Doctor Dolittle *** (1967, Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough) – Classic Movie Review 8751

Rex Harrison’s Doctor Dolittle talked to the animals while the cinemas remained half empty and the 20th Century Fox studio nearly went bust.

Director Richard Fleischer’s 1967 Doctor Dolittle is an extravagantly produced, beautiful looking but rather weary and overblown family musical, in which the good, but grumpy animal communicating veterinarian Doctor John Dolittle (endearingly played by Harrison), armed with his parrot Polynesia – who teaches him how to talk in 500 animal languages – and two humans, Matthew Mugg and Emma Fairfax (Anthony Newley and Samantha Eggar), sets off to find the Great Pink Sea Snail. Richard Attenborough plays Albert Blossom and Peter Bull plays General Bellowes.

Robert Surtees’s Oscar-nominated Color by Deluxe cinematography is excellent, just first rate, the engaging ‘Talk to the Animals’ (written by Leslie Bricusse, performed by Rex Harrison) won the best original song Oscar, and L B Abbott’s visual effects scored another Oscar. Surprisingly it was Oscar nominated as Best Picture, among the seven other Oscar nominations. It didn’t win. It has one other hit song in the amusing ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It’ (written by Leslie Bricusse, performed by Richard Attenborough), though otherwise the songs are only moderate.

It was hugely costly at $17,000,000, and earned back only $9,000,000 in the US.

Leslie Bricusse’s screenplay is based on Hugh Lofting’s novels. It runs a flabby, long-seeming 152 minutes.

Also in the cast are William Dix, Geoffrey Holder, Muriel Landers, Norma Varden and Portia Nelson.

It was shot by APJAC Productions and Twentieth Century Fox in 1966 at Castle Combe, Wiltshire, England; Bath, Somerset, England; Marigot Bay, St Lucia; at Jungleland, Thousand Oaks, California; and at the 20th Century Fox Ranch and Studios in California.

The non-singing Harrison refused to have Sammy Davis Jr as his co-star. The role of Bumpo was removed from the movie but the disappointed Davis had a hit record with ‘Talk to the Animals’.

It was remade in 1998 with Eddie Murphy as Doctor Dolittle.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8751

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