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Thomasina is Missing a Third of its Running time


The Three Lives of Thomasina was a wonderful three part Walt Disney program. Like The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, The Three Lives of Thomasina was originally broadcast as three 50 minute episodes - 150 minutes total. Though some online postings say it "was re-edited into three episodes", it was actually the three 50 minute episodes that were edited and cut into an hour and a half feature film. Unfortunately, Disney chose to only release the feature version on DVD, which is cut by 50+ minutes.

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I am so old I remember when it was broadcast originally and I did feel that the release on DVD was shorter than I remembered the film being. I think that's a shame the present Disney execs cut up such a beautiful film. Walt Disney himself would not have condoned that.

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I don't believe the DVD is edited. I could be mistaken, but I believe that on TV the commercials made the film seem longer.

If you see The Wizard of Oz, unedited, but uninterrupted by commercials, it also seems to move much faster than we remember it from network television broadcasts. I actually think some films, including these, oddly benefited from the pauses created by commercial breaks. It gave you time to reflect on the story.

Greg Zeigerson

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Also, in the case of any multi part movie that was shown on "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" you have to take into account the fact that Mr. Disney did both an intro and an epilogue on each part (there were 3), That probably accounted for close to a half hour. Then 3 sets of Disney show titles & end credits.

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The DVD of THOMASINA is not edited. I saw it in the theatre before it appeared on television. The film was released as a movie, running time as stated here, before appearing on WALT DISNEY'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR. Disney introduced each episode; many of the introductions were 2-5 minutes. He also closed the show, and often the previews for the next episode were an additional five to seven minutes, depending on how much time they had to fill. There might also be a promo for an upcoming Disney movie.

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The proof is in the pudding so to speak. Disney released another program starring Patrick McGoohan - The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. This program, like THOMASINA, was originally broadcast in the USA as three 50 minute segments AND it was also edited into a 98 minute feature film for the overseas market.

Here's what the Disney site mentions about the 98 min feature version: "Lopping off Walt Disney's introductions and tags,the repeated opening sequences and credits, and at least another 40 minutes of content..." well, you get the picture. The feature version of THOMASINA was 97 minutes and the same thing mentioned above happened there.

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The proof is in the pudding so to speak. Disney released another program starring Patrick McGoohan - The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. This program, like THOMASINA, was originally broadcast in the USA as three 50 minute segments AND it was also edited into a 98 minute feature film for the overseas market.

Here's what the Disney site mentions about the 98 min feature version: "Lopping off Walt Disney's introductions and tags,the repeated opening sequences and credits, and at least another 40 minutes of content..." well, you get the picture. The feature version of THOMASINA was 97 minutes and the same thing mentioned above happened there.

I think you'll find that in the case of Thomasina, the film did come first, in 1964, but the TV episode version was not put out until 1965. So the situation between the two McGoohan vehicles may be somewhat different.

Nonetheless, how they filled up 3 hours of weekly television with only 97 minutes of movie, I must confess to wondering about too.

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Its possible that either the dates on IMDB are incorrect -- or that in the case of THOMASINA, they released the film in Europe (all of the edited films were originally for European release)first, but still edited it down from what was later broadcast in the US on Disney's Wonderful World of Color.

And I agree, it is not possible to get 3 hour long programs out of 97 minutes.

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It's also possible that the running time of the "Thomasina" broadcast was extended by the repetition of one or more scenes as a recap.

In the original three-part broadcast of "Scarecrow of Romney Marsh," a dialogue scene from the 1st segment was repeated in the 3rd, in order to remind viewers of events from two weeks ago that related to an upcoming scene.

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I don't think the original film was edited for the DVD release.

I remember LOVING "Thomasina" when I first saw it in movie theaters during its initial release, so it stuck in my mind pretty accurately even just from the first showing.

Later, I watched it every time it showed up on "Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

I don't remember seeing anything "new" when I saw the TV 3-parter.

I DO remember the Sunday night show taking FOREVER to get to the movie segment - with Uncle Walt talking about the film and the "rehash" of previous segments (at least for parts 2 and 3). I also remember seeing the segment wrapped up, then looking at the clock and seeing that there were at least something like 10 minutes left in the Disney hour. (That time was subsequently eaten up with previews of the next episode - or else an entirely different show that would be broadcast the next week.)

When I finally bought the DVD, the movie was just as I remembered it some 50 years earlier.

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"

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The film was released theatrically long before it ran on television and then it was still the same version as shown in theaters. Nothing was edited out or added.

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Don't forget that sometimes Disney would reach into his vault and show a cartoon near the end. Also another possibility, which was not unheard of back then, was that Disney could have picked up some edited scenes from the cutting room floor and reinserted them for the broadcast to fill some time.

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