Dick Van Dyke reveals he didn’t like classic film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Hollywood veteran opens up in new book about how he repeatedly turned it down and the hell he experienced both on and off-screen
GENERATIONS of people have grown up loving family favourite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but one person who isn’t a fan of the film is its star Dick Van Dyke.
The 90-year-old Hollywood veteran played male lead Caractacus Potts in the song-filled big screen jaunt about a magical flying car, but says it took a lot of convincing for him to even appear.
Opening up in his new autobiography My Lucky Life In And Out Of Show Business, he explained: “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a movie that I repeatedly turned down.
“The movie’s producer, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, known for his tight-fisted control of the James Bond movie franchise, desperately wanted to re-team Julie Andrews and me after the success we’d enjoyed with Mary Poppins.
“I can’t speak for Julie’s reasons, but both of us turned him down. I thought the script had too many holes and unanswered questions. However, each time I said no, Cubby came back with more money. I’m talking serious money – more than seven figures, which in those days was mind-boggling, plus a percentage of the back end, which I never counted on. So I finally agreed.
“I made one last stipulation. I didn’t want to reprise my English accent, which I’d struggled with in Mary Poppins. Not a problem. My character was suddenly an eccentric American inventor. Spanning ten months, production was headquartered in England but also touched down in Bavaria and the South of France.”
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During production, the twice-married star’s first wife Margie Willett was taken seriously ill forcing Dick to return to his native US, something he claimed that film bosses had been fine with, but later went back on.
He recalled: “As we shuttled between London and the South of France, Margie suffered health problems. A local doctor surmised she might have cervical cancer. She took the kids back home to California and underwent a series of medical tests.
“”When I told Cubby that I needed to go home and be with my wife while she had more examinations, he understood and wished me well.
“I was gone only a few days. Margie’s tests came back negative and I jetted back to Europe, only to have my agent inform me that Cubby had docked me $80,000 for missing work. Furious, I didn’t want to talk to him after that, which wasn’t good since I was already unimpressed with the director, Ken Hughes. Quite simply, I thought he was wrong for the picture. One day I heard him grouse that he had to rewrite Roald Dahl’s script. Who rewrote Roald Dahl?”
He surmised: “I know the film is beloved by many but for me it lacked the magic of Mary Poppins, which its producer had hoped to emulate.”
Dick's other film credits include Bye Bye Birdie, Dick Tracy, plus, Night At The Museum and its two sequels.
Dick Van Dyke’s book My Lucky Life In And Out Of Show Business is released on August 4 by John Blake Publishing.