Trivia / Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

• Box Office Bomb: Although it was the tenth highest-grossing film in the United States, it only made back three quarters of its $10 million budget.
• California Doubling: The beach which the Pottses and Truly go to for their picnic is implied to still be in or near rural England, but it's actually Plage Taillat - the southernmost part of France.
• Creator Backlash:
  • For many years, Heather Ripley, who played Jemima, never talked about the movie because her parents divorced during its making. However, her attitude towards this movie has become fonder now.
  • Director Ken Hughes reportedly hated the finished film. He did not like working with child actors and butted heads with Dick Van Dyke throughout filming. The film's initially poor critical reception didn't help Hughes' attitude towards it, either. He told an interviewer that "the film made a lot of money, but that doesn't really make me feel any better about it."
• Creator's Oddball: Based on a children's book written by a man famous for gritty spy novels.
• Cut Song:
  • "Lovely, Lonely Man" is omitted in some TV airings and the stage musical since it stands out so much on its own among all the songs.
  • The tune played over scenes of Bomburst's castle originally had lyrics as the Vulgarian National Anthem, but exists only as an instrumental in the film.
  • "Come to the Funfair" was cut for time. An instrumental can be heard before Potts takes his hair-cutting invention there.
• Dawson Casting: Truly Scrumptious was supposed to be in her twenties, though Sally Ann Howes was in her mid-thirties when she played her.
• Defictionalization: Melody Pops, also known as Whistle Pops in some countries, are musical candies similar to Toot Sweets, introduced in the 1970s. Fortunately, they don't attract dogs.
• Deleted Role:
  • Bob Monkhouse filmed a role that ended up on the cutting room floor.
  • Phil Collins claims he was one of the children storming the castle at the end of the film but was edited out because of a rather large and unsightly bandage on his head that was covering a cyst.
• Dueling Movies: The film was overshadowed by the success of The Love Bug, another family film about a magic car that also starred a Mary Poppins actor (David Tomlinson, who played Mr. Banks).
• Fake Brit:
  • Dick Van Dyke as an English inventor, this time with no accent.
  • Heather Ripley, who portrayed Jemima Potts with a strong English accent, is Scottish.
• Fatal Method Acting: Narrowly averted. Robert Helpmann's dancing reflexes saved him when he was riding the Child Catcher's carriage and it tipped over. Helpmann leapt off in time, amazingly unharmed.
• Follow the Leader: One of a bottleneck of movie musicals produced in the wake of the success of Mary Poppins, as well as others like My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music which gave the genre a brief resurgence in it's waining years of popularity.
• Friendship on the Set: Dick Van Dyke brought Benny Hill in to work on the script and they quickly became friends, bonding over their mutual love of silent comedy. They both lamented that they weren't around during the silent era.
• Genre-Killer: Along with Camelot, Doctor Dolittle and Hello, Dolly!, all of which were produced in a rushed attempt to capitalize on the success of the brief resurgence of movie musicals in the early '60s, it's failure ended up running the genre into the ground, and movie musicals since have been far and few between.
• Hostility on the Set: In his 2011 autobiography, Dick Van Dyke revealed that he and director Ken Hughes were frequently at odds during filming. Hughes was a rather vocal Child Hater and often cursed in front of the child actors, which Van Dyke and Robert Helpmann (who played the Child Catcher) would yell at him for. Eventually, Van Dyke resorted to sequestering the children away from Hughes, with Sally Ann Howes keeping them entertained. The conflict between Van Dyke and Hughes would ultimately play a part in Hughes' later dislike of the finished film.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Robert Helpmann, the actor portraying the scary Child Catcher, loved working with his child co-stars, often making them laugh between takes.
• Money, Dear Boy: Dick Van Dyke originally turned the part down but was repeatedly offered the part with more money added in each offer. When the offer reached seven figures plus a percentage of the profits, he accepted the role. Hughes himself later had this opinion of the film, due to the Hostility on the Set and initial poor reception, outright stating that "the film made a lot of money, but that doesn't really make [him] feel any better about it."
• One-Book Author: This was the only acting role for Heather Ripley (Jemima Potts).
• Playing Against Type: Benny Hill's toymaker character is a far cry from his usual broad comedy. Supposedly his casting was at the request of Dick Van Dyke, who said Hill should do some rewrites (Hill went uncredited for them) and the two of them became best friends during filming.
• Production Posse: Producer Albert R. Broccoli carried over several cast & crew from the Bond movies, including actors Gert Fröbe and Desmond Llewelyn, production designer Ken Adam, special effects man John Stears and writers Roald Dahl and Richard Maibaum.
  • Director Ken Hughes and Anna Quayle both worked on the "unofficial" Bond film Casino Royale.
• The Pete Best: Five weeks before shooting, the producer and director were unhappy with Roald Dahl’s then-unfinished script, choosing to fire him from the role and replace him with Ken Hughes, the film’s director. Sadly, Roald’s name stayed on the credits along with Ken himself. It is unknown if any of his work made it into the final script or not.
• Recursive Adaptation: There was a Novelization of the film by John Burke, since the movie script wasn't close to the original novel at all. In it, all the scenes in Vulgaria are more explicitly said to be Potts' fantasies due to his inability to cope with the loss of his wife.
• Underage Casting: Lionel Jeffries, who played Grandpa Potts in the film, was actually a year younger than his on-screen son Dick Van Dyke.
• Wag the Director: Dick Van Dyke's only stipulation once he finally accepted the role of Caractacus was that he not have to do a British accent, knowing how badly it had worked out for him the last time.
• What Could Have Been: The role of Truly Scrumptious was originally offered to Julie Andrews, but she declined because it was too similar to Mary Poppins.
• Written for My Kids: The original novel was based on a bedtime story that Ian Fleming would tell his youngest son. Shortly after Fleming had survived a heart attack, his son came to him with tears in his eyes and said "Daddy, you love James Bond more than you love me!", convincing Fleming to turn the bedtime story into a book.

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