Movie Type: Musical Comedy, Family-Oriented Adventure
Themes: Runaways, Mischievous Children
Main Cast: Odessa Cleveland, Jean Fay, Kim O'Brien, Jeff East, Paul Winfield, Harvey Korman
Release Year: 1974
Country: US
Run Time: 117 minutes
Plot
One of Mark Twain's best-loved stories becomes a screen musical in this family-friendly adaptation. Mischievous Huckleberry Finn (Jeff East) is a 15-year-old boy who has long had a difficult relationship with his often violent father. When Dad tried to kidnap him, Huck decides to run away from home, and heads out of town on a raft. Huck is soon joined by Jim (Paul Winfield), a runaway slave who is no more eager to see his master than Huck is to see his father. As the two friends make their way down the Mississippi, they're faced with a variety of challenges and adventures, including a run-in with a pair of shabby but dignified actors, The King (Harvey Korman) and The Duke (David Wayne). Produced in association with Reader's Digest magazine, which in 1973, scored a box-office hit with a musical version of Twain's Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn featured original songs by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, who also wrote the songs for a handful of Disney hits, including Mary Poppins. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Lucille Benson - Widder Douglas; Gary Merrill - Pap; Arthur O'Connell - Col. Grangerford; Natalie Trundy - Mrs. Loftus; Linda Watkins - Mrs. Grangerford; David Wayne - The Duke; Andrew Knight; Pat O'Connor; John Schwartzman; Ken Wannberg; Ron Wright; Odessa Cleveland - Jim's Wife; Jean Fay - Susan; Kim O'Brien - Maryjane; Frank Mills - Buck
This film followed the previous year's highly successful Tom Sawyer, based on Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was produced and written by the same team and also starred Jeff East in the role of Huckleberry Finn.
Hucklberry Finn (Jeff East) a boy from Missouri who goes fishing and gets locked in the cabin from his nasty old Dad (Gary Merrill) and shots the horse riders with a Gun becomes friends with a slave Jim (Paul Winfield) rides on a log boat and lives at the scoundrels house (Harvey Korman, David Wayne) and cuts up the Mattress to take the money so he'll be rich.
Setbacks in the film's production
The 1974 musical faced numerous setbacks in production. The first of these was the sudden death of producer Arthur Jacobs half way through shooting. Another problem lay with director J. Lee Thompson who had problems with the synchronized musical direction. The third major problem was the unfortunate timing of writer Robert B. Sherman's artificial knee operation.
Without a producer, the film crew had difficulties managing the actors. Roberta Flack sang the classic, "Freedom" but insisted on having a guitar backing to her recording. She later threatened to sue if the Original Cast album was released with a dominant orchestral backing, and so although the album was recorded and printed, it was never released.
Despite these setbacks, the film still achieved some success and some of the film's songs, including "Freedom" are still considered classics.
Freedom. Sung by Roberta Flack. Flack did not approve of the musical arrangement and threatened a lawsuit if the Original Cast album were not remastered to her liking.
Rotten Luck. It was sung by Gary Merrill. The entire song was filmed sans-sync except for the final line of the song in which we see Merrill look back at the cabin and say, "And now my luck... It ain't so bad!". The unsynchronized direction of this musical number did not work very well and did not seem motivated or natural.
