Trivia / Darling Lili

• Acclaimed Flop: Despite being a disastrous financial bomb, it was nominated for several awards and won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song.
• Box Office Bomb: This was one of a string of expensive flops that put Paramount Pictures into serious financial trouble in the early 1970s. Suggested reasons for the film's failure vary. Some blame the overlong roadshow edit, some say Paramount mishandled publicity and distribution, and others feel that the time of the big-budget period musical had simply passed, and nothing could have made it appeal to audiences of the time.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The soundtrack actually did much better than the movie itself. "Whistling Away The Dark" was especially popular, and Julie Andrews frequently sang it at concerts. As a result not many people realise it's from a film.
• California Doubling: The scenes at the airfield were filmed in Ireland, while scenes in Paris were shot in Brussels. Ireland's Trinity College also stands in for Kessler's German residence. The theatre Lili performs in what is meant to be London was actually in Dublin.
• Contractual Purity: Julie Andrews was of course heavily associated with the two Magical Nanny characters she had played at the start of the decade, and did the film in the hopes of shaking off that image. It didn't really take until she went topless in S.O.B., and Vincent Canby said in Variety.
  "[Edwards] gives her a comic striptease, which only goes to prove that when you take the clothes off a Girl Guide, you've got a very naked Girl Guide."
• Creator Breakdown: In an interview with Playboy Blake Edwards said that the studio executives frequently denied things they had told him - and that he had to resort to taping all his conversations with them for the sake of his own sanity.
• Creator Killer: Not a permanent one, thankfully, but Blake Edwards' career took several years to recover from the debacle. He eventually bounced back with The Return of the Pink Panther (1975).
• Executive Meddling:
  • Blake Edwards suffered continual interference from Paramount Pictures executives while making the film, and it was eventually edited by the studio largely without his input. Edwards later satirized the problems he faced in the film S.O.B..
  • The film becoming a full blown musical was an insistence by the studio.
• Fake Brit: Lili's maid Emma is played by Doreen Keogh, who is Irish but uses an English accent.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Colonel von Ruger is Swiss, played by English actor Jeremy Kemp. Lili likewise is half-German, and Julie Andrews is wholly English.
  • Crepe Suzette is French but played by the English Gloria Paul.
• Playing Against Type: Julie Andrews was deliberately going for something a little edgier than the squeaky-clean image she'd acquired. The film was developed as a way to try and give her a Hotter and Sexier image.
• Revival by Commercialization: "Whistling Away The Dark" got a boost in popularity when it was featured in Mr. Robot.
• Romance on the Set: Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards married in 1969, while Darling Lili was in production. Their marriage lasted until Edwards' death in 2010.
• Shoot the Money: There are so many aerial scenes in the longer cut because the studio wanted to show where the money had gone.
• Star-Derailing Role: Julie Andrews's career was damaged by the flopping of both this and Star, and she ended up taking a few years out to raise her children (as she inherited Blake Edwards's during production). She didn't star in another solid hit until Victor/Victoria, ironically also directed by him.
• Troubled Production:
  • The scenes in Paris were planned to be shot on location, but this coincided with the 1968 student riots. This forced them to move production to Brussels.
  • Blake Edwards wanted to shoot the aerial dogfight scenes in South Carolina but the studio insisted on filming in Ireland. Due to the erratic weather, the second unit quickly ran over-budget trying to get "clear air" shots.
  • The studio kept meddling behind Blake Edwards's back - hiring a French director to helm the second unit, claiming he had authorised it. They got caught out when Blake revealed he had taped that conversation.
  • He recalls one instance where they needed an interior set due to bad weather, so he lobbied to just build one on the Paramount lot to save money. They eventually came round, but everyone just sat in Paris until then.
  • The film was originally only supposed to have a couple of performance scenes - just to establish Lili as an entertainer. But Paramount tried to to turn it into a big spectacular musical.
  • Blake Edwards, Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson also had to face slanderous rumours spread both by Paramount and gossip columnists - some of which claimed they were having a Love Triangle. Paramount also blamed them for the production costs, calling them "extravagant".
  • The production costs equalled about $25 million by the end of the shoot - which is about $158 million by today's standards.
• Vindicated by Cable: The movie has acquired a modest fanbase thanks to being shown frequently on cable TV.
• What Could Have Been: Benny Hill auditioned for a part in the film. Apparently when he was asked if he could do an authentic Parisian accent, he replied by asking if Blake Edwards wanted an east side or west side accent. This apparently didn't impress the director, and another actor was cast.

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