General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Ugly Dachshund

The Ugly Dachshund is a 1966 American live-action comedy from Walt Disney Productions about a Great Dane puppy named Brutus who is raised in a litter of dachshunds and grows up convinced he is one of them, to the despair of his owners, Mark and Fran Garrison. It was directed by Norman Tokar from a screenplay by Albert Aley, based on the 1938 novel by Gladys Bronwyn Stern, and stars Dean Jones, Suzanne Pleshette, and Charlie Ruggles.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	February 4, 1966 (premiere date per D23 and IMDb); wide release February 16, 1966, as a double bill with the animated featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree²^•³
Runtime and format	93 minutes, Technicolor, English; rated NR¹
Source	Novel The Ugly Dachshund by Gladys Bronwyn Stern (London, 1938); the film shifts the story from the dog's perspective to a human one and renames the Great Dane "Brutus"¹
Principal cast	Dean Jones (Mark Garrison), Suzanne Pleshette (Fran Garrison, her Disney debut), Charlie Ruggles (Dr. Pruitt), Kelly Thordsen (Officer Carmody), Parley Baer (Mel Chadwick)²
Key crew	Director Norman Tokar; producer Walt Disney with co-producer Winston Hibler; music George Bruns; cinematography Edward Colman¹
Box office	Disney marketing vice-president Card Walker projected combined receipts of $6 million for the feature and its accompanying short; Variety ranked it among the season's most profitable releases¹
Later releases	Television debut as a two-part special on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1968; home video in 1986³^•²

Spoilers

Plot

Mark and Fran Garrison rush their pregnant prize dachshund, Danke, to their veterinarian, Dr. Pruitt, to deliver her litter. Pruitt persuades the softhearted Mark also to take home Brutus, a Great Dane puppy abandoned by his mother, and Danke nurses him alongside her pups. Brutus grows up believing he is a dachshund, and his size causes escalating problems: he trees policemen, wrecks Mark's studio, and wreaks havoc at a garden party. Fran finally insists that Brutus must go, but he redeems himself by saving Chloe, Fran's favorite puppy, from the garbage heap. Fran trains Chloe for a dog show while Mark secretly trains Brutus for the same event, aiming to teach him to behave like a Great Dane. At the show, Brutus nearly disqualifies himself by imitating a dachshund that passes by, but when a female Great Dane appears he strikes a proud stance and wins the blue ribbon.¹

The opening plays a small joke on the audience: Mark frantically prepares to drive his wife to the hospital, suggesting a human birth, before it becomes clear the trip is for Danke.⁴

From novel to film

The source is the 1938 novel The Ugly Dachshund by the British author Gladys Bronwyn Stern, published by Macmillan. A contemporary review describes a dog brought up with five dachshunds who never realizes he is not one of them; the story is told from the perspective of the Great Dane, named Tono, who worries as the dachshunds receive preferential treatment until he learns what he really is.⁵ Walt Disney Productions purchased the film rights, a purchase announced by columnist Hedda Hopper on August 8, 1962. The film version retells the story from the human perspective and renames the dog Brutus.¹

The project then sat idle for about fifteen months. In December 1964, Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette were reported cast in the leads, and a January 1965 item in the Los Angeles Sentinel noted the picture was at one point intended for the television series Disney's Wonderful World of Color, to be broadcast in two episodes. Production began in January 1965.¹ It reached theaters as a theatrical feature instead, and later did appear on that program as a two-part special in 1968.³

Production

Dogs in the title role. Several Great Danes played Brutus to avoid delays from animal temperament. The trainer's first choice was a three-year-old prize-winning Great Dane named Diego of Martincrest; for the more demanding scenes he brought in a more experienced double, Duke, who had appeared six years earlier as one of the Great Danes in Swiss Family Robinson (1960).²^•³ William R. Koehler and Glenn H. Randall Jr. are credited as dog trainers.¹

A fear captured on film. During a scene in which his character was pursued by the starring Great Dane, actor Kelly Thordsen, who had what a news item called an "irrational fear of dogs," ran out of camera range and perched himself in a tree. The sequence appeared in the completed film.¹

A posthumous dub. The comedy actor Dick Wessel died after principal photography was complete, and some of his lines needed redubbing. To avoid reshooting his scenes with another actor, Tokar brought in the radio actor and voice artist Paul Frees, who looped all of Wessel's lines. It was Wessel's final film.³

Pleshette's Disney debut. Suzanne Pleshette, whose deep voice had mostly typecast her in "bad girl" roles, was reportedly glad to be cast; she recalled Walt Disney telling her, "Just because she's got a deep voice doesn't mean she can't do a clean movie." She was a dog owner herself, keeping a Yorkshire terrier named Missy during the shoot, and had to shower and change clothes at the Disney Studios in Burbank each night so Missy would not smell the other dogs on her.⁶^•³ For Jones, the film was his second for Disney after That Darn Cat!; he was signed for Monkeys, Go Home! and went on to appear in more than a dozen Disney films.⁶

Release and reception

The picture opened in Los Angeles on February 16, 1966, and in New York City on April 6, 1966; D23 and IMDb give February 4, 1966, as the release or premiere date.¹^•² It was paired in theaters with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Disney's first Winnie the Pooh film. Disney built cross-promotions around the package, including a "V.I.D." (Very Important Dog) campaign with Kal Kan dog food featuring personal appearances by the film's canine star, licensed Winnie the Pooh children's apparel to Sears, Roebuck & Co., and a display advertising the film at the National Dachshund Championships in London.¹

Critical response was unenthusiastic. The uncredited reviewer for The New York Times preferred the Pooh short, calling the feature "a thin, contrived, one-joke comedy."³ Retrospective commentary has made the same point about the single joke, while crediting the dogs and the cast with keeping the film agreeable.⁷ Commercially it did well: Variety ranked it among the season's most profitable releases, and Card Walker projected $6 million in combined receipts for the feature and short.¹

Place in Disney's live-action output

The film belongs to the run of 1960s Disney live-action family comedies, alongside titles such as The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), That Darn Cat! (1965), and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968), a formula built on animals, domestic mishap, and broad physical comedy.⁸ Its central device, a large dog raised as a small one, echoes earlier Disney dog stories: commentators have compared its dog-show sequence, in which owners resemble their dogs, to a joke from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and its acceptance narrative to Lady and the Tramp (1955) and, later, Beethoven (1992).⁷^•⁴ A 1966 book adaptation by Carl Memling, illustrated by Mel Crawford, was published in connection with the film.⁹

Modern guides flag the film as a product of its era: Common Sense Media notes that the treatment of two Asian characters, played by Robert Kino and Mako, is racist by today's standards and that the husband-and-wife dynamic is dated, while rating the film appropriate for viewers about age 7 and up.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1960s

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

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