|
|
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Even more stuff!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Nice Shirts!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
An Interview with Tom Rettig
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Irwin Chusid of WFMU (then East Orange, now Jersey City, NJ), interviewed Tommy Rettig by telephone ca. 1987. The occasion was to promote a screening of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, which was being held at Maxwell's, in Hoboken, as a fundraiser for Projected Images of Hudson County.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
New Evidence Concerning the Deleted Scenes
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
US (1953): Musical/Fantasy/Children's
Pauline Kael Review
This was cut shortly after its first disastrous showings, but later became available in its original form. The movie is mostly the nightmare-fantasy of a little boy who doesn't understand why his mother insists on his practicing the piano, and who hates his music teacher, Dr. Terwilliker. You can see why: Hans Conried is Dr. T.,and he's the slimiest villain since W.C. Fields slipped the gin in Baby LeRoy's bottle.
In Dr. T.'s castle, 500 boys with their 5,000 fingers are trapped at a mile-long
double-decker piano. Unfortunately, good, progressive parents, knowing that this was a Stanley Kramer production, from a script by Dr. Seuss, took their children to see it, and thus heard their kids scream with fear and excitement. (The kids didn't take their parents with them when they went to see PSYCHO.) The picture doesn't live up to the idea, but Conried does have a wonderfully foolish number-the "Dressing Song" ("Do-Me-Do Duds").
A review of Dr. T from Variety
Posted: Thurs., Jan. 1, 1953
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
Columbia. Director Roy Rowland; Producer Stanley Kramer; Screenplay Dr Seuss [= Ted Geisel], Allan Scott; Camera Franz Planer; Editor Al Clark; Music Frederick Hollander; Art Director Rudolph Sternad
Peter Lind Hayes
Mary Healy
Hans Conried
Tommy Rettig
By VARIETY STAFF
The mad humor of Dr Seuss (Ted Geisel) has been captured on film in this odd flight into chimerical fiction. Story and conception were shaped by Dr Seuss for the Stanley Kramer unit at Columbia, and he also contributed to the screenplay and did lyrics for the songs composed by Frederick Hollander. Results are sometimes fascinating, more often fantastic.
Of all the wild, weird happenings, the film's standout is the fantastically imaginative dungeon ballet - a mad creation. Tommy Rettig is the kid who would rather be out playing with his baseball and dog than learning the scales under the tutelage of Hans Conried, the Dr Terwilliker who becomes the villain of the plot. Opening finds the youngster dreaming he is being pursued by strange creatures with butterfly nets in a land full of odd cylinders and mounds, eerie hues and fog.
This new land is a terrifying one, filled with a strong castle in which Dr T conducts a school of piano for the 500 boys he holds prisoner. In the dungeon, deep below the fortress, is a group of miserable creatures, grown green and moldy with age, who were imprisoned because they dared play instruments other than the piano. Roy Rowland, an expert in the direction of kids, shows his skill in handling Rettig and does fairly well by most of the fantasy, although the material is such that it's hard to keep the interest from lagging at times.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Irwin Chusid: How often do you do interviews or are you asked about Dr. T?
Tom Rettig: Too often [laughs].
IC: Really?
Rettig: This is the nostalgia age and certain things have been rediscovered -- and Dr. T is one of them. They all blur together to me. I get things from Lassie and things from Dr. T, and so on. I would guess Dr. T itself, maybe once a year.
IC: How old were you when you did the movie?
Rettig: I was eleven.
IC: And you were playing the part of, I think, an 8-year-old?
Rettig: I don't know. It may have been nine or ten. In those days, because I looked younger -- I used to say I was younger than I was, and then they'd hire me to play, like, a year under that.
IC: How did you get the role of Bart?
Rettig: Just a reading, an audition. I had been an actor at that point for six years. I had done several other motion pictures and several TV shows, and this was, like all the others, just another audition -- reading, and getting the part.
IC: You must have had some idea of the nature of the film.
Rettig: Oh, yeah, of course.
IC: Was it anything that you coveted more than other roles, perhaps?
Rettig: It looked like a lot of fun, and there were some very meaningful things in there. That song, "Just Because We're Kids" -- I mean, that was just wonderful. In fact, I wish I could have really sung it. I am not a singer, never have been -- I tried to learn, never have been able to -- and they dubbed my voice for that. I can't tell you the boy's name, but I believe he was a member of the Mitchell Boys Choir [NOTE: Tony Butala]. Anyway, that song -- I thought, gee, those lyrics need to be said. That's a neat thing to be a part of. I believe those feelings very much. And it was fun. I mean, of course, I knew who Dr. Seuss was, I had all his books -- in fact, I have his book sitting right here that he signed for me. The opportunity to do something like that was absolutely a thrill and a high point. When I'm asked what my favorite movie is that I've been in, I couldn't single out between the two: 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and River of No Return, which was directed by Otto Preminger, with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum.
IC: What year was that?
Rettig: That was 1953 also. I believe right after Dr. T. Or right before, but I think right after. I think it was Dr. T, then River of No Return, and then Lassie. Or River of No Return, Dr. T, and Lassie, but somehow that doesn't sound as right.
IC: You've already answered my next question -- did you sing your songs? You didn't.
Rettig: No, sorry. And I never was a teenage singing idol either, for obvious reasons [laughs].
IC: So, unlike William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, you never made a record of, say, psychedelic classics?
Rettig: I actually did make a record, but it was never released. It was so bad. This was in the late '50s, when Ricky Nelson was starting. We were both about the same age range and people were saying it's a natural thing to get into music, that was the path upward. If that was the path upward, that was it for me [laughs].
IC: Do you have the record, or at least a tape of it?
Rettig: Yes, I do, and no you may not.
IC: [laughter]
Rettig: In fact, my own children do not have a copy of it.
IC: Did the film do poorly when it was released commercially?
Rettig: We were on a national tour. We opened at the Criterion Theater in New York. It was a big premiere. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford [of the Yankees] were there. There was lots of advance publicity. As far as I knew, we were supposed to be on tour to open at various theaters across the country, starting with New York and coming back to L.A.
IC: Who was we? You mean the cast?
Rettig: Yes. The tour, at some point very early on, was cut short. The reviews weren't bad. The people seemed to like us, too. I don't know if you've gone back and looked at any of the reviews. I don't recall them being negative.
IC: I haven't come across any negative reviews, but some of the references simply say that commercially it flopped, or didn't do as well as expected.
Rettig: It seems inexplicable that this film would open with this kind of fanfare, have this kind of strong cult following years later, and suddenly be discovered to be a good film. So I don't think the film flopped. The story that went around was that [producer] Stanley Kramer and [Columbia president] Harry Cohn were having their famous fight, and Cohn pulled all support from every project that was Kramer's at that point. I haven't read the books, but I've been told that this has been documented. Suddenly the tour was cut short and the film stopped playing. At the time, some people thought it was a political move with Cohn and Kramer. I have no idea. All I know is that it seemed very strange to me. It wasn't like it played to empty theaters or anything like that. We had crowds everywhere we went. Then suddenly they pulled the rug out from under it.
IC: Were they originally hoping to maybe replicate the success of The Wizard of Oz? It's the same sort of plot: a youngster falls asleep, has a dream, is transported to a magical kingdom run by a domineering figure, and the kid wakes up at the end and realizes it was all a dream -- except for certain real-life parallels.
Rettig: I couldn't tell you what they expected. Obviously they intended it to be in the same genre. Whether or not it would ever make its mark in history just depended on a whole variety of things.
IC: In terms of being in the same genre, did they expect it to appeal not just to kids, but to adults as well?
Rettig: I believe so, yes.
IC: Certainly Dr. Seuss books do. They work on that level.
Rettig: Yes, exactly. And he was very influential in the making of this film. I still have packed away somewhere my script with drawings that he would sketch in. Mostly he would sit there sketching the next set, or the next scene, showing things to the director and the cameraman about how he pictured it.
IC: That was my next question. I have a book about Dr. Seuss. There is one reference to 5,000 Fingers in the whole book. It mentions Dr. T and says, "Dr. Seuss referred to it as the worst experience of his life." Do you have any idea why?
Rettig: No. I think you should call him and ask him. I've heard quite the opposite. I don't know, but other people have talked to him, and apparently he has fond memories of it.
IC: Who was your favorite cast member?
Rettig: I liked them all. I know that sounds like a cop-out. From Peter and Mary to Hans, to the guy -- whose name I can never remember (NOTE: Henry Kulky] -- who played the elevator operator in the dungeon. [Laughs] It was just a neat set to work on. Everybody was neat. I don't remember anything particularly outstanding or anything bad about it. It was just a fun project from beginning to end that seemed to work, and I was well-insulated from the political shit going on in the background. There seemed to be a fair amount of that.
I loved Roy Rowland, the director. I spent a lot of time at his house. I think he had directed me in one or two movies before that and maybe one afterwards. It was just a great time. It was so much fun. I mean, if you can imagine being eleven years old and having a set like that to play on, and people like that to have access to. I mean, just to be able to run up to Dr. Seuss's chair and watch him draw in his script. It was really an outstanding experience.
IC: A lot of people who have seen the film recently remark on Hans Conried, because they remember him from Make Room for Daddy, and from What's My Line or I've Got a Secret. For me it was a revelation, because I had never seen him in that sort of role. Conried is so likeable. People remember him from the Bullwinkle cartoon series, but they had never seen him in the context of a film like Dr. T. His performance is outstanding, his character so vividly drawn and outrageous. Obviously, you have a lot of respect and admiration for the fellow. What else can you recall about him?
Rettig: He was extremely nice and friendly. His performance showed that he was just the absolute professional. He worked very very very very very hard to get what he wanted and what the director wanted, and to make that character come alive. I got to watch a very skillful actor in motion, and like watching any real craftsman, the process is beautiful.
IC: In the roller-skating sequence with Peter Lind-Hayes, where he cuts the beard of the twin brothers -- did Lind-Hayes do the roller-skating himself?
Rettig: Some of it, but some of the harder stuff, no. You can tell. Where you can't see his face, that's not him. I used to spend time on the stage -- although I wasn't on skates, I got to play on skates and learn from those guys. The bearded guys were really twins, I believe, and they were fantastic professional skaters.
IC: The "Happy Fingers" caps -- they weren't marketed, I understand. They were just given away as promotional items?
Rettig: That's true. We had various toys, horns, musical instruments, things they tried to merchandise. Well, actually, they prepared them; they never really tried to market them. And, yeah, there were caps too. I'm sorry to say my cap has disappeared over the years in various moves. I don't have one anymore. The last I can track it back is about 20 years, when my kids were about five years old.
IC: This is an observation from a friend. The movie came out in 1953 and features a boy of 8 or 9 years old, who doesn't have a father. Because of World War II, a lot of boys that age did not have fathers. Was that a consideration in the film -- appealing to kids of that age who didn't have fathers?
Rettig: You can read that into it. I would assume that nothing really happens by accident. If they're going to have a fatherless boy, they have to understand the ramifications. And, yeah, I agree, it was a popular thing to do at the time. The part I played on Lassie starting in '53 was the same thing, a fatherless boy. There was a grandfather on the show.
IC: That's right! I was trying to remember who played the father, but couldn't.
Rettig: I got the Lassie part from The 5,000 Fingers. Remember the shaggy little mutt in that story? Well, that dog, Sport, his real name's Chris, and his owner is Frank Weatherwax, whose brother is Red Weatherwax, Lassie's owner and trainer. Frank came to my mother and I one day on the set and said that his brother Red was getting the rights to Lassie back from MGM. They were going to do a TV pilot, and he said I should have my agent contact this producer. He gave my mom a number, and she called the agent. One thing led to the other, and that's how I got it. It was directly from 5,000 Fingers.
IC: What other TV programs did you do after Lassie?
Rettig: I did three episodes of Studio One, a U.S. Steel Hour,
Wagon Train -- remember Whirly Birds? -- Peter Gunn, Mr. Novak, Lawman, Four Star Theater, Ford Theater, Death Valley Days, three Burns & Allen episodes.
IC: These were mostly one-shot appearances?
Rettig: Oh, yeah.
IC: Were you in any other series?
Rettig: No. Lassie was the only series I did.
IC: So you kept pretty busy.
Rettig: I worked pretty solidly from the age of five to the age of 15. Ten years I grew up "in the biz" -- and at 15, I decided I just wanted to go play.
IC: Really? What happened at that point?
Rettig: That was the fourth year of the Lassie show, and the entire cast -- we were all on a five-year contract, and because of various disagreements, in the fourth year we jointly sued the producers for release from the contract. I wanted to play with cars and girls and go to school and be able to go to parties on Friday nights instead of studying a script to work on Saturday -- in those days, we worked Saturdays. So I got to go to high school for three years and get out of the business. My parents always left it up to me whether to work or not, and at 15, I chose not to work.
IC: Was that pretty much your exit from the business?
Rettig: Yeah, it was. I tried to get work again when I was about 18-1/2, 19, and struggled for about six or seven years doing a few things here, a few things there, sometimes good roles, but not really a career or earning a living. Then in 1965, I chucked it entirely, got rid of my agent, my manager, and said, "I gotta go make a life for myself. This is ridiculous."
IC: Is that when you got into computers?
Rettig: No, I didn't get into computers until 1981. I've done a ton of things in between. Most of the time, I've been a commercial photographer, in and out of business for myself. I had a production company for three years, I was a farmer for a year-and-a-half, I sold real estate, brokered life insurance. I've been a jack-of-all-trades, looking for something interesting to do. Then I found computers in 1981 and fell in love with them and became an expert, with a best-selling book in 1984.
IC: What book was that?
Rettig: The Advanced Programmers' Guide. That was my first book. I have my fourth book coming out with Bantam Books in February. I'm currently a Bantam author, doing a series of five books for them on all the DBASE languages.
Transcribed by Dawn Eden
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
No, This is not a screen test by Marlon Brando trying out for the role of Dr. Terwilliger! BUT just imagine the possibilities!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Collin's house as it appeared in the film.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Collin's house as it appeares today.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Special thanks to 5000 Finger fan Bill Graff for the photograph.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| page created with Easy Designer |