WHAT'S GNU WITH YOU?

It is often described as one of Hollywood's greatest turkeys and the film that almost destroyed 20th Century Fox, but my teenage memories of Doctor Dolittle are still rose-tinted.

As a youngster who had grown up reading (and loving) the original Hugh Lofting books with their extraordinary – often surreal – adventures and the wonderful menagerie that comprised Doctor John Dolittle's family: Polynesia the parrot, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the pig, Che-Che the monkey, Dab-Dab the duck (and housekeeper) and Too-Too the owl, who acts as the Doctor's accountant.

When the film came out in 1967, the critics generally panned it, especially carping about the fact that it was almost three-hours long; but what did I care? As a budding gay (who adored musical extravaganzas) I was perfectly happy to spend however many hours it ran in company with (to quote one of the lyrics) 'my friend the Doctor'!

I had the soundtrack LP and knew the songs by heart: I could do – and still can, if it comes to that (and, yes I know, it needn't come to that!) – a particularly spirited rendition of Dicky Attenborough's number (on being confronted by the Pushmi-Pullyu), 'I've Never Seen Anything Like it in My Life'.

I also knew someone in it: my friend, the wonderful Peter Bull, who played Samantha Eggar's father, General Bellows (that's Ray Aghayan's design for his costume, left). As result, I heard all the goss about how difficult Rex Harrison was and how he and the animals shared a mutual, undying hatred for one another with them biting and kicking him at every opportunity, sharing their fleas with him and, frequently, peeing on him!

However, there were a lot of things that I didn't know that I have only just discovered thanks to Mark Harris' book Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood in which he charts the troubled history of, among other movies, the phenomenally over-budgeted flop that was Doctor Dolittle.

I discovered that when a misbehaving Harrison was sacked for a week, Christopher Plummer was given the role and was paid a non-returnable $87,500 for not playing the role until Harrison pleaded his way back onto the film. In contrast, Peter Bull got his role after Fox had passed on Donald Pleasence and Robert Morley who both wanted some $60 and $50k respectively, whereas Peter did the job for a mere $11k!!

I also found out that Alan Jay (My Fair Lady) Lerner had been originally touted as lyricist and that, later, when Leslie Bricusse had been engaged to write the score, the ever-tricksy Harrison decided that he wasn't being given numbers worthy of an Oscar-winning Professor Higgins. As a result, the star insisted that Fox contract British musical comedy duo Michael Flanders and Donald Swann (famous for their At the Drop of a Hat shows and recordings) to write some songs for him – although none of them ended up in the film.

One of Flanders and Swann's offerings was a song for Dolittle to sing when the natives of the floating Sea-Star Island want to make him their monarch:

Lash me to an eagle,

I won't be regal.

Lock me in an attic

I shall still be most emphatic that 

I wont be,

I can't be,

I daren't be,

I shan't be a king!

And another thing: I couldn't bear being called 'Rex'!

The idea of F&S writing the score was not so wide of the mark when one considers how many great animal songs they penned for themselves and others: 'The Hippopotamus Song' ("Mud, mud, glorious mud"), 'The Rhinoceros', 'The Armadillo' and this one performed–– not by Michael and Donald, but by....

...The Muppets!