Doctor Dolittle

It's that time of year when I look fifty years back at the films nominated for Best Picture. I've been watching several films from 1967, but now it's time for the big five. But, I've already written about two of them: The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde. Both of these films were game-changers, so naturally they didn't win. I highly recommend Mark Harris' book Pictures at a Revolution to get the behind the scenes on all five nominees.

The worst nominee that year, and probably in the top ten of worst nominees of all time, was Doctor Dolittle. It bombed financially and was universally hated by critics, so how did it get nominated? The truth is that studios still had major clout and Academy members had loyalty to their studios, and 20th Century Fox put this film out as their choice. They also wined and dined members, in what would be against the rules today. Thus, a film nobody really liked got a Best Picture nomination.

The film tells the story of a doctor who gets along better with people than animals (it sorts of prefigures autism--clearly Dolittle is on the spectrum). With the help of his parrot, Polynesia, he learns to talk to animals, and has a thriving practice (though he earns little money). He longs to find a rare animal, the giant pink sea snail, and along with a friend, a little boy, and a woman, sets sail and ends up on a floating island.

I read some of the Doctor Dolittle books when I was a kid and remember liking them a great deal. I went to see this film when it first came out, and I'm surprised I managed to sit through it, because it is a colossal bore. I don't why they made a children's film two and a half hours long. There's very little to keep young ones interested, other than animals and some slapstick. The songs, other than the Oscar-winning "Talk to the Animals," are entirely forgettable.

Doctor Dolittle also had tremendous problems getting made, outlined in Harris' book. First, Alan Jay Lerner was hired to compose the music and procrastinated for over a year, and got fired. Then, during production, they had to deal with both Rex Harrison, a monstrous man, and all the animals. There must have been shit everywhere (and I'm not talking about Harrison).

There's not much to recommend this picture. Harrison is good, though there's a lot of Henry Higgins in the performance (he talks-sings as he usually does). There's also a kind of creepy love triangle. Samantha Eggar, who plays the high-born woman who initially hates Dolittle, first seems to fall in love with his friend, Anthony Newley. Newley even sings a song about how happy he is. But by the end of the film she plants a kiss on Dolittle's mouth, and seems to be pining for him. Women--so capricious.

I watched this film on DVD on a Sunday afternoon when I could stop and start it frequently, the only way to tolerate it.