General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Son of Flubber

Son of Flubber is a 1963 American live-action comedy from Walt Disney Productions and the sequel to The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). Directed by Robert Stevenson, it stars Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard of Medfield College, who experiments with by-products of his anti-gravity substance "flubber," including the weather-controlling "dry rain" and the lighter-than-air Flubbergas.¹^•² It was the first sequel Walt Disney produced for one of his theatrical features.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 16, 1963 per Disney's own site³; January 18, 1963 per D23 and the AFI Catalog, which records the Los Angeles opening at Grauman's Chinese Theatre⁴^•¹
Director / producer	Robert Stevenson; produced by Walt Disney⁵
Writers	Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, from a story by Samuel W. Taylor, loosely based on Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine (1959) by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams⁵
Cast	Fred MacMurray (Ned Brainard), Nancy Olson (Betsy), Keenan Wynn (Alonzo Hawk), Tommy Kirk (Biff Hawk), Elliott Reid, Ed Wynn¹
Format	Black and white, about 100 minutes; rated G⁵^•⁶
Reception	IMDb 6.1/10 from about 3,400 users; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 88% from 8 reviews⁷^•⁶
Box office	Reported revenue of $22.1 million⁸

Spoilers

Story

Professor Ned Brainard travels to Washington, D.C. to sell his anti-gravity invention, flying rubber, or "flubber," to the Defense Department, hoping to pay off Medfield College's mortgage to the loan shark and land developer Alonzo Hawk. Congress refuses the expenditure, and Brainard returns unable to sell flubber privately for national security reasons.¹

Back at Medfield he works on two new inventions. The first is a weather gun that produces "dry rain," a machine meant to promote rainfall. The second grows from a discovery by his student Biff Hawk, Alonzo's son, who finds a byproduct of flubber called Flubbergas, a lighter-than-air substance that makes anything fly.¹^•² The weather gun's rainfall proves uncontrollable, falling inside houses and cars, and its side effect shatters all the glass in town, for which Hawk's insurance company must pay the claims.⁵ Domestic strife compounds the trouble: Brainard's wife Betsy, jealous of attentions from his former sweetheart Desiree de la Roche, leaves him.¹

The football suit and the trial. Biff uses Flubbergas to inflate football uniforms, and the flying players help Medfield's inept team win a game.²^•⁹ Brainard nonetheless faces trial over the broken glass, until county agricultural agent A. J. Allen testifies that the dry rain produced bumper crops, exhibiting mammoth vegetables and an enormous chicken egg. The judge dismisses the case, and Brainard, now a hero, is reunited with Betsy.¹

Production

Daily Variety noted the tentatively titled sequel on March 9, 1962, with principal photography set for May. Pre-production centered on a football field built on a Walt Disney Studios soundstage in Burbank, where the crew tested a wire-suspension system that let staged players fly over the field; these shots were intercut with footage of a 1961 high-school football game. Principal photography began May 7, 1962.¹ D23's account adds that exterior shooting was prohibitive because of the special effects, so a section of stadium and much of the field were reproduced on one of Disney's largest sound stages, exact down to the transplanted sod and cheerleaders; the opposing team was composed of professional football players, who were surprised to be asked to play indoors.¹⁰

Fred MacMurray was paid a flat salary, as the Walt Disney Company did not offer profit sharing.¹ Walt Disney's grandson, Walter Elias Disney Miller, makes a short appearance as a baby in a television commercial.¹⁰

Significance as a sequel

Walt Disney had long resisted sequels, saying he preferred to do something new and different, a position he formed when exhibitors pressed him to follow up the 1933 animated short Three Little Pigs. Under his watch the studio produced only three feature film sequels, and Son of Flubber, the 63rd Disney film released, was the first, following The Absent-Minded Professor by two years.¹¹ D23's history records that the original film's 1961 success, which made "flubber" a household word, made the opportunity to revisit Brainard too good to pass up, and that the nonsensical title winked at the endless "Son of..." sequels of the era, from The Son of Kong to Son of Lassie.²

Most of the original's cast returned: Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, Alan Carney, Gordon Jones, Forrest Lewis, and James Westerfield reprised their roles, while Ed Wynn appeared in a new role as a nervous agricultural agent.¹² The invented setting, Medfield College, reappeared in later Disney fantasy-comedies such as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975).⁵

Reception and afterlife

The film opened at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on January 18, 1963, and after expanding to twenty-five additional area theaters in February, Daily Variety reported approximate first-week earnings of $300,000. Reviews were generally positive; the Los Angeles Times noted similarities to "the antic frenzy of the early slapstick silents and the marital mixups of the middle talkies."¹ Daily Variety deemed it another box-office success and predicted it would surpass The Absent-Minded Professor in domestic earnings.¹³ Modern aggregate scores show a split between critics and audiences: an 88% Tomatometer against a 48% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.⁶

The film was released on video in 1984¹⁰ and colorized for its 1997 video release.⁵ The British Board of Film Classification passed the 1963 cinema version at 103 minutes and a 1998 home-entertainment version at 98 minutes, both with the note "contains no material likely to offend or harm."¹⁴ As of recent listings it is available digitally to rent or buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango At Home, with no free streaming options.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026