I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!

Peter Sellers held up production one day because a script girl was wearing purple, a color he claimed gave him "bad vibes." The crew had to find a different outfit in wardrobe before Sellers would agree to work. In Germany, the film was called Let Me Kiss Your Butterfly. By Frank Miller Quotes from I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS! "Maybe there's an address on the casket." - Leigh Taylor-Young, as Nancy, trying to help Peter Sellers, as Harold Fine, lead a funeral procession to the cemetery. "I'm trying to stop trying, guru." -Sellers, as Harold Fine "I've got pot; I've got acid; I've got LSD cubes; I've got...I've got this thing here...I'm probably the hippest guy around here. I'm so hip, it hurts!" - Sellers, as Harold. "Am I being a real person?" - Sellers. "I knew it. I knew it." - Joyce Van Patten, as Joyce, on being dumped at the altar.

After meeting in the writer's room for The Danny Kaye Show, actor-turned writer Paul Mazursky and writer Larry Tucker teamed up to create the Beatles-inspired television series The Monkees. They originally planned to move into filmmaking with H-Bomb Beach Party, a satire of nuclear war. The script attracted the attention of actor Lawrence Harvey, who wanted to make it with Hunt Stromberg, Jr. producing and Mazursky directing, but the deal fell through. Mazursky had been intrigued by the growing counter-culture movement, had experimented with acid and had attended a few love-ins. But he had never gone too far because he had also started a family with his wife, Betsy. He and Tucker set out to explore a more up-tight, less committed character to see how he would respond to the temptation to drop out of society. The film was named for Alice B. Toklas, poet Gertrude Stein's secretary and longtime companion. When Toklas published The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook in 1954, she included a recipe for "Haschich Fudge." As a result, people started calling brownies laced with marijuana "Alice B. Toklas brownies." The writing team's agent loved the script but didn't feel he'd had enough experience with film so he sent it to Freddie Fields at Creative Management Associates (CMA, now ICM). Fields also responded positively and saw it as a perfect vehicle for another of his clients, Peter Sellers, who was looking for a film to follow The Party (1968). Fascinated by the hippie scene, Sellers had already started experimenting with drugs and dabbling with Buddhism, which made the project a natural choice or him. When he signed on, Fields negotiated a deal that gave Tucker and Mazursky $200,000 for the script and another $75,000 for executive producing. Sellers was paid $750,000 for acting in the film. Initially, Sellers wanted Mazursky to direct the film, but the two had a falling out when the actor mistakenly accused Mazursky of making a play for the then-Mrs. Sellers, actress Britt Ekland. Instead, Sellers picked Hy Averback, another television comedy veteran whose two previous films had been Chamber of Horrors (1966) and the Doris Day comedy Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968). Leigh Taylor-Young made her movie debut as Sellers's hippie sweetheart after making a name for herself in her first television role, as Ryan O'Neal's new love interest (after the departure of Mia Farrow) on Peyton Place. A young Ed Asner read for the role of Sellers's law partner but lost out to Herb Edelman. As a result, he had to borrow $10,000 from his agent to move his growing family to a larger home. The day he went to collect the check, Sellers and Edelman got in the elevator with him in costume for a scene from the film. By Frank Miller

A week into the shoot, Peter Sellers invited Paul Mazursky to his home for a meeting. Given their previous differences, this was a shock in and of itself. At the meeting, Sellers apologized for the misunderstanding and begged Mazursky to take over the direction. Mazursky refused to do it. This was not a happy period in Sellers's life. He was miserable working in the U.S. and furious that his second wife, Britt Ekland, had signed to make The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), which was filming on the East Coast while he was working in Hollywood. As a result, he acted out on the set a great deal. At one point, he was convinced the crew hated him and was leaking unfavorable stories about him to the press, so he tried to have them all fired. During the shoot, Sellers developed a crush on leading lady Leigh Taylor-Young, who was married at the time to her Peyton Place co-star, Ryan O'Neal. That made a huge problem with the scene in which his character is supposed to turn on his hippie sweetheart. Director Hy Averback tried to get Sellers to change the way he was playing the scene to no avail. When Mazursky stepped in and told Sellers his behavior was hurting the film, the actor turned on him, ending the relationship they had just begun to repair. The beach scenes were shot at Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu and Venice Beach. Concerned that the film was "too Jewish," executives at Warner Bros./Seven Arts insisted that the cantors at Harold's wedding be dubbed, with English replacing the traditional Yiddish in the wedding service. Originally, the film included interviews with Beat poet Alan Ginsberg and counter-culture guru Timothy Leary, but the studio cut them, claiming most filmgoers had no idea who they were. Sellers would later claim he, Mazursky and Tucker bribed a guard to let them into the editing room, where they recut the film to represent their vision, but Warner's refused to release that version. To capture the spirit of the counter-culture on screen, composer Elmer Bernstein featured the sitar, an Indian instrument popular among young people, in his orchestrations. The popular rock group Harpers Bizarre performs the title song, with music by Bernstein and lyrics by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky. The film premiered in New York on October 7, 1968, before opening around the country on October 18. Warner Brothers/Seven Arts sold the film with the tagline "The saga of Harold...from dedicated lawyer to dedicated dropout." Afraid of the film's humorous depiction of recreational drug use, the studio backed off from Mazursky's suggestion that they make the poster more psychedelic. Although I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! was still in release when the Motion Picture Association of America replaced the old Production Code with the current ratings system, the film's producers did not submit it for a rating. They simply kept to their original "For Mature Audiences" label on advertising and at theaters. By Frank Miller

Peter Sellers stars in the wacky Sixties comedy, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) as a straight-laced Los Angeles lawyer persuaded to join the hippie counterculture by a beautiful flower child. Hopelessly conservative and unadventurous, Harold Fine (Sellers) is a mother-dominated mensch, sitting passively by as Mrs. Fine (Jo Van Fleet) plans his upcoming wedding to his equally domineering fiancee Joyce (Joyce Van Patten). But when Harold meets the pot smoking, butterfly-tattooed, doe-eyed hippie Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young), his life changes. Nancy whips up some hash brownies (from a special recipe courtesy of Gertrude Stein's lover Alice B. Toklas), "turns on" the entire bourgeois Fine clan, and before you can say "Magical Mystery Tour," Harold is spouting terms like "groovy" and turning his bachelor apartment into a hippie crash pad. An enthusiastic convert to the peace-and-love way, Harold paints his car in psychedelic colors and takes up residence with Nancy in the back seat. Though Sellers' brilliant impersonation of a middle-class Jewish lawyer-turned-hippie-drop-out in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! mocked Harold Fine's transformation from a square to a hipster, ironically enough, Sellers also dabbled in the bohemian arts off-screen. According to biographer Roger Lewis, Sellers was afflicted with his own streak of hippie moodiness and a desire to fit into the counterculture. Sellers reportedly banished a script girl from the Alice B. Toklas set for wearing purple which he said gave him "bad vibes." Sellers' son Michael also saw his father succumb to the influence of an Indian guru, and recalled that Sellers would "go about the house wearing kaftans and chanting the scriptures. He would also burn incense and pray before a picture of Buddha." A significant portion of I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!'s charm and psychedelic ambiance comes not just from Sellers' peculiar brand of comedy, but is also provided by composer Elmer Bernstein's witty score, with the addition of the flower child generation's favorite instrument, the exotic Indian sitar. A legendary film composer and one of Hollywood's most prolific since entering the business in the Fifties, Bernstein was nominated thirteen times by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his film scores, and won in 1967 with his composition for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). The composer was often referred to as "Bernstein West" in homage to his film work and to distinguish him from classical composer and "Bernstein East" Leonard Bernstein. Though he was initially trained to be a concert pianist, Bernstein's successful transition to film composition was clear in the wide range of scores he has since produced, from blockbuster comedies like Animal House (1978) to message films like My Left Foot (1989) and classic Hollywood like The Magnificent Seven (1960) and To Kill A Mockingbird (1962). Bernstein, who trained with renowned composer Aaron Copland built his reputation on innovative uses of all-jazz scores (for The Man With the Golden Arm 1955) in movies, and his early experimentation with electronic music over a career that has included over 100 film and TV scores. Director: Hy Averback Producer: Charles Maguire Screenplay: Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker Cinematography: Philip Lathrop Production Design: Pato Guzman Music: Elmer Bernstein Cast: Peter Sellers (Harold Fine), Jo Van Fleet (Mrs. Fine), Leigh Taylor-Young (Nancy), Joyce Van Patten (Joyce), David Arkin (Herbie Fine). C-94m. Letterboxed. by Felicia Feaster

"As long as it accepts its conventional identity, it's as amiable as the Jewish middle class and hippie scenes it satirizes with a TV gag writer's sensibility. Toward the end, however, the movie gets all mixed up and, under the mistaken impression that it's as wise as The Graduate [1967], it runs off into an unsatisfactory limbo." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times "Film blasts off into orbit via top-notch acting and direction. Sellers' performance - both in scenes which spotlight his character as well as ensemble sequences in which everyone is balanced nicely - is an outstanding blend of warmth, sensitivity, disillusion and optimism." -- Variety "Along the journey to nowhere, Sellers displays a few glimmers of the comic genius that once made him seem like a chip off the old Chaplin. But most of the time, the movie reduces him to elephantine gestures and TV-sized jokes." -- Time "The first half of the film is the best, as Sellers gradually bends the middle-class into non-class...This kind of stuff is good and pretty close to the mark, and Sellers is very funny. Unfortunately, the movie's general approach to hippiedom is what we've come to dread. Hippies wear funny clothes, sleep on the stove, don't wash, read the Los Angeles Free Press, bake pot brownies, put up posters everywhere and operate with a sort of mindless, directionless love ethic. So the movie becomes conventional after all. If they'd dropped Sellers into a real hippie culture, we might really have had a movie here." - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Tribune AWARDS & HONORS Leigh Taylor-Young was nominated for a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer - Female. She lost to Olivia Hussey in Romeo and Juliette and Marianne McAndrew in Island of the Blue Dolphins. Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker received two nominations from the Writers Guild of America, one for Best Written American Comedy and another for Best Written American Original Screenplay. They lost the former to Neil Simon's script for The Odd Couple and the latter to Mel Brooks's script for The Producers. By Frank Miller

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968) is one of several Hollywood films of its time to poke fun at the then-burgeoning "hippie" counterculture. Post 1967's "Summer of Love," caricatures of hippies began to appear on camera with increasing frequency as either magnets for derision or targets for cheap laughs, in films such as Richard Rush's PSYCH-OUT (1968), Barry Shear's WILD IN THE STREETS (1968), Richard Lester's PETULIA (1968), Disney's THE LOVE BUG (1968), Don Siegel's COOGAN'S BLUFF (1968), George Seaton's WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT FEELING GOOD? (1968) and Ralph Nelson's CHARLY (1968). Clearly, 1968 was a boom year for hippie-bashing, but the following summer found Hollywood's mellow harshed by the infamous Tate-LaBianca slayings committed (in the words of The Los Angeles Times) by "an occult band of hippies" commanded by messianic failed songwriter Charles Manson. The brutal killings were horrific enough, resulting in the murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and stylist-to-the-stars Jay Sebring (among others); worse yet was the revelation that the killers had a Hollywood hit list that read like the Walk of Fame. Not so funny anymore, hippies became synonymous with dark motives and the threat of drug-fueled violence. Hippie costumes were worn by the criminal protagonists of both BUNNY O'HARE (1971) and BANK SHOT (1974), while Clint Eastwood hunted a serial killer with a peace symbol medallion in DIRTY HARRY (1971) and Russ Meyer's BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970) wrapped up with a main character being decapitated by a transvestite hippie sociopath. Heavy. More condescending than condemnatory, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas takes its title from a famous recipe for hashish fudge attributed to Toklas (longtime companion of writer Gertrude Stein) but which was really the work of Beat Generation artist Byron Gysin, whose prank flew under the radar of Toklas and the British censors. Directed by radio and TV veteran Hy Averback, the film stars Peter Sellers as repressed Jewish attorney Harold Fine, whose asthmatic, buttoned-up Los Angeles life comes undone when he meets-cute Nancy (Leigh Taylor-Young), the free spirit girlfriend of his hippie kid brother (David Arkin). Offering Nancy a chaste bed for the night, the beguiled Harold is rewarded with a gift of brownies laced with hash, which he unwittingly serves to his old world parents (Jo Van Fleet and Salem Ludwig) and fiancée Joyce (Joyce Van Patten). Stifled by the dull routine of his life and impending marriage, Harold takes a liking to turning on and ditches Joyce at the huppa to cohabitate with the more adventurous Nancy. Growing out his hair, Harold is feelin' groovy until Nancy's predilection for free love (and six-hour Andy Warhol movies) drives a wedge between the pair, and a contrite Harold returns to his four-square kith and kin. The script by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky, only a year away from their success with Mazursky's directorial debut BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE (1969), has dated badly. That the characters are Jewish never feels any more essential to the plot than as an excuse to wring laughs out of the occasional Yiddishisms, while-- oy vey-- the drug scenes are uninformed and silly. From the summit of his star-making turns in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and A SHOT IN THE DAR (1965), Peter Sellers had by this point begun his decade-long career slide in to poorly-conceived projects like CASINO ROYALE (1967) and THERES' A GIRL IN MY SOUP (1970); despite indulging his penchant for accents and multiple costumes, the actor never appears fully engaged with the role and his performance amounts to little more than a glum walk-through. It's also hard to watch dynamic stage actress Jo Van Fleet reduced to doing shtick as Harold's doting Jewish mother the very same year she etched COOL HAND LUKE's dying white trash mama so indelibly. Joyce Van Patten, Herb Edelman (as Harold's lecherous law partner) and future Robert Altman stock player David Arkin (whose life ended in suicide in 1991) provide stellar support in amusing but thankless roles. Look for Averback in a cameo as a rabbi and Tucker and Mazursky as hippie hitchhikers. The Warner Home Video I Love You, Alice B. Toklas DVD is a no-frills affair that does at least present the feature in widescreen, framed at 1:85:1. While the transfer is clear, colors are muted throughout and the image is flat and unimpressive. The soundtrack is available in monaural English and French, with optional subtitles in English, French and Spanish. A standard frame trailer is the only extra. Warners' keepcase box copy mistakes Paul Mazursky for the director of this "blissed-out comedy classic." Hy Averback directed only six feature films in his lifetime, and only half of these are currently available on DVD. It would be nice to see his earlier Doris Day comedy WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT? (1968) receive the digital upgrade or, better yet, his unsold 1966 pilot film CHAMBER OF HORRORS, deemed too violent for television and released instead to theaters. For more information about I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, visit Warner Video. To order I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, go to TCM Shopping. by Richard Harland Smith