The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

It's an Alphabeautiful Mathemagical New Musical Movie!

A young boy named Milo unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth and, out of boredom, drives through it and enters a fantastical, animated kingdom in turmoil following the loss of its princesses, Rhyme and Reason.

Date of release
1970-11-07
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (86)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Family
Director
Dave Monahan, Abe Levitow, Chuck Jones

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $2M
  • Based on: The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth is a 1970 American live-action/animated fantasy film based on Norton Juster's 1961 children's book of the same name. Produced by Chuck Jones at MGM Animation/Visual Arts, the film stars Butch Patrick as Milo, alongside the voice talents of Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Candy Candido, Hans Conried, June Foray, Patti Gilbert, Shepard Menken, Cliff Norton, Larry Thor, and Les Tremayne. Jones also co-directed the film with Abe Levitow, while Dave Monahan directed the live-action segments.

Production

In 1963, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contracted with Sib Tower 12 Productions to have Chuck Jones and his staff produce new Tom and Jerry cartoons. For his first project with MGM Animation/Visual Arts, Jones read the book The Dot and the Line written by Norton Juster, which was adapted into an animated short that won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In January 1966, MGM optioned to adapt The Phantom Tollbooth into a feature-length film.

In a departure from the novel, Ralph was added to the film to act as a friend to Milo. Jones explained, "It had to be a boy named Ralph. Anybody called Steve or Mike would have called with something to do. Ralph sounds like a wet tennis shoe."

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

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