"In one decisive moment...a courageous boy and a Big Red dog teach a brave man the meaning of devotion!" promised the theatrical poster for Big Red (1962), another in a long series of live-action films about animals made by Walt Disney Productions. Based on the novel of the same name by Jim Kjelgaard, which had been originally published in 1945, the film's plot revolves around a French-Canadian orphan boy named René Dumont (Gilles Payant), who is hired to exercise a champion Irish setter named Big Red. Big Red is owned by wealthy sportsman James Haggin (Walter Pidgeon), who lives alone on his large estate called Wintapi. Haggin, who has bought Big Red after winning the Montreal Kennel Club show, becomes concerned when the dog grows so fond of the boy that he will not obey anyone else. Big Red is taken away from René until he can go to New York to compete at the Westminster Dog Show. The dog is so upset by this separation from the human he loves that he tries to return to the boy by crashing through a window and is severely injured, further intensifying the drama between Haggin, Big Red and René. The cast also includes Émile Genest, who would appear in many Disney productions, and "Big Red" is played by a purebred Irish setter named Champion Red Aye "Scraps".

Big Red was directed by Norman Tokar in his feature film debut, with the screenplay adapted by Louis Pelletier. The film was shot in Technicolor, with interiors filmed at the Disney Studios in Burbank and exteriors at locations in the Big Bear Lake area in the mountains near Los Angeles. The company also did location shooting around Quebec, Canada, including La Malbaie, then known as Murray Bay. Composers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, who would write the scores for many Disney classics, wrote the theme song for the film, "Mon Amour Perdu - Big Red's Theme".

Big Red had its premiere in Los Angeles on June 6, 1962, later opening in New York in early September. As part of the promotional campaign for the film, Disney teamed up with Friskies dog food to create a free mail-in manual Friskies New Approach to Training Your Dog , featuring Pidgeon and Scraps on the cover, which consumers could get by sending in four labels from Friskies dog food. "Now your dog can be as well trained as Big Red himself!" The manual promised "an entirely new system of training based on the discoveries of a leading Hollywood trainer of movie dogs" in only 24 pages.

Despite beating out hundreds of other boys to play René, Big Red would be Gilles Payant's only film. He died at the age of 65 in 2012.

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Brode, Douglas From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture
https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/22973?sid=d06cf5ac-db80-4075-a5b8-e63a58c54d8f&sr=3.0481155&cp=1&pos=0
http://www.thedisneyfilms.com/2011/07/big-red-1962.html
The Internet Movie Database
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