The Absent-Minded Professor

The Absent-Minded Professor is a 1961 American science fiction comedy film directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is based on the 1943 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, alongside Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Elliott Reid, and Edward Andrews. The plot follows Brainard as he invents a substance that defies gravity, which he later exploits through various means. Released on March 16, 1961, the film was a huge success at the box office, and two years later became the first Disney film to have a sequel, Son of Flubber (1963). It was one of the first Disney films to be colorized (for the 1986 VHS release), and, along with The Shaggy Dog (1959) and Son of Flubber, is one of Disney's few black-and-white films to be produced after 1941. A remake titled Flubber with Robin Williams was released in 1997. Plot Professor Ned Brainard is an absent-minded professor of physical chemistry at Medfield College who invents a substance that gains energy when it strikes a hard surface. This discovery follows some blackboard scribbling in which he reverses a sign in the equation for enthalpy to energy plus pressure times volume. Professor Brainard names his discovery Flubber, a portmanteau of "flying rubber". In the excitement of his discovery, he misses his own wedding to Betsy Carlisle, not for the first time, but his third. Subplots include another professor wooing the disappointed Miss Carlisle, Biff Hawk's ineligibility for basketball due to failing Professor Brainard's class, Biff's father Alonzo P. Hawk's schemes to gain wealth by means of Flubber, the school's financial difficulties and debt to Mr. Hawk, and Professor Brainard's attempts to interest the government and military in uses for Flubber.