The Parent Trap is a 1961 American romantic comedy film. It stars Hayley Mills in a dual role as a pair of teenage identical twins who switch places with each other in order to reunite their divorced parents, played by Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith.
Teenagers Sharon McKendrick (Mills) and Susan Evers (Mills) meet at a girls summer camp. Their identical appearance causes jealousy, resentment, and a rivalry in which they continually get each other into trouble and disrupt camp activities. As punishment, they must spend the remainder of the camp season rooming and dining together in isolation.
Sharon and Susan overcome their mutual dislike when they realize they are identical twin sisters, whom their parents, Mitch (Keith) and Maggie (O'Hara), separated upon divorcing shortly after their birth. Eager to meet the parents from whom they were separated, they decide to cut their hair identically, coach each other on their lives, and switch places.
Hayley Mills was born April 18, 1946 (8 months after me) in London, England. Both of her parents were actors. In 1959, she was cast in a film (Tiger Bay) in which her father (Sir John Mills) co-starred.
Mills was given the lead role in Pollyanna (1960). The role of the orphaned "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted her to stardom in the United States and earned her a special Academy Award of Juvenile Oscar, the last person to win the accolade.
In the summer of 1961, The Parent Trap was featured at the Oswego Theater. I must have seen it at least a half a dozen times. Why?
I developed a crush on Hayley Mills. I even fantasized about how I would go to Hollywood where we would meet and become boyfriend/girlfriend. It never happened.
Strangely, I never saw her in any of her other movies. It was as if I fell in love with her characters in The Parent Trap and didn't want to mess up my mind with her being something different.
Occasionally, I hear in the media about Hayley Mills and am glad she is alive and well. I am then reminded about that wonderful summer of 1961.
