important Broadway productions only after receiving his training in summer stock theatre. He worked as a set painter, lighting director, and chief of the parking lot. During a Helen Hayes festival at the Falmouth Playhouse on Cape Cod, he had a few walk-on parts. He also helped the theatre electrician and grew so interested that he was allowed to stay on after his mother's plays had ended. As a result, he lit the show for Barbara Bel Geddes in The Little Hut and for Gloria Vanderbilt in The Swan. Television In 1955, at the age of 18, he played Hal Ditmar in the television play, '"Deal a Blow," an episode of the series Climax! directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Macdonald Carey, Phyllis Thaxter, and Edward Arnold. The critical response was excellent, with the New York Times saying he "performed splendidly." The following year Frankenheimer directed the movie version of the play, which was renamed The Young Stranger (1957), with MacArthur again in the starring role. Again, his performance was critically acclaimed, earning him a nomination for Most Promising Newcomer at the 1958 BAFTA awards. In late 1956 it was announced MacArthur would make Underdog, based on a novel by W. R. Burnett, alongside his mother and Susan Strasberg but the project never materialized. MacArthur returned to TV to appear in World in White (1957) and episodes of General Electric Theater, Studio One in Hollywood, and Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. Disney MacArthur was selected by Walt Disney to star in The Light in the Forest (1958), playing a white man raised by Native Americans. In April 1957, he signed a three-picture deal with Disney. On Light in the Forest he was paid $2,500 a week. This went up to $3,000 a week for the second film and $3,500 for the third, although he could not be forced to work other than during his summer vacation at Harvard, where he was studying history. Disney executives liked his performance and cast him in Third Man on the Mountain (1959), playing a young man who climbs the Matterhorn. His mother had a cameo. Deciding to make acting his full-time career, he left Harvard in his second year to make two more Disney movies, Kidnapped (1960) alongside Peter Finch, and Swiss Family Robinson (1960) with John Mills. The latter was especially popular. He was named a possibility for Bon Voyage but ended up not appearing