Trading Places: Das Doppelte Lottchen and The Parent Trap

8. TRADING PLACES: DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP Constantine Verevis In 1961, Walt Disney Productions released The Parent Trap, a story of identical thirteen-year-old twins, Susan Evers and Sharon McKendrick, who meet for the first time at a summer camp and gradually realise they are sisters (separated at birth) whose divorced parents took custody of one child each. Curious and eager to meet each other’s parent, the girls decide to trade places – Susan goes to Boston masquerading as Sharon, Sharon goes to Carmel (California) pretending to be Susan – whereupon the twins devise a plan to reconcile their estranged parents and re-create an ideal family unit. With Hayley Mills starring in the dual role of twins, The Parent Trap was a huge popular and commercial success for the Disney studio: it was theatrically reissued in 1968, and subsequently extended through two television sequels, The Parent Trap II and III (1986, 1989). Moreover, it was remade (by Disney) in 1998, ‘introducing’ Lindsay Lohan in the twin role (in this case) of Annie James and Hallie Parker, raised respectively in London and California. Perhaps less well known is that Disney’s 1961 version of The Parent Trap was itself already a remake of German, Japanese and British versions – Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), Hibari no komoriuta (1951) and Twice Upon a Time (1953) – each in turn derived from Erich Kästner’s 1949 novel Das doppelte Lottchen (published in English translation as Lottie and Lisa). While the cultural production does not end here – with subsequent versions reported in India, Iran and Korea, and animated and live-action remakes in Germany and Japan – this chapter inquires into the transnational connections between Kästner’s novel and the American and German versions (originals and remakes). While the doppelgänger is a 130 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP familiar figure in German fiction, this chapter extends its analysis beyond Kästner’s twin figures of Lotte and Luise to chart not only a cartography of transnational flows – a political economy of textual production and reception – but also indicate the way in which the exchange of twins – Lotte (Lottie) and Luise (Lisa), Susan and Sharon, Charlotte and Louise, Annie and Hallie – is symptomatic of that between original and remake. First published in German as Das doppelte Lottchen (1949), Erich Kästner’s children’s novel – ‘Ein Roman für Kinder’, as it is described on the title page – was translated into English as Lottie and Lisa in the following year.1 The English translation tells the story of two nine-year-old girls – Lisa Palfy (in Kästner’s original, Luise Palfy) from Vienna and Lottie Horn (Lotte Körner) from Munich – who meet on a summer camp at a small village on Lake Bohren. Lisa has curly hair and Lottie wears braids, but aside from these cosmetic differences their likeness is uncanny. The girls have never seen each other before, but upon matching one another’s birth dates they realise that they are identical twins, separated as infants at the time of their parents’ divorce. At the end of camp, they decide to trade places: Lisa (as ‘Lottie’) braids her hair and joins her mother Lisalotte Horn, who works for a Munich illustrator and lives modestly as a single mother. Lottie (as ‘Lisa’) curls hers, and joins her father, the composer-conductor Arnold Palfy, who lives by more comfortable means in a spacious apartment, and with a housekeeper. The girls correspond, but when Lottie finds out that her father is planning to remarry a fashionable woman of leisure, Miss Irene Gerlach, she becomes ill and stops writing to her sister in Munich. Meanwhile, Lottie’s mother comes across a picture of the two girls that was taken while they were at summer camp, and confronts Lisa, who tells her the entire story. When Lisalotte calls Arnold to tell him what has happened and learns why Lottie has stopped writing she immediately travels, with Lisa, to Vienna. Reunited, the family has occasion to celebrate the twins’ tenth birthdays, whereupon the girls tell their parents that they do not ever need birthday presents again so long as they don’t have to be separated. The parents talk it over, realise that they still have feelings for one another, and decide to remarry. A popular success, Kästner’s novel was adapted to film the following year – Das doppelte Lottchen (Josef von Baky 1950) – with the author himself preparing the screenplay. In consultation with the film’s director, Hungarian-born Josef von Baky, Kästner auditioned hundreds of pairs of twins for the lead roles, eventually choosing real-life twins Jutta and Isa Günther as the perfect expression of the fictional Luise and Lottie. Kästner’s screenplay follows the book with precision, not only retaining all the key plot elements – situations, characters and locations – but also lifting large passages of dialogue and finding inspiration in the book’s many illustrations, drawn by Walter Trier. Moreover, the novel’s lively, omniscient third-person narration – which (in 131 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS English translation) opens with the following lines, ‘Do you happen to know Bohrlaken? . . . That’s where the story begins . . . It’s a rather complicated story . . . Complicated and pretty thrilling’ (Kästner 1950: 1–2) – is imported wholesale as a voice-over by Kästner himself, who appears at the opening of the film in a direct address to the camera. Kästner’s close involvement led some commentators to describe the film version as a ‘cinematic illustrated history’ (Critchfield 2004: 238), but the film’s director, Baky, does in fact manage to creatively visualise some passages from the book. For instance, the brief recounting of the parents’ separation and divorce shows the temperamental artist Arnold Palfy (Peter Mosbacher) driven to a state of creative desperation by ‘the little twins [who] howled day and night in the flat’ (Kästner 1950: 61), comically rendering the incident in a sped-up, two-shot sequence: Palfy in shirtsleeves at the piano, tearing at his hair for the twins’ distraction, and (next) Palfy in overcoat preparing to leave as removalists carry his piano to another flat. Similarly, the excursion of Lottie (dressed as Lisa) with her father, who is conducting Hänsel and Gretel at the Vienna Opera House, is also her first encounter with Irene Gerlach (Senta Wengraf), a figure whom Lottie immediately recognises as a witch, albeit ‘a more beautiful witch than the one on the stage’ (74). The episode leads to Lottie’s nightmare (75–81), rendered in the film as a distorted, expressionistic dream sequence. The segment – which draws upon Trier’s illustration, ‘Lottie had a dream’ (77) – begins in the family flat where the twins – exiled by the father – are magically transported, first to a dark forest and from there, at the command of the wicked witch (embodied by the fiancée, Gerlach), on further to a sunny meadow and gingerbread house where the twins are ultimately separated – literally cut in half – by their quite deranged father. Despite objections to the film’s perceived technical weakness and overt sentimentality, the film version of Das doppelte Lottchen went on to become a popular success and winner of several film prizes (including the 1951 German Film Prize in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay) and was theatrically reissued in 1979 (Holloway 1994: 7). Commenting on this success, Anne Critchfield writes that it is ‘exceedingly tempting’ to understand Das doppelte Lottchen’s story of separated twins as a metaphor for the division of Germany after World War II (2004: 234). Such an assumption is reinforced by the near-proximity of the 1994 German remake to the beginning of German reunification in 1990, but Critchfield more generally describes the dream of reunification – the discovery of someone or something thought to be long since lost – as a parable for the resumption of normal life after war-related faults and disjunctions. That is, rather than bind the narrative invention of Das doppelte Lottchen to a specific political and geographical situation, Critchfield identifies the book and film’s longing for familial reconciliation as a broader, more universal theme, and one that more likely accounts for the popularity of 132 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP the work and is reason for the international reach and multiple retellings of the story. Further abstracted to the figure of the doppelgänger, the twin nature of the protagonists in Das doppelte Lottchen can be traced through literature and folklore (worldwide) to symbolise the duality of the self. In this case, the ultimate reunification of Lotte and Luise can be understood as an expression of the reconciliation of that fractured self, estranged in and through the broken family situation (Broad 1995: 123, 127). It is this ‘universal’ appeal that in all likelihood further accounts for the multiple versions – historical and regional – of the Kästner property. Critchfield (2004: 239) notes eleven film/television versions derived from (and in varying degrees, credited to) Kästner’s novel. These include: Emeric Pressburger’s authorised adaptation, Twice Upon a Time (1953); live-action film and animated television versions from Japan – Hibari no komoriuta (The Lullaby of Hibari, Koji Shima, 1951) and Watashi to Watashi: Futari no Lotte (I and Myself: The Two Lottes, 1991); the German remake, Charlie and Louise: Das doppelte Lottchen (Joseph Vilsmaier, 1994) and animated version, Das doppelte Lottchen (Toby Genkel, 2007); and It Takes Two (Andy Tennant, 1995) – a version with the Olsen twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley – widely recognised as an unofficial remake. Versions (not noted by Crtichfield) include Double Trouble (2007), a thirteen-episode children’s television drama series, produced by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, but the most widely known and distributed of all these adaptations is Walt Disney’s The Parent Trap (David Swift, 1961) and its 1998 remake (directed by Nancy Meyers). The material that was to become Disney production # 2136 – Das doppelte Lottchen – was uncovered by a reader in Disney’s story department, shortly after the publication of the English-language edition. The discovery of the story – a tale of nine-year-old twin girls, separated as infants, who meet at summer camp, trade places, and subsequently bring the family unit together – meshed with an image that represented the Disney company as an upstanding moral organisation, one with an express commitment to middle-class family values, and to the welfare of children (Giroux and Pollock 2010: 25). Despite its resolutely commercial orientation, Disney had worked to situate itself as an icon of American culture and of family values, all delivered through ‘the promise of making . . . dreams come true through the pleasures of wholesome entertainment’ (27). Accordingly, Disney Studios had established itself not just as a provider of entertainment but also as a political force, one devoted to the development of models of instruction that would inform how young people were to be educated (27). This work – which was seen to contribute to, and naturalise, a dominant, ‘middle-class patriarchal [and] heterosexual paradigm’ (Griffin 2000: 38) – was especially evident in the period following World War II, during which a gradual adoption of a conservative aesthetic and underlying 133 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS ideology resulted, by the beginning of the 1950s, in the consolidation of a new and massively successful Walt Disney Company. This was enabled not only through the ongoing investment in feature-length animated versions of famous children’s tales – Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953) and Sleeping Beauty (1959) – but also through its diversification into live-action feature films, wildlife documentaries, television programmes and – pre-eminently – its Disneyland theme park, which opened in the summer of 1955. The latter provided the Disney Company with a regular source of income, and the familyfriendly image of the theme park coalesced in the kindly paternal figure of Walt Disney himself, who had entered the nation’s living rooms in and through his hosting of the studio’s weekly television anthology programme, initially entitled Disneyland (1955–7) and later Walt Disney Presents (1958–61). First broadcast on the ABC network, the anthology series went through a further change of title at the end of 1961, when it was moved to NBC in order to take advantage of the network’s ability to broadcast in colour. Rebadged Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, it retained that title until 1969 when it became simply The Wonderful World of Disney (Gillan 2015: 215). By the time of Disney’s death (in 1966) the studio had perfected its fashioning of a wholesome image, and ‘the company had taken on the mantle of upholding traditional American values and was encouraged to find popularity and profit . . . through teaching these values to others’ (Griffin 2000: 47). The late 1950s and early 1960s also signalled Disney’s move towards the embrace of ‘tween-inclusive’ live-action family comedy (Gillan 2015: 215): films that were – as Neal Gabler describes in his expansive Disney biography – ‘broad, simple, and clearly child-oriented’ (2007: 586).2 Although still (in the main) profitable, Disney animations of the 1950s had typically enjoyed a lower profit margin than live-action films and the studio had scaled back production, with only three animated features – 101 Dalmatians (1961), Sword in the Stone (1963) and The Jungle Book (1967) – produced in the decade following the poor performance of Sleeping Beauty (Schickel 1985: 295–316; Gabler 2007: 585). In place of these features, the emphasis had shifted towards liveaction films, which were faster and cheaper to produce: typically, live features cost at least a million less than the minimum for an animated feature (Schickel 1985: 299). Specifically, Disney had experienced a surprise box-office success with its first venture into live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog (1959), a film about a boy who turns into a sheepdog, which had earned nine times its production cost of slightly more than one million dollars (299). Additionally, at a time when other studios were shedding contract players, Disney was actively recruiting a repertory company, and The Shaggy Dog led to an ongoing relationship with Hollywood star and television actor Fred MacMurray, one that was extended through subsequent features such as The Absent Minded Professor (1961) and its sequel, Son of Flubber (1963). 134 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP A second, more important (and more lucrative) partnership was established with Hayley Mills, the British child-star who (at age thirteen) had taken the title role in Disney’s Pollyanna (David Swift, 1960), and someone who Walt Disney had described as the greatest movie find in a quarter century: a ‘model child . . . attractive, athletic, and middle-class’ (The Parent Trap 1961: 4). Following the huge success of Pollyanna – a film for which Mills had earned an Honorary Academy Award – the actor was signed to a long-term, picturea-year deal with Disney. Looking for a suitable vehicle for his new contract player, Disney ordered that the recently purchased Kästner property be tailored for Mills, lifting the age of the twins from nine-going-on-ten to thirteen-goingon-fourteen, not only to accommodate Mills but also to further open up the property’s ‘tween-appeal’. Even more significant was the decision to double Disney’s investment in the star (that is, to have Mills take the role of each twin), a shift that distinguishes the Disney version/s from others, which (like the Kästner/Baky film) typically employ real-life twins. The undertaking to cast Mills in a dual role was also informed by the studio’s reputation for technical innovation, specifically its development of a patented travelling matte (or double exposure) technique which meant that Mills could embody each of the twins, without sole (or substantial) reliance on a double. Although it was a time-consuming and expensive process, when Disney – who had by this time disengaged from issues connected with the theme park and reasserted control over the Burbank studio – saw how seamlessly the optical shots were able to fit together, he ordered that the script be further adjusted to include more intensive use of the special effect (supplemented with split screen shots and the use of Mills’ uncredited double, Susan Hennig-Schutte). Finally, the task of helming the production was assigned to David Swift, the writer-director of Pollyanna, who would later use the opening summer camp sequences of The Parent Trap as basis for the creation of a television series, Camp Runamuck (1965–6). The initial working title for the Disney production of Das doppelte Lottchen was that of the English translation (‘Lottie and Lisa’), with the release title – ‘The Parent Trap’ – determined somewhat later by a competition and a one hundred dollar prize draw that selected it from five shortlisted entries. Disney himself had apparently favoured the title ‘His and Hers’, but this was dropped when it became known that it had already been secured for another studio’s production (His and Hers, released in 1961). As Critchfield (2004: 243) points out, Disney’s preference is evidence of an adaptation strategy that is contrary to Kästner’s book and screenplay: namely, that the children (in the Disney version) be regarded as possessions – his and hers – of the parents. Moreover, in the Kästner/Baky version, the twins – Lotte and Luise – exchange places in order to meet and learn something about each twin’s previously unknown parent, and therefore act principally in their own interests.3 That is, the twins do not deliberately set out to bring the parents together and complete the 135 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS family unit. The presence and actions of the children may well contribute to a growing awareness in the parents, but their decision to come together – along with Palfy’s statement in the final pages of the book: ‘we owe every second of our new happiness . . . to our two children’ (Kästner 1950: 153) – comes too quickly and only further contributes to charges of sentimentality. The ‘trap’ of the refigured Disney title shows a second and perhaps more drastic difference between the Kästner/Baky film and Disney’s translation. Specifically, the shift in focus – from the children to the parents – and the attendant plan to set a ‘trap’ and so bring the family unit together are also symptomatic of a strategy through which to build a substantially larger target audience. This commercialist agenda effects, then, a generic shift in the remake, amplifying the wry humour of the German version to create a domestic (sometimes romantic) comedy – one complete with slapstick, musical numbers and star performers – and so ring up profits at the box office. The result is an uneven film (generically speaking) that wavers between broad physical comedy and more subtle humour in an attempt to appeal, simultaneously, to younger and more mature viewers. The former is most evident in the opening portion at summer camp where – prior to realising they are sisters – the twins play a series of practical jokes upon each other, culminating in a free-for-all at a Saturday night inter-camp dance in which the directress of the girls’ camp, Miss Inch (Ruth McDevitt), gets a chocolate cake in the face and her opposite from the boys’ camp is doused with a full bowl of punch. There is a reprise of these high jinks towards the end of the film when the twins harness their combined resources to antagonise, ridicule and expose father Mitch’s (Brian Keith’s) gold-digging fiancée Vicky Robinson (Joanna Barnes) during a camping trip. This is contrasted with other, somewhat risqué sequences, such as that in which the church minister Rev. Dr Mosby (Leo G. Carroll), visiting the ranch home to discuss details of the upcoming marriage between Mitch and Vicky, is not shocked – but rather merrily amused – by the unannounced appearance on the scene of mother (and ex-wife) Maggie McKendrick (Maureen O’Hara) suggestively dressed in one of Mitch’s bathrobes (see Maltin 1973: 188). If this generic shift suggests that the first agenda of the remake is one of commercialisation then this strategy is more than evident from Disney’s The Parent Trap Press Book (1961).4 With overt reference to the studio’s diversification strategy, the press book announces: ‘Walt Disney’s hilarious motion picture The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills as completely identical twins represents another seven-league step along the Burbank producers road to ever greater diversification in filmed entertainment . . . [It is] packed with all the goodies of entertainment – drama, humor, love, and even a fair amount of good old-fashioned slapstick’ (1961: 2). Declaring the result a comedy hit, the press book continues: ‘Walt Disney’s Technicolor feature The Parent Trap is obviously dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equally 136 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP hilarious’ (5), and ‘in a day when many a motion picture labeled “for adults only” is drawing the ire and fire of the public and press, Walt Disney continues to produce family fare of the highest order with a generous quantity of laughter mixed in. His latest Technicolor feature The Parent Trap is his funniest and familyest and could be labeled “For Everyone Only”’ (5). Such comments are a paraphrase of contemporaneous opinions, such as those of nationally syndicated, conservative writer-educator Dr Max Rafferty, who wrote (sensationally), in the context of the post-War dissolution of the Hollywood Production Code Administration: ‘[Disney’s] live movies have become lone sanctuaries of decency and health in the jungle of sex and sadism created by the Hollywood producers of pornography’ (quoted in Gabler 2007: 586). Disney’s clean dream world and view of social realities – including high divorce rates in the post-war period – is offered in this big screen version of Das doppelte Lottchen as a solution to the alarming break-up of the family unit. At the service of this was an exhaustive Disney advertising and marketing strategy that included not only typical industry-wide practices – a standard deluxe Technicolor trailer, teaser trailers, lobby cards, 1-sheet and 3-sheet posters, and so on – but an invitation (extended to exhibitors) to ‘DOUBLE your exploitation: The Parent Trap offers twice the opportunities’ by offering up a range of promotional strategies, such as ‘Top Twin Trick’ in which theatres would ‘invite twins to [their] town to submit a report on an interesting trick they have pulled in confusing people of their true identities’ and thereby arrange a competition and merchandising tie-in (The Parent Trap 1961: 10–11). The property was additionally serialised and multiplied through such strategies as a thirteen-week Sunday colour-comic series, published coast to coast in fifty-five major cities (starting in July 1961), a ten-cent comic-book version of the story, and even (for the 1968 reissue) a novelisation of Swift’s screenplay (Crume 1968).5 Most important of all, though, were ‘the rocking rhythms and bright ballads’ of Disney’s music campaign, which included a Vista Long-Play Album which headlined Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands – ‘the favorites of the teen set’ – singing their versions of two songs from the film, ‘The Parent Trap’ and ‘Let’s Get Together’, and a further Vista seven-inch single on which ‘Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills’ sing ‘Let’s Get Together’ (The Parent Trap 1961: 8). The songs from The Parent Trap are key to the film’s awareness and maintenance campaigns, and are further exploited through a broadcast television strategy of ‘trailerising’, a term that the trade magazine Variety had applied (in September 1957) to all of Disney’s anthology programmes, especially those instances in which an episode’s promotion of studio products was not effectively counterbalanced by original entertainment content (Gillan 2015: 214). Specifically, the trailerising of The Parent Trap occurs in ‘The Title Makers’, a June 1961 episode of Walt Disney Presents (the final episode broadcast in 137 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS black-and-white at ABC) that focuses on the creation of the title sequence and song for The Parent Trap (217). As described by Jennifer Gillan, ‘The Title Makers’ is an example of a ‘creative way’ in which the Disney studios used episodes of the anthology series as ‘long form trailers embedded within some original content’ to create a ‘content promotion hybrid’, one that simultaneously functioned as: 1. a television episode; 2. an ‘educational-informational’ short on creating title sequences; 3. a ‘company voice’ advertisement for Walt Disney; 4. a grouping of ‘behind-the-scenes’ interstitials about Disney television and film studios and its production workers; and, most predominantly, 5. a hosted lead-in to the trailer for The Parent Trap. (2015: 217) The latter – which includes a bonus preview of a song from another live-action Disney film in production – Babes in Toyland (1961) – looks in on a studio recording session in which the title song that will play over the credits for The Parent Trap is being performed by Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands. When the two performers take a break from recording, a mysterious voice speaks to them, asking to know details of the film. Funicello and Sands proceed to explain the story – of separated twins who meet for the first time and scheme to get their divorced parents back together – in and through the presentation of clips from – an extended trailerising of – The Parent Trap. Just before the denouement is revealed, Funicello and Sands become aware of the source of the voice, which turns out to be that of Walt Disney himself, disguised (Wizard of Oz-style) through special audio effects. ‘The Title Makers’ clearly contributes to the commercialisation of the Kästner property, but – as Gillan is quick to point out – the existence in 1961 of such a complex paratext is not nearly as surprising as ‘the remarkable consistency of the [alternative] ideological messaging about “togetherness”’ expressed in The Parent Trap, and that is more generally found throughout mid-twentieth-century Walt Disney programming (Gillan 2015: 217). Accordingly, ‘The Title Makers’ provides an opportunity to interrogate not only the remake’s commercialist agenda but also its culturalist one. As previously stated, Disney values are typically assumed to be traditional and The Parent Trap appears to adopt an overtly anti-divorce position, with Susan (from California) declaring early in the film: ‘It’s scary the way nobody stays together anymore these days. Pretty soon there’s going to be more divorces than marriages!’ The Parent Trap is presented as a family-oriented situation comedy and, predictably enough, the ‘trap’ of the title is effective and the parents are reconciled: ‘the romantic plot triumphs over divorce, class and geographical differences’ (Broad 1995: 126). But as Gillan and (elsewhere) Douglas Brode (2004: xi) point out, in contrast to the kind of conservative 138 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP Figure 8.1 ‘The Title Makers’, Walt Disney Presents (1961) 1950s discourse found in television sitcoms – for example, The Parent Trap spin-off The Patty Duke Show (1963–6) – The Parent Trap, along with ‘The Title Makers’, features several elements that are socially critical of, or at least ambivalent about, a 1950s ideology of the nuclear family and of that social formation’s supposedly positive impact on children. The contention that Disney films contain ‘socio-political daring’ (Brode 2004: xi) is especially evident in the title sequence for The Parent Trap, a segment that stands mise en abyme for the film as a whole. Specifically, The Parent Trap opens with an animated image of a well-known and old-fashioned saying, but with one word added: ‘Bless Our – Broken – Home’. In the animated title sequence, two Cupids attempt to repair the aforementioned saying by eliminating the errant word. And across the course of the film, Susan and Sharon assume the Cupids’ places, and the sign is literally ‘made good’ by the time of the film’s end credits, where it reads ‘Bless Our Happy Home’. The film’s title song – performed by Funicello and Sands and played over the credits – comments on (as Disney describes it in ‘The Title Makers’) an unfolding ‘melodrama in miniature’: namely, the hostile antics of two animated figures in the estranged (‘average’) married couple of ‘John’ and ‘Marsha’. More 139 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS particularly, the lyrics instruct the twins, Sharon and Susan, and also teenagers in the audience, that the preservation of parental marriage – an institution evidently being eroded by selfish and ‘immature’ adults – is ultimately the responsibility of the children. As the lyrics of the song have it: If their love’s on skids/ Treat your folks like kids/ Or your family tree’s gonna snap/ So to make them dig/ First you gotta rig/ The parent trap [. . .] If they lose that zing/ And they just won’t swing/ Then the problem falls in your lap/ When your folks are square/ Then you must prepare/ The parent trap [. . .] Straighten up their mess/ With togetherness/ Togetherness!/ The parent trap In evidence in the lyrics of this song – and The Parent Trap as a whole – is something ambivalent and – again – something quite foreign to the Kästner/ Baky version: namely, the way in which (to recontextualise Scott Bukatman’s description of the ambivalently defined futures of Tomorrowland) Disney culture is ‘simultaneously reactionary and progressive, nostalgic and challenging’ (Bukatman 1991: 58). That is, on the one hand, it is clear enough that childhood innocence and family togetherness is crucial to Disney’s success (Giroux and Pollock 2010: 32). In this assessment, the specific appeal of Disney entertainment – not only films, but also other products and attractions, including the theme park – comes from its relentless quest for images of innocence, and this in turn is harnessed as a strategy to co-opt a productive market of children and adults, and to fuel company profits. But, on the other hand, in place of the unstable nuclear family which, even in 1961, is depicted as something so easily dissolved through divorce, Disney’s The Parent Trap offers a different type of ‘togetherness’: specifically the lasting bonds of sisterhood, and close friendship, depicted in and through the twin characters of Susan and Sharon. In this case, the allure is that of a teen dream: the fantasy – or phantasy – of discovering another (more unified) self. 140 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP Figure 8.2 ‘Let’s Get Together’, The Parent Trap (1961) This message – that a long-lasting, inter-generational friendship is more likely to sustain one through the upheavals that may well occur in cross-generational family life (Gillan 2015: 219) – is set up in the title sequence (and ‘The Title Makers’) and in turn reinforced in and through the film’s signature teen tune, ‘Let’s Get Together’. Performed towards the end of the film, the number begins with one Hayley Mills (Sharon) dressed in a frock and seated at a piano on a makeshift stage playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony before the other (Susan), more casually dressed in jeans and equipped with guitar, marches in and invites the twin to join her in a duet: ‘You gotta get the new sound’, Susan tells Sharon. ‘Come on now, let’s compromise. You give a little. I’ll give a little. Let’s get together.’ In an assessment of this sequence that recalls the (aforementioned) notion of the duality of the self, Sean Griffin writes that the performance ‘embodies a number of both gay and lesbian teen desires to be able to be two different people, one butch and the other feminine, and shows how people can act out both parts’ (2000: 84). At the very least, the sequence demonstrates that ‘togetherness is flexible enough to reference the standard cultural orthodoxy about nuclear family togetherness [but also draw out] a new myth story about friendship as [an alternative] mode of togetherness’ (Gillan 2015: 219). In the context of the translation of Kästner’s Das doppelte Lottchen, the main point is that ‘togetherness’ becomes a key figure in and through which to understand not just The Parent Trap’s (vertically integrated) commercial strategies of convergence, but also its methods of cultural transformation. To conclude, although the performance of ‘Let’s Get Together’ is a key segment for Disney’s The Parent Trap, it is not in itself enough to rekindle 141 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CONSTANTINE VEREVIS romance for the twins’ estranged parents and to re-create the ‘ideal’ family unit. Now that the twins have met, the proposed solution is that they spend part of each year, separately, first with one and then the other parent. This is an unhappy outcome to which the twins respond by adopting an identical deportment, frustrating their parents’ ability to distinguish between them, and forcing the camping trip expedition that exposes Vicky’s true nature and ultimately enables the desired reunion. The interchangeability of the twins at this point – a little ahead of the contrived ending which, like that of the Baky version, seems too abrupt – perhaps has something to say about the multiple versions of Kästner’s story: the way that ‘premakes’ and remakes, originals and copies, do not simply follow – first one, and then the other – but coexist and reflect one another. The Parent Trap transforms, but also doubles, Das doppelte Lottchen just as Lindsay Lohan (and Lindsay Lohan) doubles Hayley Mills (and Hayley Mills), who sings a line from ‘Let’s Get Together’ before going on to reunite (in the 1998 remake) the transatlantic (US–UK) parent couple, Nick Parker (Dennis Quaid) and Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson).6 At the end, the multiple versions of Kästner’s work – Das doppelte Lottchen and The Parent Trap (1961), The Parent Trap (1998) and Charlie and Louise: Das doppelte Lottchen (1994), and a number of others – demonstrate that, for all the specificity of a particular version, the multiple versions of Das doppelte Lottchen – like the transnational film remake – are ultimately characterised by twin notions: those of proximity and reflection. Notes 1. Trans. Cyrus Brooks. Illustr. Walter Trier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1950. 2. This coincided with the cancellation of Disney’s principal ‘tween-address’ television series, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955–9), which was dropped when the studio’s contract with ABC ended and the anthology series was moved to NBC (see Gillan 2015: 215). 3. Upon discovering that their parents divorced and separated them, the twins do, however, express their solidarity and disapproval. Luise begins: ‘“Fine parents we’ve got . . . Just wait till we tell them a few home truths. That’ll make them sit up!” “We couldn’t do that” said Lottie timidly. “We’re only children.” “Only!” exclaimed Lisa, and threw back her head’ (41). 4. Thanks to Kathleen Loock, who kindly provided The Parent Trap press book resource. 5. The inscription page of the 112-page novelisation of The Parent Trap describes it as an ‘Adaptation by Vic Crume, Based on the screenplay’ and ‘Written for the Screen and Directed by David Swift. Based on a book by Erich Kästner.’ 6. An account of the ‘rom-com’ transformations of the later Disney version requires a chapter of its own. References Broad, David A. (1995), ‘The Parent Trap: A Myth of the Reunited Self’, Popular Culture Review, 6: 1, pp. 121–31. 142 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DAS DOPPELTE LOTTCHEN AND THE PARENT TRAP Brode, Douglas (2004), From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture, Austin: University of Texas Press. Bukatman, Scott (1991), ‘There’s Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic Experience’, October, 57 (Summer), pp. 55–78. Charlie and Louise: Das doppelte Lottchen (1994), Dir. Joseph Vilsmaier, Bavaria Filmverleih und Producktions GmbH. Critchfield, Anne L. (2004), ‘The Parent Trap: Hollywoods Verfilmungen von Das doppelte Lottchen’, Erich Kästner Jahrbuch, 4, pp. 237–46. Crume, Vic (1968), The Parent Trap, New York: Scholastic. Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), Dir. Josef von Baky. Carlton Film. Gabler, Neal (2007), Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Gillan, Jennifer (2015), Television Brandcasting: The Return of the Content-Promotion Hybrid, New York: Routledge. Giroux, Henry A. and Grace Pollock (2010), The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Griffin, Sean (2000), Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out, New York: New York University Press. Holloway, Ron (1994), ‘Charlie and Louise: Das doppelte Lottchen’, Kino 54 (May), pp. 7–8. Kästner, Erich (1949), Das doppelte Lottchen, Wein: Verlag Carl Ueberreuter. Kästner, Erich (1950), Lottie and Lisa, Trans. Cyrus Brooks, London: Jonathan Cape. The Parent Trap (1961), Dir. David Swift, Walt Disney. The Parent Trap (1961), Press Book, Walt Disney Company. The Parent Trap (1998), Dir. Nancy Meyers, Walt Disney Pictures. Maltin, Leonard (1973), The Disney Films, New York: Crown. Schickel, Richard (1985), The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, New York: Simon & Schuster. ‘The Title Makers’ (1961), Walt Disney Presents, ABC, 11 June. 143 This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms This content downloaded from 203.220.159.251 on Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:56:15 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms