Half-Remembered Homage: The show as a whole. Its writer, Dale Wassermann, boasted that he had never actually read Don Quixote cover-to-cover; he was much more interested in using the archetypal elements, including Cervantes himself, to talk about the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. The inevitable result is that a lot of the show, including the whole characterization of Don Quixote as an idealistic hero, relies more heavily on Pop-Cultural Osmosis than on anything coming directly from the book.
The film
Cut Song: A song called "To Each His Dulcinea" was omitted from the movie. It was sung by the Padre in the stage play and featured the lines, "A man can do quite anything, / Outfly a bird upon the wing / Hold moonlight in his hand."
Non-Singing Voice: Peter O'Toole recorded his vocal tracks for the film, but realized that his own singing voice was not good enough for the requirements of the music, so he assisted in the search for a voice double. The man O'Toole picked sounded nothing like him, so a new search was begun, and eventually Simon Gilbert was selected as the singing voice of Don Quixote, because his singing voice sounded the most like O'Toole's speaking voice.
According to BRIAN BLESSED, he dubbed the singing voice of Harry Andrews for "The Dubbing/Knight of the Woeful Countenance."
The original plan was to re-unite librettist Dale Wasserman, composer Mitch Leigh, director Albert Marre, and stars Richard Kiley and Joan Diener from the stage version. However, Marre had never directed a film before, and when United Artists saw how much he had spent on screen tests, they fired him, and Wasserman, Leigh, Kiley, and Diener (who was married to Marre from 1956 to her death in 2006) left the film in protest.
So British director Peter Glenville was brought on board, and he cast Peter O'Toole as Cervantes/Don Quixote. However, when United Artists learned that he planned to eliminate most of the musical numbers from the score, Glenville was also given the sack - which upset O'Toole, a self-confessed terrible singer who had only agreed to play the role on the understanding that he wouldn't have to sing, and who found the idea of a straight dramatic adaptation of the source material appealing. He took his anger out on Glenville's replacement, Arthur Hiller, whom he routinely addressed as "Little Arthur" throughout production.
When it became clear that the film was going to be a musical after all, arrangements had to be made to dub over O'Toole's (lack of) singing voice, but the singer initially recruited to provide his singing voice sounded nothing like him, so O'Toole personally assisted the production team in finding a suitable replacement, eventually settling on Simon Gilbert. Although it is sometimes claimed that most of the other non-singing actors, such as Sophia Loren, Harry Andrews, and Rosalie Crutchley, did their own singing, BRIAN BLESSED has said in interviews that he was asked to dub Andrews' singing voice in post-production.
