8365/21284
We stopped at Chievely service station on the way home. The child's cuddly toy was no longer on the picnic table, but that does not mean the story has a happy ending. Does any story have a happy ending? The toy will end up in the bin at some point. It might as well be now. All life is futile.
I don't want to spoil the surprises too much, but will say that any story that involves a film production coming to a halt because a giraffe has stood on its own penis (as a family we tried to work out how this was possible) is a winner in my eyes.
It's an incredible story of incompetence, wastefulness, stupidity, a monstrous lead actor, betrayal, injured giraffe penises and executives blindly taking punts on stuff without any idea what they're doing. Who would have thought trying to do a film with 1200+ live animals would have turned into such a disaster?
Because of the success of The Sound of Music Hollywood decided that what everyone wanted was three hour long musicals. It was only with the failure of Camelot that they realised that what people wanted was good films. But it was too late for Doctor Doolittle where a thin idea had been stretched to well over two hours.
Rex Harrison sounds like a real piece of work and it's amazing that he got away with having any kind of career in musicals when he couldn't even sing. How did people accept his ludicrous talk singing and not walk out of cinemas in disgust? This podcast looks for positive aspects of this racist, self-centred, arrogant, childish, entitled arsehole who failed to call the police when a woman he was with died in "mysterious" circumstances. It fails to find any.
The only consolation is that he was bitten by quite a few animals on this production. And if you're into that kind of thing he was the inspiration for Stuey on Family Guy.
It's fair to say that Hollywood in the 1960s was insane. Though I suspect that's just as true now. If this and the life of Prince Andrew teach us anything it's that giving self-centred human beings everything they want makes them even more horrible people. Who would have thought it?
"Ex-CIA chief of disguise Jonna Mendez stated in 2019 that a mask of Harrison was used by multiple CIA agents for covert work. The moulds of his face were larger and so could fit over a smaller agent's face. The moulds were made from aluminium and bought from Hollywood film facilities. She mentioned that his likeness was "taking part in a lot of operations". According to Mendez, Rex Harrison's aluminium facial props mould was used as a baseline for over-the-head masks that the agency would create and use operationally. The masks came in small, medium and large sizes, with Rex's mould becoming the agency's standard "large" size. Subsequently, many undercover operatives' real identities were disguised by masks bearing Rex's facial features."
What a life this man had and what influence he has had on the world. I hope he's enjoying Hell.
Anyway the podcast is excellent and you should listen. It does make me want to rewatch the film (which I remember enjoying as a kid, but that's no indication of it being worthwhile) though the hosts strongly advise against it.
I also want to read the books again, though even in the 60s people were complaining of the racism that ran through them. I had the complete set as a kid, but I was not a big reader. I maybe read the first two, but I was not a big reader back then and just pretended I'd read them all and that it was my favourite series.
Perhaps it’s lucky that I shirked on this or I might have been indoctrinated into being racist and thinking I could talk to animals.
