In case you missed it, Dick Van Dyke’s acapella group the Vantastix gave an impromptu performance of the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” theme song recently at a Denny’s restaurant in California. Patrons rushed to grab their cell phones and upload video of the performance to social media. It’s a catchy tune that everyone remembers fondly from their childhood. I was fortunate enough to see the movie in theaters and even had a lot of the merchandise associated with the movie when I was a kid. I was a big fan of Dick Van Dyke not only for his movies but also for his television show.
Here is the original film version of the song with Heather Ripley as Jemima Potts and Adrian Hall as Jeremy Potts. Dick, of course, played Caractacus Potts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTTzcXSLjhI
The Vantastix have been performing the song for years. Here is an older video of the group that was uploaded in 2013 by his wife Arlene to her YouTube channel. Sadly she no longer uploads videos but this gem is still available.
The impromptu Denny’s performance that caught so much public attention may have been a rehearsed promotion for their new album. It’s hard to say but I can tell you, as someone who has had professional voice training, that you’re not supposed to break out into song right after eating. A lot of singers are called upon to do just that and it’s always a testimony to any performer’s skill and discipline when they can finish a song without mishap.
Here is the Denny’s version of the song as caught by one of many people in the crowd who capture the moment on their phones.
There are a lot of interesting tidbits about those old movies that you can find on the Internet. For example, Lionel Jeffries, who played Grandpa Potts, only died in 2010. He was born in 1926 and his last film is dated to 2001. Jeffries appeared in many movies and television shows but one of my favorite roles among his many characters was that of Joseph Cavor in “First Men in the Moon” from 1964. He also appeared as King Pellinore in 1967’s “Camelot” with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, although that was not among my favorite movies.
![Lionel Jeffries in his last role on 'Lexx'](https://www.xenite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/lionel-jeffries-lexx.jpg)
His last role, according to IMDB, was in an episode of Lexx called “Walpurgis Night”. Although I loved Lexx and thought I had seen all the episodes I don’t recall that one off the top of my head. It’s a bizarre take on the Dracula legend (of course, every episode of Lexx was a bizarre take on something).
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was almost the last of the great live action fantasy musical movies, in my opinion. Sorry, fans of the original “Pete’s Dragon”, but that was never a movie for me. I think I stopped falling in love with musical fantasy flicks after “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. “Xanadu” definitely did not cut the mustard, nor any of those awful 80s’ “musical” movies.
Disney, of course, kept the musical movie concept alive with its great animated films. But an era came to an end with “Willy Wonka”, which was released three years after “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”.
Dick Van Dyke only made two big musical movies: “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, both of which were huge hits. He was the last of the great singing and dancing stars of American film (yes, he’s obviously still alive). We got to Dick do some dancing in the “Night of the Museum” films but those were not musical fantasy movies. The film industry changed after Walt Disney died in 1966 and moved on to action movies, bad 1970s era dramas, and horribly cheap sand-and-sword barbarian movies in the 1980s. Things started to look up again in the 1990s but it has been a long road to hoe.
Thank God we had “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” to fall back on when the weekends were boring and there was nothing else to do but watch old movies.