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To the extent that I care about sixties films - and largely I don't - I find the dichotomies of the period fascinating. The "new realism", the bloated overlong establishment pictures (I mean, Dolittle's got nothing on the huge bloated hash of Hello Dolly, or Cleopatra... it's actually kind of small in that league)... the schizophrenic nature of the era still leaves me reeling.
Siren mentions the whole question of bloated sixties musicals, and mentions Star!, which I happen to own, mostly for that giant, strange number in which everything is like a circus of trapezes and tightropes and it's a Noel Coward song, I think, or a Gershwin one, and it's lovely, and Andrews, God love her, makes it work (which, along with having seen Darling Lili and the famous breast baring, leads right to SOB). I'm meandering, but it's the very idea of Dolittle as a musical that's so gobsmackingly obtuse... really, who thought a string of patter songs was a good idea? And just how did this build on anything Harrison achieved in My Fair Lady (which, by the way, is its own bloated mess... but never mind)? And Leslie Bricusse??? Seriously???
Yet, there it is, trundling along at a snail's pace, full of amazingly stupid, offensive (Geoffrey Holder! Jesus!) images, never ending... and there it sits, with multiple Oscar nods because... it's big, it's studio... and they have clout. One could, I suppose, generously argue that Fleischer's done as much as he could with the fantasy elements (though, God knows, this film actually has me reconsidering Eddie Murphy's version, CGI and "human talk" animals and all... it's genius compared to the original, I now see). for that period, but... that's about it.
And by the way, Newley is fabulously miscast - that drunken Irishman on the make thing he's got going is fabulously inappropriate from minute 1 (or is it minute 10, given the bloated credit sequence), and never gets any better. And as much as I can imagine what a cocktail party the set was (what intrigues me about the Rachel Roberts tale is not her crazy behavior but that she's alienating Tennessee Williams!), that's cold comfort for having that film inflicted on me. Ouch it smarts. :)
nycweboy, you've hit on something that bothered me throughout the parts of Harris' book on Doctor Dolittle. Why did they keep Harrison? What had them convinced that audiences were clamoring for more of his brand of frigid Englishman? It was as if they were building Doctor Dolittle from a kit and a Rex Harrison was something the instruction manual told them was essential. It struck me that although the movie flopped that kind of thinking about how to make a hit movie---pick any five recent hits, take an element from each, this star, that rising starlet, this plot element, that screenwriter---has triumphed to the point that it's become the way most movies are made today. Why else does Matthew McConnaghey have any sort of a career?
Well, yes and no - I think to that extent you hit on what's so bad about the big sixties studio pics: no one seems to actually know how to combine elements that actually should be combined (isn't that, really, what you get once Robert Evans and crew take over Paramount? People who actually seem to understand how to package big projects?). Things may be cookie cutter and assembly line these days... but it's not like you have a string of musicals that no one wants to see like they did then (and really, Dolly+Star+On A Clear Day + Dolittle+ Oliver=...no studio musicals for close to twenty years). Even if you argue that it's the comic book movies and the "tent poles" of summer... it seems to me there's a lot they're doing that's better.
And just to follow that point through... really, what did Harrison bring to the screen, ever? I mean yes, McConaghey has his problems, but he is drop dead gorgeous and he's at least charming (I'd point out that Failure To Launch is a better romantic comedy than people give him credit for, and he's really carrying the picture). His problem seems to be choosing bad scripts. Harrison and "appealing" and "box office"? Who ever put those together? I mean, the sixties is chock full of head-scratching choices - set aside the "camp treat" it's become and explain to me who thought that version of Valley of the Dolls was ever worth pursuing - and bizarre castings that are hard to find in modern parallel, when the big problem is casting 22 year olds to play 40. In the old days, after all, wouldn't Meg Ryan still be making romances in her forties, shot through linoleum, pretending to still be a dewy 25 (isn't that what makes her our Doris Day)? Instead she's practically playing grandmothers at 45 (i'm stepping away from the part where she has life threatening surgery to look especially youthful).
I'm leery of saying "everything's just gotten worse" when really, compared to the schizo sixties, we get a lot better, and better made, product these days. Which is proof, I suppose, that it actually could be worse.
Harris's book is about old and new Hollywood confronting each other, right? Well, Jack Warner was dead wrong about "Bonnie and Clyde," but Darryl Zanuck wrote a long memo warning of all the things that could go wrong, and the only thing he missed was the dysentery outbreak in St. Lucia. Old isn't necessarily wrong.
During one long evening at the Burtons', Roberts sent their guests Tennesse Williams and director Joseph Losey running for the door when, in Burton's words, "she insulted Rex sexually, morally, physically...lay on the floor in the bar and barked like a dog...started to masturbate her bassett hound."
This was the part that had me shrieking on the subway, it will surprise no one to hear.
Harrison was a supremely unpleasant man and yet he took all this insanity from Roberts for years...
Seriously, I have not seen this movie since 1967. But...well...if I could walk with the animals....
I tried to show it to two five-year-olds this afternoon. The boy lasted through the first number and then started building a Lego man. The girl fell asleep during "Talk to the Animals." I think the movie's major problem is length.
So, I"ve just watched Tom's YouTube Parade o' Doolittle...well, I lie. I watched the first two, and the whimsy was so thick it glopped all over me and left me a little queasy. So I stopped. But the Siren's dead right (as always) about the windowpane pants--Newley is going with Stage Irishman, which is just beyond perplexing for 1967. It's like he had no idea where the culture had already gone. Well, he and/or Fleischer.
The trailer is bizarre; it would never have made me want to see this. Which, apparently, was the effect on my parents, since they didn't take me to it (I was 8 or 9 at the time, so right in the target age range). Oddly, we DID all go to "Oliver!" a few years later, which was enormously more successful--I mean aesthetically, not financially, but then I don't know the numbers for either film.
I saw Dolittle as a kid when it aired on television in the 70s and quite liked it. When I re-watch it I am still impressed by the scale and beauty of the thing. God it's wonderful to have real people in crowd scenes. But it's pretty bad. It lurches to life in the occasional musical number but it's mostly pretty bad.
One thing I noticed, which may seem bizarre, but -- you can tell the actors can't stand the animals. No chemistry at all. You can see them dying to rush off the set and get away from them.
What would have helped was a more modest running time and scale. There's all that exposition at the beginning and it's just deadly. But Fox was determined to have a roadshow engagement which required a certain running time (over two hours if I recall).
The credits were very good, I must say. My kids probably liked those best.
Dr. Dolittle trailer
Anthony Newly sings
More Newly, with a Miss Eggar
Oliver Reed or Anthony Newley?
According to Joan Collins, Newley could give Reed a run for his money in the ladies' man department, but Reed nonetheless. Those hooded eyes and that marvelous silky voice.
He's absolutely terrifying as Bill Sykes and is much closer to Dickens than just about anything else in the entire movie. It's like he's the only actor who's read the book.
Of course, he didn't age well. But in his prime? Makes the backs of my knees sweat.
Whereas Newley's appeal, for me, was completely ruined by his singing, which I always founfd really off-putting.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073480/
Some intriguing pictures of Newley as Quilp.
Had a good cast. David Warner as Sampson Brass was a good choice. Michael Horden as Nell's grandfather also good. David Hemmings was a little too old for Dick Swiveller at that point though.
which reminds me of Lance's post on how the press corps loves McCain because his campaign runs an open bar ...
I think the studio just went out and bought it.
SOM '65
Oliver '68
In my book, Poppins is the class of that lineup....but it's probably a minority view.
It's the best cartoon Disney turned out in the 60s too, and I'm not talking about the dancing penquins part.
To carve his niche in the edifice of time
Before the mortar of his zeal
Has a chance to congeal
The cup is dashed from his lips
The flame is snuffed aborning
He's brought to rack and ruin in his prime
Then came this person, with chaos in her wake
And now my life's ambitions go with one fell blow
It's quite a bitter pill to take
I never read the Travers books when I was a kid. I read them for the first time when my kids were little. I was stunned by the difference between the Poppins of the books and Julie Andrews. I'm not sure if you could get away with a movie version that was faithful to the books.
I don't know what the books are like if read for the first time as an adult. But I first read them when I was in the single digits, and they became sacred texts of escape for me. Clearly, no movie version would have made me happy, but making them sappy and cheerful was not likely to make me happy.
And they're very, very English.
Of course, the story "Bad Tuesday," in the first book, was rewritten by Travers in the 1970s, replacing the racist stereotypes with animals. So the purist needs to buy the earlier editions.
My family went to see that film, and then went again the next week. My father's idea, and completely unprecented. A great movie musical.
Enjoy.
I love Youtube.
Somewhere later in life Rex Harrison acquired a more avuncular image, but there is little doubt from his best performances (Unfaithfully Yours, Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Higgins) that he wonderfully satirizes male narcissism, and it's not just acting. To dump Lilli Palmer and end up with Rachel Roberts, that's got to tell you something about the man.