A whole lot of very familiar movie faces will be found in the Disney film A Tiger Walks. This is the story of the events during an evening and morning when a tiger with a traveling zoo is let loose by his very stupid and cruel handler Theo Marcuse. Rajah the tiger gets loose and causes a whole lot of havoc and becomes quite a political football with the local sheriff Brian Keith in one political party and the governor Edward Andrews in another with Andrews trying a little one upsmanship by calling in the state national guard on a tiger hunt.
Keith is a very sensible man whose own daughter Pamela Franklin has taken to championing the tiger's cause and its right to live. In that she's showing a whole lot more compassion than most of the grownups in the film. After all no one asked the tiger whether he wanted to be taken out of his jungle environment. Keith is also concerned that there is a fog at night which makes hunting impossible and that too many people will just make the tiger move into a nearby thickly wooded area from where it will be almost impossible to take him dead or alive.
Some of Franklin's indiscreet remarks to a television reporter puts Keith in the hot seat as if he doesn't have enough problems. But she starts by accident a money drive to save Rajah and put him in a zoo along with his family as he has mated and has a pair cub offspring.
Seeing a lot of familiar faces makes Disney films such a pleasure to watch. A whole lot of these people were finding less and less employment on the big screen. One of the funniest is Una Merkel owner of a small motel who is loving all this attention the town is getting as she's making visitors and town folks pay dear for those rooms.
Andrews is one slippery politician, he's even got his political operative Jack Albertson in charge of the hunt. In that Disney Studios was remarkably ahead of its time.
Two farewells mark this film. Kevin Corcoran who was now a big teen and no longer playing his Moochie character marked the end of his Disney association. Watching him years later in Disney products I can't believe how annoying he was though not so in this film. Secondly this was the farewell picture for Sabu who plays the tiger's other handler who is really the only one who knows what he's doing and only Brian Keith is listening to him with a little persuasion from Franklin and wife Vera Miles.
A Tiger Walks holds up well as good family entertainment with some interesting social commentary as well.
