History Trivia / DoctorDolittle

* TroubledProduction: As detailed by the book ''Pictures at a Revolution'', it was a clusterfrak with a ballooning budget, uncooperative animals and stars (Creator/RexHarrison was extremely difficult to work with during production, suffering various personal crises and constantly insulting and arguing with castmates, such as Anthony Newley for being Jewish, and crew members), location shoots where both the weather and the locals didn't help... producer Arthur Jacobs downright had a heart attack during production, and to compensate the hell he went through, came the only good thing out of the project, as Fox greenlit, under promise of not exceeding a $5 million budget, a discredited Pierre Boulle-penned sci-fi story that he had been seeking to adapt for years... called ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes''.

** ''Return'' is followed by ''Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake'' (thirteenth published), which fills in the previously untold story of the Great Flood, described only in the vaguest of details late in ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office''. It is the last book by in-universe order.

** The next in in-universe order are ''Doctor Dolittle's Circus'' (fourth published), ''Doctor Dolittle's Caravan'' (seventh published), ''Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary'' (fourteenth published), "Doctor Dolittle Meets a Londoner in Paris" (short story, only included in the anthology ''The Flying Carpet''; fifth published) and ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office'' (third published).
** ''The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle'' was the second published, but sixth in in-universe order.
** ''Doctor Dolittle's Zoo'' (sixth published) and ''Doctor Dolittle's Garden'' (eighth published) come next.
** The next book is ''Gub Gub's Book: An Encyclopaedia of Food'' (tenth published), an out-of-universe translation of an in-universe work.
** It was followed (in-universe) by ''Doctor Dolittle in the Moon'' (ninth published) and ''Doctor Dolittle's Return'' (eleventh published). The last book, in-universe, is ''Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake'' (thirteenth published), which also fills in a gap from the end of ''Doctor Dolittle's Post Office''.
** The remaining two books are ''Doctor Dolittle's Birthday Book'' (twelfth published and the last released during Lofting's lifetime, a day-book with pictures and quotations from the earlier stories), and ''Doctor Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures'' (fifteenth and last published), which collects eight stories taking place during the events of ''The Story of Doctor Dolittle'', ''Doctor Dolittle's Caravan'' and ''Doctor Dolittle's Garden''.

* CutSong: "Where Are the Words?," sung by Anthony Newley, and "Something in Your Smile," sung by Creator/RexHarrison. Both songs appeared on the soundtrack LP and CD, however, and the latter song may be heard under the film's opening titles.

** Harrison wanted his friend Creator/MaggieSmith for Emma Fairfax. Fox considered Creator/JulieAndrews, Music/BarbraStreisand and Creator/HayleyMills.

** In the original cut of the movie, Dr. Dolittle and Emma did eventually begin a relationship. He sang "Where Are the Words?", when he realised he was falling in love with her, but in a revised version, it's actually Matthew who falls for Emma and it is his recording of the song which is featured on the soundtrack album. Both versions were filmed and both actors recorded their respective versions, but the footage for both, as well as the vocal track by Rex Harrison have been lost to history. In both scenarios, "Something In Your Smile" is sung by Dolittle when he realizes he himself has fallen for Emma, however, although Harrison's vocal for the song survives, the footage does not.

** It also killed merchandising tie-ins due to the spectacular failure of the film's $200m worth of tie-in merchandise. Not ''permanently,'' but this fact ended up resulting for one of the biggest twists of fate in film production history - the fact that the tie-in merch sold so terribly soured Fox on the idea of it for a decade, only for it to bite them in the rear in spectacular fashion when they signed away the rights to tie-in merch for [[{{Film/StarWarsANewHope}} the original Star Wars]] to George Lucas, only for the merchandise for what was already an incredibly popular film to become its biggest revenue source.

* TroubledProduction: The book ''Pictures at a Revolution'' goes into detail about problems that it ran into. The most of notable of them included the following:
** Following years of legal battles with Creator/HughLofting's family, work on a ''Dolittle'' film finally began in 1964 with Alan Jay Lerner employed as scriptwriter and lyricist. When a year passed and Lerner had nothing to show for it, producer Arthur Jacobs fired him and tried unsuccessfully to entice Music/TheShermanBrothers away from Creator/{{Disney}} before settling on English composer Music/LeslieBricusse, who took just two months to provide a full treatment complete with song ideas and tempering the [[ValuesDissonance racist content]] in a way that met with the Lofting family's approval. However, Bricusse unwittingly included an original scene from a rejected script by producer Helen Winston (assuming it was from the book), who sued Fox for $4.5 million.[[note]] The case settled out of court, and the scene, in which Britain's animals go on strike in support of Dolittle, was only alluded to in the finished film.[[/note]]
** Creator/RexHarrison, fresh from his star turn as Henry Higgins in ''My Fair Lady'', was contracted to play the title character, but tried to back out after Lerner's dismissal. To do that, Harrison made ridiculous demands to piss off the producers like demanding that Creator/SammyDavisJr be replaced with the non-singing actor Creator/SidneyPoitier, because he didn't want to work with an "entertainer" (Read: someone who could sing better than himself). He also demanded contradictory rewrites from Bricusse, made pointless explorations for new shooting locations and other songwriters (most notably, he looked into replacing Bricusse with Michael Flanders and Donald Swann), and wanted to record his songs live as opposed to standard sound recording in studio. Christopher Plummer, fresh from ''his'' star turn as Baron von Trapp in ''The Sound of Music'', was paid $300,000 to stand by as Harrison's replacement during production. Harrison eventually returned, but was extremely difficult to work with during production, suffering various personal crises and constantly insulting and arguing with castmates, such as Anthony Newley for being Jewish, and crew members.
** Over 1,150 animals were trained for the film... in California. Because of British animal quarantine laws, they were unusable for location shooting at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, and another set of animals had to be trained at great expense. The animals proved almost as difficult to work with as Rex Harrison; a fawn drank from an open paint can and had to have her stomach pumped, a goat ate director Richard Fleischer's script, squirrels chewed through several key pieces of scenery, Rex Harrison was frequently urinated on by sheep while filming a field scene, a flock of ducks sank when placed in the water as the scene was shot at a time of year when their feathers were not water-repellent, several animal roles had to be repeatedly recast when the "actors" grew too large, some of the trainers got hepatitis from being bitten repeatedly, and the unexpected co-operation of the animals during the first take of "The Reluctant Vegetarian" was rendered irrelevant when Polynesia the Parrot shouted "Cut!" - and Harrison assumed it had been Fleischer who spoke.
** The location shoot in Castle Combe, posing as Dolittle's home village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, had other unexpected problems. Just as the weather reports the studio ignored warned, the rain fell in torrents all summer - except when the crew tried to film scenes set on rainy days. The film crew clashed with local residents when they insisted on the removal of their anachronistic television aerials, and an artificial dam built to enlarge the local lake was almost blown up by future explorer-adventurer Ranulph Fiennes, then a demolitions expert in the SAS, who saw the dam as an act of vandalism.[[note]] Fiennes was dishonourably discharged from the SAS for improper use of explosives and fined a considerable sum for his act of "countervandalism".[[/note]]
** Filming moved to Marigot Bay in St. Lucia for the Sea-Star Island scenes, and the problems continued apace. The weather remained unco-operative, and there were frequent problems with swarms of local insects. A key scene in which Dolittle's companions leave the island on the Great Pink Sea Snail enraged the locals, the children among whom had just endured a food poisoning epidemic caused by freshwater snails, and they pelted the prop Snail with stones. Harrison deliberately ruined filming of a beach scene in which he was not involved by sailing his yacht into the shot and refusing to move. Studio sets had to be built in California for costly reshoots of the village and island scenes.
** As set decorator Stuart Reiss recalled in the book ''Pictures at a Revolution'', the California sets had to be built on a slant so they could drain in case animals (such as cows or birds) made a mess. They also had laborers on standby with brooms, and all of the furniture had to be hosed down and washed every night. And there had to be duplicates of everything, even the walls, in case a big animal backed up into it or kicked it. Furthermore, the sets had the problem of a nasty stench resulting from animal waste and the gallons of ammonia used to clean them. To add to this, despite birds being tethered to railings, a few of them escaped and managed to get caught in the netting on the ceiling of the soundstages.
** Despite initial optimism from producer Arthur Jacobs (who had a heart attack during production), the final budget was a then-outrageously high $18 million ($136 million adjusted for modern inflation), three times original estimates. Preview audiences (which notably included very few children) and critics were unimpressed, and the film was a box-office bomb, [[BoxOfficeBomb earning just $9 million]] despite a merchandising blitz (nine different versions of the soundtrack were recorded, with a million records pressed, but they sold so poorly that they are often found in bargain bins to this day).[[note]] It was ten years before another film, [[Film/ANewHope a space opera helmed by George Lucas]], tried the merchandising angle again.[[/note]] Public opinion soured further when Fox essentially [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney bribed their way to nine Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) by hosting lavish dinners and free screenings for Academy voters.]][[note]] It won two: Best Special Effects and Best Song for "Talk to the Animals".[[/note]]
** As well as [[StarDerailingRole ending Rex Harrison's career as a leading man]], ''Dolittle'' is often credited, alongside Creator/WarnerBros' ''Theatre/{{Camelot}}'' (which came out two months earlier), with [[GenreKiller killing the family musical]], as both opened to a negative critical reception and general lack of interest. Fox, already committed to releasing the similarly disappointing musicals ''Star!'' in 1968 and ''Film/HelloDolly'' in 1969, almost went bankrupt ''again'', only making ''one film'' in 1970 and not recouping their losses until a 1973 re-release of ''The Sound of Music''. The only good thing to come out of ''Doctor Dolittle'' was that Arthur Jacobs was able to make Fox greenlight, under promise of not exceeding a $5 million budget, a discredited Pierre Boulle-penned sci-fi story that he had been seeking to adapt for years... called ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes''.

** Following years of legal battles with Creator/HughLofting's family, work on a ''Dolittle'' film finally began in 1964 with Alan Jay Lerner employed as scriptwriter and composer. When a year passed and Lerner had nothing to show for it, producer Arthur Jacobs fired him and tried unsuccessfully to entice Music/TheShermanBrothers away from Creator/{{Disney}} before settling on English composer Music/LeslieBricusse, who took just two months to provide a full treatment complete with song ideas and tempering the [[ValuesDissonance racist content]] in a way that met with the Lofting family's approval. However, Bricusse unwittingly included an original scene from a rejected script by producer Helen Winston (assuming it was from the book), who sued Fox for $4.5 million.[[note]] The case settled out of court, and the scene, in which Britain's animals go on strike in support of Dolittle, was only alluded to in the finished film.[[/note]]

* TroubledProduction: Bad enough to warrant [[TroubledProduction/DoctorDolittle its own page]].

* TroubledProduction: ''Holy shit'', this film almost warrants its own page for this. The book ''Pictures at a Revolution'' goes into detail about problems that it ran into. The most of notable of them included the following:
** Following years of legal battles with Creator/HughLofting's family, work on a ''Dolittle'' film finally began in 1964 with Alan Jay Lerner employed as scriptwriter and lyricist. When a year passed and Lerner had nothing to show for it, producer Arthur Jacobs fired him and tried unsuccessfully to entice Music/TheShermanBrothers away from Creator/{{Disney}} before settling on English composer Music/LeslieBricusse, who took just two months to provide a full treatment complete with song ideas and tempering the [[ValuesDissonance racist content]] in a way that met with the Lofting family's approval. However, Bricusse unwittingly included an original scene from a rejected script by producer Helen Winston (assuming it was from the book), who sued Fox for $4.5 million.[[note]] The case settled out of court, and the scene, in which Britain's animals go on strike in support of Dolittle, was only alluded to in the finished film.[[/note]]
** Creator/RexHarrison, fresh from his star turn as Henry Higgins in ''My Fair Lady'', was contracted to play the title character, but tried to back out after Lerner's dismissal. To do that, Harrison made ridiculous demands to piss off the producers like demanding that Creator/SammyDavisJr be replaced with the non-singing actor Creator/SidneyPoitier, because he didn't want to work with an "entertainer" (Read: someone who could sing better than himself). He also demanded contradictory rewrites from Bricusse, made pointless explorations for new shooting locations and other songwriters (most notably, he looked into replacing Bricusse with Michael Flanders and Donald Swann), and wanted to record his songs live as opposed to standard sound recording in studio. Christopher Plummer, fresh from ''his'' star turn as Baron von Trapp in ''The Sound of Music'', was paid $300,000 to stand by as Harrison's replacement during production. Harrison eventually returned, but was extremely difficult to work with during production, suffering various personal crises and constantly insulting and arguing with castmates, such as Anthony Newley for being Jewish, and crew members.
** Over 1,150 animals were trained for the film... in California. Because of British animal quarantine laws, they were unusable for location shooting at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, and another set of animals had to be trained at great expense. The animals proved almost as difficult to work with as Rex Harrison; a fawn drank from an open paint can and had to have her stomach pumped, a goat ate director Richard Fleischer's script, squirrels chewed through several key pieces of scenery, Rex Harrison was frequently urinated on by sheep while filming a field scene, a flock of ducks sank when placed in the water as the scene was shot at a time of year when their feathers were not water-repellent, several animal roles had to be repeatedly recast when the "actors" grew too large, some of the trainers got hepatitis from being bitten repeatedly, and the unexpected co-operation of the animals during the first take of "The Reluctant Vegetarian" was rendered irrelevant when Polynesia the Parrot shouted "Cut!" - and Harrison assumed it had been Fleischer who spoke.
** The location shoot in Castle Combe, posing as Dolittle's home village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, had other unexpected problems. Just as the weather reports the studio ignored warned, the rain fell in torrents all summer - except when the crew tried to film scenes set on rainy days. The film crew clashed with local residents when they insisted on the removal of their anachronistic television aerials, and an artificial dam built to enlarge the local lake was almost blown up by future explorer-adventurer Ranulph Fiennes, then a demolitions expert in the SAS, who saw the dam as an act of vandalism.[[note]] Fiennes was dishonourably discharged from the SAS for improper use of explosives and fined a considerable sum for his act of "countervandalism".[[/note]]
** Filming moved to Marigot Bay in St. Lucia for the Sea-Star Island scenes, and the problems continued apace. The weather remained unco-operative, and there were frequent problems with swarms of local insects. A key scene in which Dolittle's companions leave the island on the Great Pink Sea Snail enraged the locals, the children among whom had just endured a food poisoning epidemic caused by freshwater snails, and they pelted the prop Snail with stones. Harrison deliberately ruined filming of a beach scene in which he was not involved by sailing his yacht into the shot and refusing to move. Studio sets had to be built in California for costly reshoots of the village and island scenes.
** As set decorator Stuart Reiss recalled in the book ''Pictures at a Revolution'', the California sets had to be built on a slant so they could drain in case animals (such as cows or birds) made a mess. They also had laborers on standby with brooms, and all of the furniture had to be hosed down and washed every night. And there had to be duplicates of everything, even the walls, in case a big animal backed up into it or kicked it. Furthermore, the sets had the problem of a nasty stench resulting from animal waste and the gallons of ammonia used to clean them. To add to this, despite birds being tethered to railings, a few of them escaped and managed to get caught in the netting on the ceiling of the soundstages.
** Despite initial optimism from producer Arthur Jacobs (who had a heart attack during production), the final budget was a then-outrageously high $18 million ($136 million adjusted for modern inflation), three times original estimates. Preview audiences (which notably included very few children) and critics were unimpressed, and the film was a box-office bomb, [[BoxOfficeBomb earning just $9 million]] despite a merchandising blitz (nine different versions of the soundtrack were recorded, with a million records pressed, but they sold so poorly that they are often found in bargain bins to this day).[[note]] It was ten years before another film, [[Film/ANewHope a space opera helmed by George Lucas]], tried the merchandising angle again.[[/note]] Public opinion soured further when Fox essentially [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney bribed their way to nine Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) by hosting lavish dinners and free screenings for Academy voters.]][[note]] It won two: Best Special Effects and Best Song for "Talk to the Animals".[[/note]]
** As well as [[StarDerailingRole ending Rex Harrison's career as a leading man]], ''Dolittle'' is often credited, alongside Creator/WarnerBros' ''Theatre/{{Camelot}}'' (which came out two months earlier), with [[GenreKiller killing the family musical]], as both opened to a negative critical reception and general lack of interest. Fox, already committed to releasing the similarly disappointing musicals ''Star!'' in 1968 and ''Film/HelloDolly'' in 1969, almost went bankrupt ''again'', only making ''one film'' in 1970 and not recouping their losses until a 1973 re-release of ''The Sound of Music''. The only good thing to come out of ''Doctor Dolittle'' was that Arthur Jacobs was able to make Fox greenlight, under promise of not exceeding a $5 million budget, a discredited Pierre Boulle-penned sci-fi story that he had been seeking to adapt for years... called ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes''.

* TroubledProduction: ''Holy shit.'' The book ''Pictures at a Revolution'' goes into detail about problems that it ran into. The most of notable of them included the following:

* HostilityOnTheSet: Creator/RexHarrison didn't make himself any friends onset. He particularly had it in for Anthony Newley, as he was jealous of the younger actor's superior singing ability. Harrison demanded Newley's role be reduced and disrupted scenes featuring him. He even disparaged his costar as a "Jewish comic," a "Cockney Jew" or a "sewer rat." Samantha Eggar said of Harrison:

* DawsonCasting: The producers felt Creator/RexHarrison was too old at 58 to play Dolittle, but hoped his name would help recreate the success of ''Film/MyFairLady''.

* TroubledProduction: '''Ho. Lee. Shit.''' The book ''Pictures at a Revolution'' goes into detail about problems that it ran into. The most of notable of them included the following:

* TroubledProduction: The book ''Pictures at a Revolution'' goes into detail about problems that it ran into. The most of notable of them included the following:

** Bumpo originally appeared in the film and was to be played by Creator/SammyDavisJr. Harrison vetoed this, refusing to work with a song-and-dance-man and suggested Creator/SidneyPoitier. The character was later dropped from the script and Willie Shakespeare was added.