The Absent-Minded Professor The Absent-Minded Professor The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 American comic science fiction family film produced by Walt Disney Productions based on the short story "A Situation of Gravity" by Samuel W. Taylor. The title character was based in part on Hubert Alyea, a professor emeritus of chemistry at Princeton University, who was known as "Dr. Boom" for his explosive demonstrations. The film stars Fred MacMurray as Professor Ned Brainard. The film was a huge success at the box-office, and two years later became the first Disney film to have a sequel, 1963's "Son of Flubber". The original 1961 film
Mary and Martha (film) setting up Ms. Swank's somewhat annoying character for a fall that Ms. Blethyn's more interesting character is given short shrift. But the scenes in which the two actresses are together have some real power." Critical with the film, "The A.V. Club"s Simon Abrams wrote that "at first, the off-the-cuff insensitivity that "Mary and Martha"s characters persistently exhibit seems benign enough. "Mary and Martha" is, after all, a made-for-TV melodrama about two mothers that bond after their respective sons die from malaria, and grief does sometimes manifest itself in strange ways. Screenwriter Richard Curtis and director Phillip Noyce do their best