Behind The Scenes: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Hughes, 1968) With Dick Van Dyke And Sally Ann Howes

This is Caractacus Potts, inventor extraordinaire. Caractacus had a dream. He believed man could fly. At first it was hard getting his dream off the ground. But Caractacus had faith, and a beautiful sweetheart, two charming kids, and an adventurous grandfather. Then Caractacus invented a fantastic magical car. It floats, it flies, and it carries adventure wherever it goes. It took them to castles and palaces, and to far off lands known only in lullabies. It also took them into the clutches of the nasty baron Bomburst, who ruled over the evil kingdom of Bulgaria, where children were imprisoned and happiness was a crime. Never before has there ever been such a magical musical entertainment as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Making movies is mostly a game of hurry up and wait. It takes hours to set up the cameras and other equipment just to shoot a 10-second scene. And when it's finished, the waiting starts all over again. What to do with a lot of extra time on your hands can be a problem, unless you're a couple of impetuous young actors named Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall. Actually, waiting isn't bad at all. Especially if Daddy is there to wait. Well, he really isn't our Daddy, you see. He's Dick Van Dyke, and in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he plays the part of our father, crafting his pot. He keeps us entertained during the long wait between scenes. And if the time flies quickly, it's only because Daddy is always up to something. That's Sally Ann Howes. She plays truly scrumptious in the picture. When you have a whole day free, there's no better place to spend it than St. Tropez, so Adrian and I struck out on our own. Unaware that somebody was watching every move we made. We found out later that he had been right behind us all the time. And while we stopped for some ice cream sodas, he took time out to enjoy the grown-up version, the sudsy stuff. While making this picture, we also traveled through England and Bavaria, but St. Tropez was our favorite. The movie is all about a wonderful car named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She floats, flies, and does countless other marvelous things. And that is why she's wanted so badly by the wicked Baron Bomburst, played by Mr. Goldfinger, Gert Frobe. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is about pirates and castles and soldiers and living puppets and a candy factory. It's chock full of adventure and laughter and singing and dancing. It's the most phantasmagorical musical entertainment in the history of everything. Mr. Van Dyke, could you describe this picture in about one paragraph? Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That'd be a long paragraph, I think. I played the part of an unsuccessful inventor with two children who lives in a windmill. And we find this car in a junk heap and refurbish it. And it has magical properties. It flies, it'll hover on the water, do almost everything. And the nefarious Baron Bomburst, played by Gert Frobe, tries to kidnap the car and we end up in Bulgaria where most of the adventures with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang take place. But it's an inverted world where all the adults are children and all the children have to live in a dungeon. It's terrible. Where did you first hear the script of this film and what were the circumstances? I heard about it in Hollywood. Cubby Broccoli, the producer, came to Hollywood to talk to me about it. And I had never heard of the story or even knew that Ian Fleming wrote a children's story. I don't think most people do know that. And that was the first time I heard about it. I went home that night and asked my kids. They'd all read it. They knew all about it. How do you find working with Ken Yu as the director of the film? Ken is just exactly my kind of a director, because he doesn't regard the script as engraved in stone exactly. You know, if you want to ad-lib or change things around, if you get a good idea, it's perfectly all right with Ken. So that's the kind of director I like to work with. How do you find working with Sally Ann Howes? Well, how could I find her? It's a pleasure. Could you compare your role here or your style of role here with that of Mary Poppins? I don't know. There's a couple of numbers that are kind of like, you know, the numbers we did in Mary Poppins. The man I play, Cracticus Pross, probably has Burt's philosophy, the same outlook on life as Burt in Mary Poppins. Most everybody thinks that American television is in pretty sad shape. What do you think is wrong with it, or why? I don't, you know, somebody once said in a paper, one of the papers here, I think, that if the newspapers in the United States depended on a rating system the way television does, it would be 10 pages of comic strips. And I wonder if that isn't true, that the rating system is what's the matter with television. I think that we should just diversify it in some way so that small groups of people, you know, with interest can watch something that they're interested in. It's all that lowest common denominator thing or something. I'd like to see the rating system go. Dick, in Divorce American Style, which is now a hit throughout the country, many critics noticed that it was rather a new Dick Van Dyke, although the movie, half of it is a funny, howling comedy kind of thing, a lot of it has a biting kind of honesty to it. What is most rewarding to you, doing something, a realistic type part like that, or again, a part like this in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a fantasy? Well, it's probably the most fun doing a fantasy like this, children's show or comedy. I get the most fun out of it. But the minute I read the script on Divorce American Style, I grabbed it right away when they offered it to me. Because I think that, you know, you can say the truth better with humor than you can say it any other way, because people don't forget it. And I think this picture, despite the fact that it's got laughs in it, it has an undercurrent of, as you said, it's biting. But I think it really says it. I've taken people to that picture who had to leave right in the middle. It got so close to home, they couldn't take it. What about the Dick Van Dyke show going off the air? What was the reason for that? Well, we all voted. Everybody took a vote. We only had a five-year contract. So at the end of the five years, we decided to vote on it. And most of us felt that we didn't want to, we want to quit while we're still proud of it. I don't know. When they go eight, ten years, it seems like you either run out of ideas or get a little stale or something. But I get a little homesick. Looks like they're going to go for another eight or ten years, though. Because we've got them coming back pretty strong. In the daytime? Yes. Good. What do you think of fashion and the mini, mini, mini skirts we've been seeing here in London? I don't mind the mini skirts, but the mini, mini, mini skirts, I don't know. You know, I don't mind it. We go down to King's Road and Carnaby Street. That's right, isn't it? Yeah. And I think it may be an overreaction to conformism on the part of the kids, but I think it looks pretty good to see individuals dressing the way they want. It's colorful. The rest of us in our plain gray suits go down there and watch. Dick, do you have a favorite scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that you've enjoyed doing more than any of the others? Well, we've only been shooting now three weeks, and we've been working on a number called Two Sweets, which takes place in a big candy factory. And we're still working on that. We're having a ball with it. Matter of fact, I just pulled a muscle in my leg. I got a little too energetic in the number. Dick, in watching some of your reruns of your show and seeing you now in person and in divorce American style, especially when you took off your shirt in the bathroom ballet moment to it, you look like you're in the peak of condition. You're getting broader and broader. How do you stay in shape? And how have you gotten so much more sturdy looking than you once were? How... where am I getting broader and broader? I don't know. Well, you know, for about a year, I lifted weights and things. I only weighed 140 pounds, and I'm six feet one. And in a year, I gained about 20 pounds. And I've stayed about the same. I'm right around 160 now. Play a lot of tennis. Although here, I have a little squash court. The house we're renting, and I've taken up squash. And it's not a fast game, but it's fun. You're filming here in London. What do you miss most about America while you're here? Hamburgers. I swear, hamburgers. Because you can't get a hamburger. No, they just don't have it. If you go to the butcher and ask for a hamburger, they don't know what you mean. You have to ask for minced meat. And it's not the same somehow. What do you get? Minced meat. Dick, in this scene that takes place in the candy shop, it's pretty wild. What actually happens in there? Well, I play an inventor. So I've invented a candy that whistles. Oh. And also is edible. And so we call it Toot Sweets. And in my effort to sell Lord Scrumptious, the manager of the Scrumptious factory, these sweets, we evolved into a dance number called Toot Sweets. And all the workers in the factory joined in and were spilling candy all over the place. The kitchen must be fairly interesting. Yes, it is. Big colored bat. They've done an interesting thing. It's a color picture, but that entire set is black and white or gray. And the only things that are brightly colored are the candy boiling in the big bat. And it looks interesting on film. Very stylized. Let me change the subject for just a second and ask you to go back to this family business. What do you think is the most important element to keep a family cooking proper? Oh, I don't know. Well, of course, I think that if you have a religious faith that keep your kid in the church along with the family up to a certain age, the church will lose them when they're 15 or 16 years old until they're about 25, I'd say. 25, 30 years old. But I think it's a groundwork that you can't overlook. Some kind of, you know, value outside themselves. I think you've got to have it. To the south of London, among the gently rolling downs of Sussex, near the village of Ditchling, dwells a singularly improbable personage named Emmett. Strolling through the quaint countryside, he seems no more extraordinary than a country squire taking the morning air. But to those who know. Typical English eccentric. That must be the inventor. Hidden away inside a cunningly picturesque 18th century forge is Emmett's workshop. Here, like Dr. Frankenstein, new life is created from discarded bits and pieces. Emmett's monsters, however, are not pseudo humans, but delicate and whimsical mach machines. This is the domain of Roland Emmett, the Ditchling Tinkerer. Emmett resides with his wife, Mary, at Wild Goose Cottage, though an area goose, wild or otherwise, is known to inhabit the immediate vicinity. Still, there is something a bit untamed about the premises. Objects have a tendency to disappear. The Tinkerer is loose, collecting the necessary ingredients for a new creation. For Emmett combines ordinary oddments into extraordinary flights of imagination. His studio is a rather antique dovecot at the bottom of the garden. Here, the metamorphosis begins, where a tea caddy and a seashell are integrated into a new Emmett whatsit. Roland Emmett first came to the world's attention as a cartoonist. His particular brand of nonsense has been described as a kind of deep dish Victorian parody of modern manners and technology, full of gentle gothic whimsy. Most renowned of Emmett's graphic creations is the infamous Far Tottering and Oyster Bay Railway. A sometimes working model, constructed for the Festival of Britain in 1951, flung Emmett deep into the mire of three-dimensional construction, an accident from which he has not yet extracted himself. Emmett's current mechanical muddle involves the creation of a clockwork lullaby machine, a portable hairdressing saloon, and a gentleman's moon rocket outfit. All improbable props for the motion picture Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a splendidly magical motor machine, created by the Emmett-like inventor Caractacus Potts, who's played by Dick Van Dyke in the film. Headquarters for the cinemization of the Ian Fleming story is England's Pinewood Studios, where that well-known cast of thousands has been toiling for months to bring the musical to the screen. Creation of this phantasmagorical entertainment presented producer Albert Broccoli with a pride of problems, signing the perfect cast, including Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Heather Ripley and Adrian Hall, Dirk Froebe, James Robertson Justice, and Lionel Jeffries. This was only one problem to be resolved. Finding the right location was another, for filming took place in France and Bavaria as well as England. And then there were the huge musical numbers to stage. But these were large, massive problems, easily dealt with by the man who helped bring James Bond to the screen. More difficult was the delicate and crispy puzzle of creating the manic machines Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts invents in the film. Where was the answer to be found? Where but Ditchling and Roland Emmett, who so perfectly personifies Potts' potty approach to technology. I became involved in this film for various reasons. I've built a great number of rather pathetic inventions in the past, and I believe that the sponsors of the film could see some affinity between Caractacus Potts, who of course is Dick Van Dyke, and myself. We both try very, very hard, but never quite pull off what we're after. I've made, I think it's eight devices in all for this picture. I think one could say from design to finish. That's six or seven months it took me to make these. Once completed, Emmett moved his splendid gaggle of gigaws to Studio K Pinewood and the set of Potts' workshop. Now this is the Potts' clockwork lullaby machine. There's a little array of cat bells at the top which join in, and the amplifier is a great seashell backed up by a horn, which is a sheet of music from one of the Browns' lullabies. But it's rather confused thinking. Now the thing about Potts is that he was always ahead of his time, and here we have Visivision, which was his idea of, I suppose we must say television, his idea of, anyway, snatching pictures out of the air in 1910. It's not entirely successful, and although it does produce here a picture, and in colour, it seems to have got stuck on one picture. The Potts' sunflower washing up machine. This is rather a dreadful thing, and I think it's one of Caractacus Potts' least successful adventures. This is the little dragon suction cleaner. This little dragon is a most temperamental little beast, and if it loses its temper it either suddenly chews the carpet to shreds, or sucks up the entire carpet, which is never seen again. People often think of me and my machines as eccentric. I think this is awful. We're not eccentric, any of us. We're different, yes, but I think, now my machinery, this is the way machines ought to go. And granted it doesn't do the job, but still. Now this is a large full-bodied machine of most imposing proportions. It's really for making lollipops and toffee apples and jelly babies. It seems to do all right with the toffee apples, the jelly baby situation's rather confused. The most astounding thing about this machine, however, is that it suddenly and inexplicably begins to produce a magic whistling sweep, which has a great deal to do in the film, and actually later makes Caractacus Potts fortune. You know, I've spent an awful long time with these things, and when you've done that, you grow very attached to it. At least I do, I've grown very attached to these things, and I know them all by name, and you know, they're temperamental, and sometimes they won't play, sometimes they will. And you know, you go around, you have a word here and there, and you give them a pat and so on. I don't know, they're like a family to me, and when I lock up the workshop at night and go away, I often wonder what they get up to, or whether they just sit there waiting for me to come back, whether they think about me as I do about them, or whether, you know, just what does go on after the door's shut at night. Oh well, I suppose I shall never know. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's a legend. It's a magical motorcar. Many years ago, way back in 1960s, I was Pierre the Clown. I played clown for many years, and my act was the motorcar that fell to pieces, which was an old Model T Ford. And in 1966, my agent said to me, there's a film being made called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's about an extraordinary motorcar. I said, well, what they want me to do? He said they might want your car to fall to pieces in one of the scenes in the film. And we set it up to show them what it could do. And in the end, they decided the car was terrific. It did everything, but they had to have it do it straight away. Bang, everything should fall off straight away. With my old Model T Ford and my circus act, that didn't happen. And while we were discussing all that, they said, oh, would you like to look after the actual motorcar itself and be involved? I said, yes, I would. Thank you very much. I would stand by just in case they need something moved. Hold this, do that, move this, shake that. If it was drivable, I used to drive it to the various locations. But the wonderful position I've got, that I ended up with a motorcar, and that's really very, very magical. It was based on an old car that raced at Brooklands in the 1920s. It had a Zeppelin engine out of the First World War flying airships of the Germans. There was about three or four Chitties. There was one that was actually made onto a speedboat chassis because that had to skim along the water at Saint-Tropez. Chitty Gen 11, which I own, that was in most of the driving sequences. There was one or two small models, yes. There was a little miniature made of that for various scenes. In 1973, I did inquire what is going to be the future of these wonderful motorcars. I said, well, I would be very, very interested. And so I then bought two Chitties from Cubby Broccoli. Even now, 30 years later, Chitty still continues to tour the British Isles. And she's very well known the world over, wherever you go. We've been to Germany, we've been to France, we've also been to Australia, and various other places around the world. And it's magic. When I go around, people turn their heads so much they nearly turn off. It's quite phantasmagorical. Chitty might be magical, but still has to be cleaned. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh, this is Chitty's gleaming bonnet. It's the wonderful aluminium made out of the tin bath, but it's got to be cleaned all the time. So if anybody can clean it, give me a hand and we'll do it together, all right? And this is the lovely tyre. These are the original tyres, Goodyear. We've had to now research some other tyres. This is one of the spares. This is a very beautiful spare. And these are these wonderful lamps. These are lovely old classic motor car, and they're really beautiful. And they need to be cleaned all the time, so it makes Chitty very, very beautiful. And look at this lovely leather seating, this wonderful Corallet leather, this lovely glowing red. Of course, the woodwork, as you can see, is pure magic because it's really wood. It's not plastic. A lot of film props were made out of odds and ends, but this is real craftsmanship. Wonderful thing. That lovely brass there again. All has to be cleaned, because when you've got to go to a show, you need to make sure that the car shines. Everybody's jealous of this wonderful bodywork. Oh, by the way, seatbelts. Must have got to have seatbelts, because if you don't have seatbelts, because it's everybody's got to be belted up, because if you don't belt up, you might have an accident. And I think that should always be remembered when you're driving. Always belt up in whatever country. And this is the wonderful picnic basket, as you can see, and the little pussycat. Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? Have you been to London to see the Queen? Marvellous, because you see, she looks after the thing. And I've got to get what we call a nice bowl of milk for her, all right? You'll be all right. See you later. Now, this is the cloud closer. If you don't close the cloud, then it starts to rain. Now, the one in the front of Chitty is the cloud opener, and this is the cloud closer. So when you're travelling at 30,000 feet with your seatbelts on, you must close the cloud. Otherwise, it can be very, very, very wet. Underneath the basket is the LPG tank, which is liquid petroleum gas. Environmentally friendly, so when we're flying around, we don't hurt the birds and the bees, or the flowers, or the trees. Now, this is Chitty's exhaust. I mean, let's face it, all that wonderful noise from the engine, and you hear this roar of the exhaust roaring away, and that gives you the speed and the power to fly. This is this marvellous steering wheel. There's a little bit of wood left over from the actual bodywork, so Karadikas made it into this wonderful steering wheel with all the lovely brass workings. Ah, and these. Now, these are magical. In case you get a bit thirsty in flight, this is lemonade, chocolate juice, and marmalade juice, and that's very good. The marmalade juice on the sandwiches when we're flying. I'm still working on the bell. This is the bell. All ships have a bell, because Chitty is a boat, and I suppose could be a ship. And here is the aerometer, so I know how high I go. 500 metres, 6,000 metres. So therefore, I've got to be very careful. That is all working in order, and it is, you see, because I could never take off if that's not working. Oh, by the way, the letterbox. Chitty gets thousands of fan mails from all over the world. They come by email, and come by letterbox, and a little grubby old stamp stuck on the envelope, and it says Chitty Stratford-on-Avon or Chitty England, and they all come to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in Stratford-on-Avon because that's where she lives. The wings that are on Chitty now are sort of a fiberglass wing, which I use for showing everybody that Chitty does have wings. I feel very responsible and very proud to have the motorcar. People wave, and I sort of wave back because it's nice to be, not me being recognised, but the car being recognised, and you can just imagine their lips saying, oh, there's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You don't, don't. I'm sure it doesn't. Yes, it is. It was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Quite amazing.