April 18 - Hayley Mills

Image courtesy disney.fandom.com

On this day, in 1946, Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills was born in Marylebone, London, England. As the daughter of Sir John Mills, an actor who appeared in over 120 films, it was probably inevitable that Hayley would become a star herself. Talent does run in her family: her mother, Mary, was a playwright, her sister, Juliet, was on the soap opera Passions for decades, her brother, Jonathan, became a screenwriter and her son, Crispian, is a musician.

Hayley was first noticed when she was 12. Her father was set to star in a British crime drama, Tiger Bay. The producers were looking for a boy to play the other lead in the movie, a street rat who witnesses a crime. A pre-production meeting with John took place with Hayley tagging along. I’m not sure what exactly happened at that meeting, but the role was changed to a girl, Hayley got the part, the film was a huge success in England and she went on to win a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer. Just as important to our story (and maybe Hayley’s, too), Bill Anderson, a producer at the Walt Disney Studio in America, happened to see Tiger Bay.

Image copyright Disney

Disney was gearing up to do a big screen adaptation of the 1913 novel, Pollyanna. The studio was having difficulty coming up with an actress to play the title role, until Bill said he’d seen someone who might be perfect in a British film. Walt watched Tiger Bay and agreed, hiring Hayley to play his upbeat orphan alongside Karl Malden and Jane Wyman. When Pollyanna was released in 1960, it was almost unanimously praised as Disney's best live action film to date, but failed to ignite audiences (or at least failed in the eyes of the studio, which was hoping for twice the box office of $2.5 million it achieved). It was enough to catapult Hayley to international stardom. For her work on the film, she was presented with a Juvenile Academy Award, the 12th and last ever presented. Interestingly, when Hayley was unable to attend the Oscar ceremony, another Disney Legend, Annette Funicello, accepted for her.

Image copyright Disney

For her followup to Pollyanna, Walt cast Hayley in her two most enduring roles:  Sharon McKendrick and Susan Evers in The Parent Trap. The film, also starring Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith, was a bona fide hit. It reached number six on the box office list for 1961 (just behind another Disney classic, The Absent Minded Professor) grossing over $25 million. It also marked the first time Hayley sang on screen, a duet with herself called Let's Get Together. The single version topped out at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and had the cheeky singing credit "Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills". The same year she did a British film, Whistle Down the Wind, which also became an English hit and, along with The Parent Trap, earned her the vote for biggest star in Britain 1961.

Image copyright Disney

Hayley's third film for the studio came in 1962, In Search of the Castaways. Starring opposite Maurice Chevalier this time, Castaways became the hit of the Christmas season, reaching number three at the box office for the year. The next year, she starred with Burl Ives in the musical Summer Magic. Not as big a commercial success as her two previous films, Hayley still managed to earn a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. In 1964, she appeared in a critically acclaimed British adaptation of The Chalk Garden with her father and her fifth Disney film, The Moon-Spinners. The last of her string of hits with the studio came the next year when she played Patti Randall in That Darn Cat! opposite Dean Jones (in his first Disney film). Her six films in six years had turned Hayley into the most popular young actress of the decade.

Hayley's major affiliation with The Walt Disney Company ended about the same time as her major popularity did. Her career, however carried on. Over the next decade, she appeared in eleven more films. Some she did with her father (The Family Way in 1966) and some she did with her new husband, director Roy Boulting (Twisted Nerve in 1968 and Mr. Forbush and the Penguins in 1971). In 1970, Hayley made her West End stage debut in a production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. After starring in a South African film, The Kingfish Caper, in 1975, she simply stopped acting for a while (it may have had something to do with the affair she had with Leigh Lawson, a fellow cast member in A Touch of Spring on the West End; a year later her marriage had ended and she and Leigh had a son, Jason, together).

Image copyright Disney

In 1981, Hayley returned to acting on British television in a mini-series called The Flame Trees of Thika. The positive critical reception gave her the courage to accept more roles and revive her career. She narrated an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney. The buzz that generated prompted the company to throw her into back into her old roles of Sharon and Susan from The Parent Trap in a series of made-for-tv sequels: The Parent Trap II, The Parent Trap III, and (for some sad reason) Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon. In 1987, Hayley starred in a new show on The Disney Channel called Our Miss Bliss. Bliss only lasted 13 episodes before moving to NBC, where it was reformatted (unfortunately for Hayley, minus Miss Bliss) and renamed to something you might be more familiar with, Saved By the Bell. Her longest gig of recent times was on a British drama, Wild at Heart, where she starred as Caroline Du Plessis for six seasons starting in 2007.

Image courtesy geocities.ws

Hayley has also been regularly appearing on stages around the world since her return to acting in the early Eighties. She played Anna in both an Australian production and a touring company of The King and I (I happened to catch a performance of that when it came through Orlando in the late Nineties; she sounded exactly like she did in The Parent Trap). She won a Theatre World Award in 2000 for her off-Broadway debut in Noel Coward's Suite in Two Keys. In 2015, she toured Australia with her sister, Juliet, in the comedy Legends!

Haley was one of the earliest people to be declared a Disney Legend. As part of the class of 1998, she only trailed Fred MacMurray, Ib Iwerks and the Nine Old Men in receiving the honor. And the honors coming her way may not be done yet. At the age of 73, Hayley's career is far from over. Later this year, she'll be featured in a new BBC drama, Pitching In. Hopefully the new venture will make us  more Wild at Heart and less craving a Hawaiian Honeymoon.