Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion

Dr. Marsh Tracy (Marshall Thompson) runs an animal care station in the African wild. Julie Harper (Betsy Drake) is studying the local animals. Marsh takes in a troublesome lion who turns out to be cross-eyed. His daughter Paula (Cheryl Miller) loves all the animals and befriends the new lion. The lion does scare away her visiting teacher Rupert Rowbotham (Richard Haydn). Poachers threaten the animals and their protectors.

I am shocked that the actors are really handling these wild animals. That's a good size leopard and it looks like a real attack. This is an MGM film although it seems more like a Disney film. It became the basis for a CBS TV show for four seasons. I've never seen the TV show. It's light comedy family fun. Haydn has a fun comedic role. The lion works. I can see it as a TV show.

The best thing I like about Clarence The Cross-Eyed Lion is that it shows Africa as it is and not Africa as Hollywood made it up in the 30s and 40s. This is the newly emerging independent Africa and the white folk you see here are ruled by the governments of the new countries.

Colonialism goes and independence comes but the work of widower Marshall Thompson and widow Betsy Drake goes on. Thompson has a veterinary clinic for jungle animals and he lives there with his teen daughter Cheryl Miller. Drake is an anthropologist and she studies the primates like Dian Fossey on whom her character is modeled.

The running gag in this film is the lion who's the Ben Turpin of the jungle and has double vision. Which makes him a lousy hunter and he would have doubtless died in the jungle had he not been discovered and taken in by Thompson and Miller and fed like a pet.

Named Clarence he's a gentle soul, but he causes a lot of mischief. In the end though he deals well with Maurice Marsac who leads a band independent soldier of fortune guerrillas.

This is a nice family film and it led to the Daktari TV series.

A family of great white hunters living in Africa have their village visited by the titular cross-eyed lion and wacky animal Disney hijinks ensue. It's nothing you haven't already seen dozens of times before, but as usual, Disney pretty consistently makes enjoyable entertainment that's hard to resist. This film was so popular at the time that it spun off into it's own TV series.

This is a good family film!

I only want to say that the previous reviewer is not correct. This is fabulous, entertaining and well-done family film. I highly recommend it! Just seeing the real Africa and not a Hollywood set is reason enough to see this film. Also, please note that this film was made into a good TV series: "Daktari". Yes, Richard Hayden is the best thing in the movie! What a great comedic actor!

Perhap some might not like the movie because it is simple, straight-forward and charming. It is a kids movie that adults will like too!

I saw this in the theater when I was a child and watched the TV show too.

One of my favorite shows as a kid.

Excellent family-oriented animal adventure film with plenty of human interaction and comedy. Marshall Thompson is Doctor "Daktari" Marsh Tracy, head of an animal study compound in Africa. Widowed, he takes care of his teenage daughter Paula played by cute and perky Cheryl Miller. Sort of an American Hayley Mills, Paula Tracy is a bit of tom-boy (she has a python for a pet) but is growing up into a woman (she tapes her stockings to her thighs with masking tape to hold them up). Betsy Drake (the former Mrs. Cary Grant) is Julie Harper, a sort of Jane Goodhall type character who studies apes in their natural habitat and is the romantic interest for Dr. Tracy. The great character actor who made a career of rolling his r's, Richard Haydn ("Five Days in a Balloon"), is excellent as the comic relief Rupert Rowbotham, Paula's tutor, who is afraid of all the animals (especially Mary Lou the python and Clarence, the lion who tend to snuggle up to him). Add some wrestling with wild cheetahs, a few dangerous gorilla poachers, the antics of Doris the chimpanzee, and of course Clarence, the cross-eyed lion and what you have is the most consistently entertaining of the African animal adventure films which include John Wayne's "Hatari" and Hugh O'Brien's "Africa--Texas Style!. Ivan Tors ("Flipper," "Sea Hunt," "Gentle Ben," "Zebra in the Kitchen") produced this film which later became the TV series "Daktari."