf and they form a bond over the course of the long night.
From here, things happen quickly. Natty and Wolf have a lot of adventures and one of the most impressive things about The Journey Of Natty Gann is its tight pacing. She spends some time with a farmer and his pregnant wife (played by Verna Bloom), temporarily joins up with a gang of junior cattle rustlers (including Barry Miller from Saturday Night Fever and Grant Heslov, George Clooney’s future producing partner, in his big screen debut), is arrested and has to escape from a girls’ reformatory. She gets some help from a badly scarred but kindly blacksmith (Bruce M. Fischer from Something Wicked This Way Comes and several Clint Eastwood movies) but has more hard times than easy.
Meanwhile, Sol has learned that his daughter is missing and resolves to track her down. When Natty’s wallet is recovered at the scene of the trainwreck, Sol fears the worst. Returning to his logging job, he volunteers for the position of “topper”, one of the most dangerous assignments on the team. Having lost both his wife and daughter, Sol can’t see any reason not to accept “widow’s work”.
Natty and Wolf meet up with Harry again at a shantytown just before it’s raided and burned to the ground. Harry joins them for the rest of the trek to Washington. He finds work down in San Francisco and asks Natty to come with, sure that her father has moved on. But Natty decides to persevere, ultimately tracking down the logging company and reuniting with her father.
With its plucky heroine and her canine costar, The Journey Of Natty Gann fits squarely in the long-established Disney tradition. But there’s no sense that Kagan or anyone else believed they were making “just” a Disney movie. Rosenberg’s screenplay is gentle enough for kids but remarkably clear-eyed about the grim realities of life in the Great Depression. These people are fighting for their survival and the movie makes no bones about the fact that life was hard.
It also happens to be a terrific looking movie. Dick Bush, the director of photography for such decidedly non-Disney pictures as William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Ken Russell’s Tommy, does a beautiful job capturing the Canadian landscape. Paul Sylbert, the Oscar-winning production designer of Heaven Can Wait and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, creates richly detailed sets that are perfectly evocative of the time and place. And costume designer Albert Wolsky earned an Oscar nomination for his outstanding work. He lost, probably understandably so, to Emi Wada and her brilliant costumes for Akira Kurosawa’s Ran but don’t feel too bad for Wolsky. He’d already won an Academy Award for All That Jazz and would win another a few years later for Bugsy.
The film’s original composer was Elmer Bernstein, who recently made his Disney debut with The Black Cauldron. But Bernstein’s score, for whatever reason, was ultimately not used, except for a couple of very brief moments. It was replaced by a new score by James Horner, who had also turned in an eleventh-hour replacement on Something Wicked This Way Comes. Horner’s music suits the film well and Bernstein’s work would eventually be released on compact disc by the soundtrack specialists at Varèse Sarabande on an album called The Unused Scores. Seems Elmer Bernstein had to deal with a lot of rejection in his career.
The Journey Of Natty Gann was released to American theatres on September 27, 1985. Like Return To Oz and The Black Cauldron, Natty Gann had the misfortune of being caught in the middle of the great Disney regime change. The new folks didn’t have any skin in the game, so they didn’t put much effort into its theatrical release. But critics championed it and the picture hadn’t cost a lot to make, so it didn’t end up losing money. Meredith Salenger won Best Starring Performance by a Young Actress at the Young Artist Awards, beating out the likes of Fairuza Balk in Return To Oz and Drew Barrymore in Cat’s Eye.
Natty Gann found a second life on home video and through repeated airings on the Disney Channel. The film absolutely deserved to find its audience. It’s exciting, emotional and genuinely moving. It’s just a shame that more people didn’t get to experience it on the big screen. The spectacular location photography would really come to life on a bigger canvas.
The Journey Of Natty Gann remains one of the high points of Disney’s extremely erratic 1980s output. If you’ve never seen it, I encourage you to check it out. You’re in for a treat. And if it’s been a while since you’ve taken the journey, it may be time to revisit it and pass it on to a new generation. Disney prides itself on making “timeless” films for the whole family. This one actually fits the bill.
VERDICT: A very big Disney Plus.
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