The great childhood fantasy of running away to join the circus was turned into a nostalgic family movie with Toby Tyler (1960), a live-action juvenile adventure from Walt Disney. Based on the beloved children's novel Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus by James Otis, originally serialized in Harper's Young People magazine in 1877, the movie follows the adventures of the title character, an orphan who runs away from his elderly uncle and aunt to take a job working for the conniving concessions vendor of a traveling circus. Toby is a naïve, earnest kid whose curiosity lands him in trouble, one of the changes made from the book (where Toby was in a foster home and more of a trouble-maker), but he emerges from minor disasters not only unscathed but promoted to a bigger position in the circus, ultimately getting his turn as a star in the big top before his circus adventure is over.

For the role of the sweet-natured Toby, producers turned to Kevin Corcoran, a veteran child actor who had been performing since the age of two. He had already made a name for himself at Disney by playing Moochie in the serialized TV show The Adventures of Spin and Marty and co-starring in the big screen features Old Yeller (1957) and The Shaggy Dog (1959). After appearing with a canine co-star, Toby Tyler gave him a new challenge: playing opposite a scene-stealing, practical-joking chimpanzee. Mr. Stubbs, the simian who Toby adopts as his best friend, was part of a performing chimpanzee act called The Marquis Family and was reportedly cast in the film after Walt Disney saw the chimp in an episode of The Jack Benny Hour.

For Ben Cotter, the gruff monkey wrangler who looks after Toby, and Sam Treat, the paternal clown who dispenses advice in a cartoonish German accent, Disney cast Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon, co-stars of Disney's swashbuckling TV adventure Zorro. Longtime character actor Tom Fadden, plays Toby's Uncle Daniel, appeared in hundreds of movies and TV shows, often uncredited, but film buffs will surely remember him as the tollhouse keeper in It's A Wonderful Life.

Journeyman director Charles Barton graduated from B-movies to Abbott and Costello comedies (including their cult horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948) before becoming a Disney regular on both the big and small screens. Toby Tyler reunited him Corcoran, whom he'd directed in Spin and Marty and The Shaggy Dog, as well as his Zorro stars Calvin and Sheldon. It was the first Disney film shot at Golden Oak Ranch in California, which the studio had recently purchased, and the production boasted that it restored fourteen authentic circus wagons for use in the film (some of them were later used in the 1962 MGM musical Billy Rose's Jumbo).

Corcoran went on to star in a number of Disney films and TV shows, including Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and the Old Yeller sequel Savage Sam (1963) before he retired from acting. He later returned to Disney after college and worked as an assistant director and producer, with credits on Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978) and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). In later years he was an assistant director on numerous network TV shows (including Murder She Wrote) and a producer on the acclaimed crime dramas The Shield and Sons of Anarchy.

Sources:
Those Endearing Young Charms, Marc Best. A.S. Barnes and Co., 1971.
IMDb
Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, James Otis. The World Publishing Company, 1947.
AFI Catalog of Feature Films
IMDb

By Sean Axmaker