I thought this little extract from Mark Harris’ Pictures At a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood may be of interest to those of us luddites who pine for classic Hollywood and the stars and bars that made up the lustrous landscape of The Dream Factory. The passage deals with the end of production on the star-spangled turkey “Doctor Doolittle” (the musical version from 1967). The shooting was so horrible that Rex Harrison and his wife, the actress Rachel Roberts, fought each other tooth and nail and ultimately became crazy drunks:

“Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, set up in a mansion in Beverly Hills, were both drinking more heavily than ever in what Roberts later called a period of “real disintegration.” “They had rented a house that my godfather, Jean Negulesco, used to own,” recalls Natalie Trundy . . . “There was one night when Rachel Roberts was so drunk that the police picked her up — she had run away, and they found her crawling through the grass, trying to get home. And Rex used to come to the set in the morning with about five martinis in him. It was pathetic.” The couple’s problems were becoming dangerously public: They showed up disheveled and disoriented at a tribute to George Cukor one night, Harrison with his toupee stuffed in his jacket pocket; on another occasion, Harrison appalled a room full of the Hollywood establishment — among them WIlliam Wyler, Billy Wilder, Jimmy Stewart and their wives —  at a party at the Los Angeles restaurant The Bistro, singing obscene lyrics about his penis to the tune of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face” while Roberts, who was not wearing underwear, did handstands.”