The Blue Bird
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
George Cukor
Elizabeth Taylor
Jane Fonda
Ava Gardner
Cicely Tyson
Robert Morley
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
The Queen of Light leads two peasant children, brother and sister Mytyl and Tyltyl, on a quest for the Blue Bird of Happiness. She provides them with a hat that has a magic diamond which gives them the power to draw out the souls of all things, animate and inanimate. So on their way, they are accompanied by the personifications of a cat, a dog, water, bread, sugar, fire, and others. Mytyl and Tyltyl visit kingdoms of the past and future, learning and becoming more wise with each visit. And finally, they learn that the blue bird that they have been looking for was in their own backyard the whole time.
Director
George Cukor
Cast
Elizabeth Taylor
Jane Fonda
Ava Gardner
Cicely Tyson
Robert Morley
Harry Andrews
Todd Lookinland
Patsy Kensit-healy
Will Geer
Mona Washbourne
George Cole
Richard Pearson
Nadejda Pavlova
George Vitzin
Margareta Terechova
Oleg Popov
Valentina Ganilaee Ganibalova
Yevgeny Scherbakov
Pheona Mclellan
Crew
Stanford C Allen
Aleksandar Arshansky
John Bramall
Gregory Elbert
Gordon Everett
Mike Gowans
Ionas Gritzus
Stirling Harris
Tony Harrison
Alfred Hayes
Edward Isaev
Alexei Kapler
Irwin Kostal
Edward Lewis
Maurice Maeterlinck
Liliana Markova
Paul Maslansky
Lionel Newman
Tamara Polyanskaya
Paul Radin
Lee Savin
Tatyana Shaprio
Theodore Soderberg
Yevgeny Starikovitch
Yevgeny Tatarsky
Valery Urkevich
Ernest Walter
Hugh Whitemore
Brian Wildsmith
Freddie Young
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
No bluebirds could be readily found, so several thousand pigeons were hand-dyed blue for the climactic scenes.
James Coco, originally cast as Dog, couldn't eat Russian food; the only local fare he could stomach was bread and butter. He wound up gaining so much weight his costume no longer fit, suffered a gall bladder attack, and had to be replaced by 'George Cole' . Coco later said, "They tell us [the movie] will finish by August, but not by August of what year. I understand Elizabeth [Taylor] is having Christmas cards printed."
Irwin Kostal, the composer for the American half of the production, clashed with the Soviet composer, Andrei Popov. Popov wanted jazz for the score; Kostal wanted "Volga boatmen music".
In an interview, director George Cukor recalled that during filming he received complaints from several English-speaking members of the Russian crew about star Jane Fonda. Their complaint was that instead of letting them do their jobs, she would follow them around quoting passages from Karl Marx and wanting to engage the technicians in discussions about them. They told Cukor they were already Communists, that Fonda didn't have to convert them, and if she persisted in her behavior the whole crew would go on strike. The producers spoke to Fonda and got her to stop.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1976
Released in United States 1976
