Hayley Mills Top Ten

 I just finished Hayley Mill's memoirs, quite fun, and in the interests of killing time wile half watching a movie I'm not that engaged in I thought I'd do a Hayley Mills top ten.

1) Tiger Bay (1959) - astonishing debut. One of the best ever by a child actor, up there with Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon. One of J Lee Thompson's best movies. Yvonne Mitchell very good in a support role. A lot of 40s and 50s British films were about a kid who witnessed a crime (Hunted, Secret Place, The Fallen Idol, The Yellow Balloon)... this gets points for having a female.

 

2) The Parent Trap (1961) - I always wondered what Annette Funicello thought when Disney flipped over Hayley Mills and started making all these movies for her. "What am I? Chopped liver?" This movie is fun, once you get past the fact the parents conspired to keep kids away from their siblings and other parent for their whole life... oh, and that you can tell the reunion will last five seconds. Mills is excellent. Brian Keith is always good.

 

3) Whistle Down the Wind (1961). A small film, but extremely well done. Superbly acted. Written by Mills' mum - who became an alcoholic. Hayley later did another film written by her mother, Sky West and Crooked, that was a lot less successful.

 

4) The Trouble with Angels (1966) - Mills showed she could be in a popular teen film not made by Disney. Really fun girls-at-convent-school movie, surprisingly hasn't been embraced by many feminist critics despite its female stars, writer and director.

 

5) The Family Way (1966) I figured this would be a cutesy generation gap comedy jazzed up with a Paul McCartney soundtrack and some brief Hayley Mills nudity and, yeah, it is, only there's all this complex sexual stuff going on. Like Hywell Bennett clearly has a much lower sex drive than Mills which is going to cause troubles down the track, and John Mills plays a man who was clearly in love with his best friend (who went along on John Mills' honeymoon... is that normal in England?).

6) In Search of the Castaways (1962) Bright Jules Verne adventure.

7) Endless Night (1972) The best of Mills' psycho thrillers (Twisted Nerve, Deadly Strangers).

8) The Chalk Garden (1964) An old play gets the Ross Hunter treatment but quite well done.

9) The Moonspinners (1964) Charming spys in Greece tale from Disney, lovely location scenery, and Mills the ideal plucky heroine.

10) Appointment with Death (1988) - I wanted to include one late period HM film and this was it for me, she's very good in an entertaining film.