Francis the Talking Mule
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Talking Mule.
In his 1950 silver screen debut, Francis starred opposite
Donald O’Connor as a sagacious Burmese mule who befriends an American GI
(O’Connor’s Peter Stirling). With Francis’s help, Peter is able to foil the
enemy. However, when Peter tries to convince his commanding officers that
Francis helped him foil the bad guys, he earns a trip to a padded cell instead
of a medal.
Such began the great big screen hijinks of this
man-and-talking-beast duo. The predecessor to TV’s knock-off Mister Ed (also
produced by Francis originator Arthur Lubin), Francis was trained by Will Rogers
and starred in seven films throughout the course of his career. He was also the
star of a Dell comic book series called Francis, the Famous Talking Mule.
And he became the subject of a Capital Records recording, Francis the Talking
Mule, featuring two songs by Chill Wills and the Starlighters.
Though Donald O’Connor is most often associated with the Peter Stirling
character, Francis’s human sidekick was also played by Mickey Rooney in the
final Francis film, 1957’s Francis and the Haunted
House.
The stubborn, longsuffering mule was rewarded for his hard
work by receiving the American Humane Association’s Annual Patsy Award for six
years. The Patsy was awarded for outstanding animal performances in motion
pictures. It was discontinued in 1980, due to the increasing use of computer
graphics and mechanical animals in film.
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