MovieChat Forums > Doctor Dolittle (1967) Discussion > Why Didn't the Animals 'Talk'?

Why Didn't the Animals 'Talk'?

posted 11 years ago by idonnowho
3 replies | jump to latest

I had initially assumed that, aside from Polynesia, none of the animals spoke intelligibly in Hugh Lofting's original books. Upon reading the first two books, I was rather surprised to see that they DID talk in human voices therein; Polynesia, Gub-Gub, Dab-Dab, Jip, etc.

So... was it because they simply COULDN'T have made it look like the animals were talking back in 1967, due to the potential lack of the technology "Babe" later used for the illusion of talking animals? Or did Richard Fleischer and co simply not want any of the animals, besides Polynesia, to speak intelligibly for the audience to hear? Bummer... That would've made this film even MORE fun!!!

But, not to worry; I'm working on a project (pertaining to this film) in which Dolittle and the animals do have intelligible conversations with one another, not only like in the books, but similar to the Eddie Murphy remake (only the dialogue won't be nearly as crass for the most part...)

[–] laurence01 8 years ago

Actually the animals did not talk in the books. It was just written that way so readers could understand what they were saying. In the story the Dr talks their languages they do not talk ours.

Let Zygons Be Zygons.

[–] gcarras (2770) 5 years ago

They couldn't find right voices (Mel Blanc or others not available?:-))

[–] Otter (24464) 5 years ago

I've heard that this film was monumentally expensive, and ended up being a huge financial disaster. And making the animal appear to talk would have meant lots of time spent waiting for every single animal in the film to move its jaws in a way that looked like talking, and on movie sets, time is money.

So it's entirely possible that someone at the studio decided that they weren't going to waste time and money on making the animals appear to talk. "For what we're paying Rex Harrison", I imagine some executive saying "He can damn well convince the audience that he hears the fucking animals talk!".