King of the Grizzlies ** (1970, John Yesno, Chris Wiggins, Hugh Webster, Jack Van Evera) – Classic Movie Review 12,259

‘Half a ton and ten feet tall!’

Director Ron Kelly’s 1970 Walt Disney Productions adventure film King of the Grizzlies is set in the late 19th-century West, and stars John Yesno, Chris Wiggins, Hugh Webster and Jack Van Evera.

Canadian Rockies location filming lifts a typical Disney wildlife adventure, in which a Cree Indian boy called Moki (John Yesno), working as a foreman on the ranch belonging to his former Army commanding officer Colonel Pierson (Chris Wiggins), befriends a bear cub, tries to tame him, and meets him again now that he is a grizzly. He is now ‘half a ton and ten feet tall!’

The bear steals every scene from the humans.

The screenplay by Jack Speirs, Rod Peterson and Norman Wright is a loose adaptation of Ernest Thompson Seton’s 1900 novel The Biography of a Grizzly.

The film was released on 11 February 1970 by Disney’s Buena Vista Distribution.

The cast are John Yesno as Moki, Chris Wiggins as Colonel Pierson, Hugh Webster as Shorty Russell, Jack Van Evera as Slim and Big Ted as Wahb, with the film’s producer Winston Hibler as the narrator.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,259

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