Trivia / Cannery Row

• Defictionalization: Monterey's Ocean View neighborhood, on which the fictional Cannery Row is based (see below), later renamed itself Cannery Row after the book. Though it bears little resemblance to the one in the book these days, essentially being a tourist trap consisting of souvenir stores, expensive restaurants, and perhaps in a poetic tribute to Doc, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. ^note  One of the few buildings left relatively unchanged from the time of the novel is Ed Ricketts's [Doc in the novel] lab.
• The Other Marty:
  • Raquel Welch was originally cast as Suzy, but was fired after just five days of filming. Welch sued MGM for wrongful termination and later won a multi-million dollar settlement.
  • Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical version, Pipe Dream, was originally going to cast Henry Fonda as Doc, but Fonda found that even after taking singing lessons he, in his own words, "couldn't sing for shit." Richard Rodgers wasn't willing to let Fonda talk his way through the songs, so Fonda walked away from the project and the creators cast a much less well-known actor with a much better singing voice.
• What Could Have Been: The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization were at one point planning a movie of Pipe Dream ... with The Muppets! Kermit the Frog as Mac, Miss Piggy as Fauna and Fozzie Bear as Hazel. Doc and Suzy as the human guest stars.
• Write Who You Know: The Cannery Row of the book is a thinly-veiled version of Monterey's Ocean View neighborhood. Doc is essentially an Expy of Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, and Western Biological is a stand-in for Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories. Dora is heavily based on Flora Woods, a madam who operated on Ocean View.

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