Flipper

Flipper (1963)

The wonderful story of a boy and his amazing underwater friend!

Sandy is distraught when, having saved Flipper by pulling out a spear, his father insists the dolphin be released. A grateful Flipper, however, returns the favor when Sandy is threatened by sharks.

Date of release
1963-08-14
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (65)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Family
Director
James B. Clark
Collection
Flipper Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Florida

Flipper is a 1963 American adventure film written by Arthur Weiss based upon a story by Ricou Browning and Jack Cowden. Produced by Ivan Tors and directed by James B. Clark, the film centers on a 12-year-old boy living with his parents in the Florida Keys who befriends an injured wild dolphin. The boy and the dolphin become inseparable, eventually overcoming the misgivings of the boy's fisherman father.

Production

Co-creator Ricou Browning said that he originally conceived the story after seeing his children intently watching the TV series Lassie, which inspired Browning to create a similar story with a dolphin in place of the dog. After he sent the story to his friend, producer Ivan Tors, Tors expressed interest in making it into a film.

Filmed in color in 1962 and released in 1963, Flipper has several underwater sequences, along with scenes of the trained dolphin performing stunts. Flipper was portrayed by the dolphin Mitzi, a female born in 1958 and trained at the Santini Porpoise School (later the Dolphin Research Center) by Milton and Virginia Santini, who are credited in the film. Mitzi died in 1972 and is buried at the Dolphin Research Center.

In addition to Mitzi, four other dolphins were filmed for the production of the movie. Two of the dolphins, Little Bit, a female, and Mr. Gipper, a male, mated at the Santini Porpoise School, yielding a calf named Tursi in 1973 who still lives at the Dolphin Research Center as of 2026.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended