The Shaggy D.A.

The Shaggy D.A. (1976)

The Only Candidate with a Law Degree and a Pedigree!

Wilby Daniels, a successful lawyer running for District Attorney, suddenly finds himself being transformed into an English sheepdog. Somehow he has to keep his change a secret and find just what is causing it, all the while eluding the local dog catcher.

Date of release
1976-12-17
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (88)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Comedy, Family, Fantasy
Director
Robert Stevenson
Collection
The Shaggy Dog Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Hound of Florence

The Shaggy D.A. is a 1976 American comedy film and a sequel to The Shaggy Dog (1959) produced by Walt Disney Productions. It was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Don Tait. As with the first film in the series, it takes some inspiration from the Felix Salten novel, The Hound of Florence.

Production notes

Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette were frequently paired in other Disney gimmick comedies, such as Blackbeard's Ghost and The Ugly Dachshund. Keenan Wynn had played villainous Alonzo Hawk in many other Disney comedies before taking on the role of John Slade.

This is the last of 19 films Robert Stevenson directed at Disney that spanned nearly 20 years. His first was Johnny Tremain in 1957. He also directed a number of episodes for the series Disneyland. This is also Stevenson's final film. The first film that he directed was Happy Ever After, a 1932 German musical.

The film's theme song, "The Shaggy D.A.", was written by Shane Tatum and Richard McKinley. The song was sung by Dean Jones.

The story was set in fictional Medfield, a town that (along with its eponymous Medfield College) was the setting for six other Disney gimmick comedies, including The Absent-Minded Professor, its sequel Son of Flubber, The Million Dollar Duck and the Dexter Riley trilogy (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him Now You Don't, and The Strongest Man in the World).

The mythology of the Borgia ring was changed from the first film, in which young Wilby read the inscription on the ring once and then was the victim of random transformations which could only be stopped if he performed a heroic deed. In this sequel, he simply turned into a dog whenever the ring's inscription was read aloud, and the spell would generally last from five to ten minutes.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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