Child stars aren’t noted for their career longevity. Shirley Temple was retired by the age of 22; Deanna Durbin at 28; Bobby Driscoll was washed up at 23 and dead at 31. Hayley Mills, on the other hand, has been acting since 1959 and is still going strong. That’s a really, really long time, especially in child star years.
She was a movie star for about a decade. Not a fake star, only called that by over-hyping flacks, but a genuine, old-school, above-the-title movie star: listed in box-office polls, the focus of a carefully-protected public image, signatory to a long-term contract with a studio who would try to craft vehicles for her. In fact, you could make an argument that Hayley Mills was one of the last stars for whom that last factor applied, at least in English-speaking cinema.
Her reign as a box-office attraction ended after a cold streak of dud films, although she has continued to act, and would still be a draw on stage (heck, I saw her in a production of The King and I in Brisbane). Her acting and career have rarely received much critical attention so I thought I would have a look back at her life and times.
Mills was born in 1946 into a showbiz family, to put it mildly: dad John was a beloved actor, and one of the biggest stars in British cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, when his polite, decent “everyman” qualities were in particular demand in war movies like The Colditz Story (1953) and Above Us the Waves (1956). Mum Mary was a writer, and sister Juliet became an actor (Nanny and the Professor).
From her memoir, it sounds like Hayley was a relatively typical teen – slightly mischievous, close to her siblings, big imagination, all that – whose parents just happened to have very exotic professions. She had no ambition to act, unlike her sister, until director J. Lee Thompson visited the family home to discuss a movie he was making with her father, Tiger Bay (1959).
This was one in a surprisingly large sub-genre of British cinema in the ‘40s and ‘50s: the kids-who-witness-a-crime movie. These films would typically concern some plucky young thing who sees a crime and develops a strong bond with its perpetuator: examples include The Fallen Idol (1948), Hunted (1952), The Yellow Balloon (1953) (directed by Thompson), Moonfleet (1955), The Weapon (1956) and The Secret Place (1957). Tiger Bay was about a young boy in a seaside town who witnesses a sailor (Horst Buchholz) murder his girlfriend and they develop a, you guessed it, strong bond.
During script conferences, Thompson noticed the 12-year-old Hayley Mills running around, singing TV jingles, showing off as kids like to do, and the idea hit him that the boy character could be turned into a girl played by John Mills’ daughter. It would be a point of difference, not to mention publicity-friendly stunt casting. The Millses agreed and the film was made: Tiger Bay is a terrific thriller-drama from Thompson’s peak period, which benefits from location shooting, confident handling, and, most of all the performance of Hayley Mills. She’s a wonder – completely natural, relaxed. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth a look.
The film was a minor hit, not massive, but profitable. Astonishingly, there were no job offers for Hayley as a result – not even, as far as I know, for something like a bratty little sister in a Tommy Steele musical. Mills writes in her memoirs that she couldn’t even get cast in the school nativity play.
She went to visit her father in Australia, where he was making the mediocre film version of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959). This trip gave rise to my favourite anecdote in the book: she was at a party attended by the touring English cricket side, who had just lost the Ashes and were getting drunk; when Anne Baxter (John Mills’ co-star in the film) lost an earring in the pool, the whole team jumped in fully clothed to find it. (Something I can imagine every English cricket team on tour doing… it gives one a wonderful sense of continuity.) Mills might have slunk back into civilian life had not Tiger Bay been seen by a Mr Walt Disney.
Disney had enjoyed enormous success in the 1950s with his live-action features, but they were mostly boys’ own stories: Treasure Island (1950), Davy Crockett (1955), Old Yeller (1957), Third Man on the Mountain (1959), etc. Writer-director David Swift suggested they do a new version of Pollyanna, a classic novel that had been filmed with Mary Pickford, and Disney agreed.
Disney had quite a big female star under contract, Annette Funicello, but for whatever reason never seemed to have much faith in her abilities to carry a film (she usually supported the boy); his other key female star, Janet Munro, was too old. After seeing Tiger Bay, however, he felt Hayley Mills would be ideal.
The Mills family were uncertain, especially as Disney wanted to sign her to a multi-picture contract, but they relented when the studio agreed to make that deal non-exclusive. Disney got mum and dad over the line by offering John Mills the lead in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) (I’d always thought his casting came before Pollyanna but nope… it was a pay-off. Not a bad one, incidentally, John Mills was good in Robinson).
Pollyanna was stuffed with excellent support actors and production value. The resulting film was actually a slight commercial disappointment (the running time is awfully long) but it’s never stopped playing somewhere in the world (people love that movie) and reviews of Hayley Mills’ performance were generally, and deservedly, superb: she was plucky, brave and (spoilers) paraplegic without being annoying, and served as an excellent centre for the action.
Mills was awarded a special Oscar and Disney announced they had signed her to five more movies.
According to the memoir, David Swift hadn’t originally wanted Mills for Pollyanna, but they ended up getting along wonderfully during the shoot and he wrote and directed her next film for Disney: The Parent Trap (1961).
This became recognised almost instantly as the classic kids-who-reunite-their-parents comedy (it’s still referenced today) and was a huge hit. Once you get past the cruelty of the premise (i.e. parents have kept twin sisters separated from each other and one of their parents for years), it remains a charming tale, thanks a great deal to its star, who was now judged one of the biggest box-office attractions in the world (according to exhibitor polls she was the biggest in England in 1961).
She became a pop star, too, with her rendition of “Let’s Get Together” from The Parent Trap hitting the top ten.
Indeed, by now Mills was so big, she could get a film financed in Britain on the strength of her name alone. This was Whistle Down the Wind (1961), from a novel by her mother, and the directorial debut of Bryan Forbes. It’s a wonderful picture, a little like Tiger Bay in that it revolves around kids and criminals: in this case, Hayley plays one of three siblings who thinks a prison escapee (Alan Bates) is Jesus Christ. The movie was a critical sensation (Mills was nominated for a BAFTA), and one of the most popular films of the year in Britain; Forbes later said it was the most popular and profitable feature he ever made.
Mills was probably the hottest teen star in the business – a dream friend/girlfriend/daughter/big sister. After reading her memoir, I think this was in part because Mills, in real life, was a very identifiable teen, and this came across on screen: she came from a close if tempestuous family (mum was an alcoholic), she was a bully victim at school, she was insecure about her weight and looks, and prone to crushes.
This vulnerability and relatability led to tonnes of fan mail and, unfortunately, a fair few stalkers (girl-next-door stars tend to get more of these than the femme fatales because, I think, they seem more approachable).
Other filmmakers came calling but were knocked back by Disney and/or her parents. Otto Preminger wanted Mills for Exodus (1960), the part of a Jewish girlfriend of Sal Mineo, who (spoilers) gets killed; although the movie was based on a Leon Uris best-seller and starred Paul Newman (and it would be a massive hit), Preminger was a notorious bully to actors, and I don’t think Mills missed too much by not doing this one (Jill Haworth took the role). However, it is definitely a shame that she didn’t do any of four other movies offered: The Greengage Summer (1961) for Lewis Gilbert, Term of Trial (1961) with Laurence Olivier, The Children’s Hour (1962) for William Wyler with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, and Lolita (1962) for Stanley Kubrick.
Her parents apparently vetoed Greengage, and the part went to Susannah York, launching that actor to stardom. There were trade announcements that Hayley would be in Term of Trial, but apparently her parents stopped that one too, not wanting their daughter playing a seducer of Laurence Olivier; Sarah Miles stepped in and became a star as a result. In Children’s Hour, Mills was offered the part of the gossipy brat who spreads rumours that two teachers are lesbians; Disney felt this was inconsistent with her image and vetoed it (Karen Balkin played the part). For Lolita, Mills would have starred as the nymphet obsessed over by James Mason (eventually played by Sue Lyon); Disney vetoed that one, which isn’t surprising.
Still, it was a pity, and Mills was annoyed, even at the time, especially over Lolita. When the great directors call, it’s best to answer. It’s interesting to wonder how Mills’ career might’ve panned out had she made Lolita – probably a lot more pervy movies.
Disney put her in a Jules Verne adventure tale, In Search of the Castaways (1962), an old-school ripping yarn with Mills searching for her missing father. There are scenes set in Australia and New Zealand, which will give it novelty to antipodean viewers, and Mills has a cute puppy love romance with Michael Anderson. This movie doesn’t get recalled as much these days as other Disney adventures from this period such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Swiss Family Robinson, but it was one of the most popular films of the year.
Keeping things varied, Mills’ next movie for Disney was Summer Magic (1963), some turn-of-the-century Americana with songs. As a film, it’s okay, with some nice scenes between Mills and Deborah Walley, but a bit bland: there’s no small town atmosphere, Dorothy McGuire (who plays mum) looks like she’s going to fall asleep and I kept getting the support cast mixed up. It’s a shame Disney didn’t instead make another film announced for Mills that never went to production, a version of Dodie Smith’s I Captured the Castle (this was eventually shot in 2003 with Rose Byrne).
Disney allowed Mills to star in a film in England for producer Ross Hunter: a version of the Enid Bagnold stage play, The Chalk Garden (1964), which Hunter had developed for Sandra Dee. It’s an effective movie, helped by superb work from Deborah Kerr and Edith Evans, and was a solid hit at the box-office, proving again that Mills didn’t need the Disney name to bring in the punters. I
Incidentally, Dee’s career has interesting parallels with Mills: both were girl-next-door types who enjoyed huge popularity, both were attached to studios who developed vehicles for them (in Dee’s case, Universal), both had celebrity marriages and struggles with their weight, both were rarely taken seriously by critics but were better actors than they got credit for, both struggled to find good movies from the late sixties onwards. Dee’s personal life was far more tragic: she was sexually abused by her stepfather, had a psychiatric breakdown, developed full blown anorexia, died young… but then she had lousy parents. Mills’ parents, for all their flaws (and they are spelled out in the memoir), at least cared and were present.
Back at Disney, Mills had her first proper on-screen romance in The Moon Spinners (1964), a charming mystery shot on location in Greece, backed with a superb support cast. Peter McEnerey was her leading man and, like many of Mills’ leading men in this decade, seemed too old for her, but it’s a fun 90 minutes.
This sort of movie was harder to make than it looked: a point promptly proved when Hayley then appeared in The Truth about Spring (1965) alongside her dad for Universal; it tried to be a Disney-style adventure-romance, complete with another Disney alumni as lead (James MacArthur) and location filming (Spain), but did not work.
Back in Hollywood, Mills starred in That Darn Cat! (1965) for Disney, a hugely entertaining comedy featuring one of that studio’s strongest casts of the era (Dean Jones, Roddy McDowall, Elsa Lanchester, etc). It was a big hit, and Disney wanted to continue their contract with Mills, but she walked away, wanting independence.
She later said this was a mistake. Maybe. I wonder what sort of films the studio would have put her in – she was probably too young at first to romance Dean Jones like, say, Dorothy Provine, Suzanne Pleshette and Yvette Mimieux, but I can imagine her in The Love Bug (1969). I actually don’t think leaving Disney was as big a career error as another thing she did (or, rather, didn’t do).
Mills’ first post-Disney film was another family affair, Sky West and Crooked (1966), from a novel by her mother, directed by her dad. It was an attempt to recapture some of the magic of Whistle Down the Wind, but all the chips have to fall the right way for these sort of movies to work (i.e. sensitive character pieces) and it didn’t happen; this isn’t a bad picture, just not a particularly good one.
Hayley headed back to Hollywood for The Trouble with Angels (1966), a comedy about the antics of girls at a Catholic school. This is actually terrific fun: warm, clever, and surprisingly respectful of nuns; I am surprised that academics don’t discuss it more, with its female director (Ida Lupino), fascinating support cast (including Gypsy Rose Lee) and depiction of women. It was a hit, proving once again that Hayley Mills was box-office outside Disney, and led to a sequel (in which Mills did not appear).
Around this time, Mills also voiced The Little Mermaid in a charming Rankin-Bass film The Daydreamer (1967). She was offered the Samantha Eggar part in Doctor Doolittle (1967), but turned it down, mostly, she says in her memoirs, because her sister Juliet was also up for the role and she didn’t want to cause bad blood in the family.
It was a mistake, as was the fact that after Angels, Mills didn’t make a Hollywood film until the 1980s. That latter fact was the big career error. Historically, it’s always a mistake for a British star, especially female ones, to only appear in British films; they cut themselves off from too many opportunities that way. This would definitely be the case for Hayley Mills. I’m not saying she would have stayed at her level of stardom, but she surely would have had more opportunities than what followed.
It wouldn’t have seemed like that at first. After Angels, Mills appeared in The Family Way (1966), a comedy-drama set in an industrial town, about a man (Hywell Bennett) unable to consummate his marriage to a young bride (Hayley Mills). John Mills is superb as Hayley’s father, possibly in love with his dead male mate. Hayley did a (hugely publicised) nude scene, flashing a bit of bum, but it is in context of the story.
The Family Way was the most successful solely-British-financed film of the year – the nude scene certainly didn’t hurt at the box-office, nor did the fact that Paul McCartney wrote the soundtrack.
At the film’s premiere, Hayley hooked up with The Family Way’s director, Roy Boulting, despite the fact that he was 32 years older than her, with three ex-wives and six other children. This became a bit of a tabloid scandal of its day, not a particularly sexy one, and it probably hurt Mills’ career… though not as much as the cold streak of poor British films she then made.
First off was Pretty Polly (1967), the tale of a young woman abroad in Singapore. It had a Noel Coward source novel, Guy Green as director (he was the original director of Whistle Down the Wind before he dropped out), Trevor Howard as the male lead, some raciness (Mills has sex on the beach with Shashi Kapoor), but it all seems very slight. It lacks something – extra characterisation, location footage, a plot twist…
Noel Coward had enjoyed the TV adaptation of his novel (which starred Lyn Redgrave) but loathed the motion picture version. He wrote in his diary, “Hayley, poor child, did her best, but there was no hope with that script and that director.” She’s actually quite good in the part, incidentally – better than the film, something that would become a recurring theme in her later career.
Twisted Nerve (1968) seemed like a promising change-of-pace – a psycho thriller directed by Boulting, reuniting her with Hywell Bennett from The Family Way. Unfortunately, it is not a very good movie in which Mills doesn’t have much to do except react – I think Boulting was trying to fashion her as a Hitchcock blonde but she’s very passive and the movie lacks the directorial flair of a Hitchcock, Seth Holt or Freddie Francis.
Twisted Nerve is best remembered today for its effective whistling theme tune (used in Kill Bill) and allegations that the film implied there was a connection between Down Syndrome and psychotic behaviour. Mills called Twisted Nerve “an unmitigated disaster… it wasn’t my kind of film. It wasn’t even a good role… No one wanted to see Pollyanna being stalked by a pervert.” I’d disagree with that last statement – it wasn’t the genre, or the concept, it was just the execution.
Take a Girl Like You (1970) was more self-consciously groovy – based on a Kingsley Amis novel, co-starring Oliver Reed, directed by Jonathan Miller of the Beyond the Fringe group. Some people like this movie. I think it is dreadful. For all its swinging trappings, at its heart this is a Rock Hudson-Doris Day-Tony Randall comedy with Oliver Reed as Rock, Hayley as Doris and Noel Harrison as Randall; she does excellent work, incidentally, warm and likable, but Reed comes across as a lecherous sex pest (Mills says he was like that during filming) and Williamson as a camp creep. Mills claims the producer wanted a sexy comedy while Miller wanted a satire, which may explain why the end result was a mess. It tanked.
Mills’ enthusiasm for acting was reignited by playing Peter Pan on stage, which kicked off a theatrical career. She writes in her memoir that she recognises now that she should have left Boulting in 1970 but couldn’t bring herself to do it. If she had, she might’ve avoided a fourth cinematic disaster in a row: Mr Forbush and the Penguins (1971).
This man-and-his-penguin tale began production under the direction of Al Viola, who went over budget; Viola was fired and replaced with Roy Boulting, who in turn substituted female lead Susan Fleetwood with his partner. It did not work; this is a spectacularly charmless movie in which Mills is wasted, only worth watching for its location photography. Hayley is charming in her few scenes and the film would’ve been better if she’d played the lead – she would have been more at home with the material than the actual star, John Hurt. It lost a fortune.
Mills wound up getting married to Boulting (they had a kid, which prolonged the relationship for a few more years). She appeared in another movie for her husband, or his company, rather: British Lion’s Endless Night (1972). This was based on an excellent Agatha Christie novel, directed by Sidney Gilliat, with Hywel Bennett as the male lead. It’s not a bad movie, with a decent story and cast, but lacks flair; Gilliat – who has a fine CV – had not directed for ten years and you can tell. It was an improvement from her last efforts but was another commercial flop.
By this point, the British film industry had collapsed and Mills really should have headed over to Hollywood, especially considering as she lost most of her child star earnings to the tax office due to poor financial advice. Her husband lost more of their money making the terrible Soft Beds Hard Battles (1973) (like Twisted Nerve, it was co-written by Leo Marks who Mills says was a bad influence on Boulting). However, she was loving motherhood and getting creative satisfaction from theatre.
Mills starred in three more features. There were two for director Sidney Hayers: What Changed Charley Farthing? (1974), a painful attempt at an African Queen-type jaunt co-starring Doug McClure, with Mills attempting an odd accent and seeming unhappy; and Deadly Strangers (1975) a psycho thriller with Simon Ward in which Mills went nude again but couldn’t compensate for a lack of story.
Then she travelled to South Africa to star in the dull The Kingfisher Caper (1975), alongside David McCallum and Jon Cypher with Roy Boulting doing some work on the script (based on a Wilbur Smith novel). In all these films, Mills had this dreadful mumsy haircut as if deliberately trying to ugly-fy one of the most attractive British stars of the day. All three films lacked style: every second movie of the ‘60s in Britain would be brilliantly stylish but these ‘70s efforts were all shot like bad television. She doesn’t mention any of these films in her book, incidentally. Self-protective amnesia, I assume.
It was actually quite strange that the British film industry didn’t use Hayley Mills better: she was pretty, charming and could act, had a box-office name. But she managed to miss the good movies grabbed by, say, the Redgraves or Julie Christie or even Jenny Agutter.
Mills and Boulting were still together in 1975, but she left him not long after (they divorced in 1977), at which point her memoir ends. She doesn’t write about her relationship with actor Leigh Lawson (who she hooked up with post-Boulting), or her eventual return to Hollywood in the ‘80s (a lot of made-for-TV Parent Trap sequels, and guest stints on TV shows, plus an early gig on Saved by the Bell). She had a juicy support role in Appointment with Death (1988), but her best parts were in England, where she did a lot of TV and stage.
She’s still plugging away and always comes across in interviews as super nice and wonderfully well-adjusted.
What lessons can be learned from the career of Hayley Mills? Here are some:
1) When great directors call, just answer.
2) Get decent lawyers and accountants and don’t be afraid to sue bad ones who’ve cost you money.
3) You don’t have to live in Hollywood but don’t abandon it.
4) Your husband doesn’t always know best.
5) Your parents don’t always know best. But if they at least care and you stay off hard drugs and booze you can be a child actor and still turn out alright.
Anyway, Hayley Mills. Give the book a read, it’s fun.
