Darling Lili

Darling Lili (1970)

She gave away secrets to one side and her heart to the other.

World War I. Lili Smith is a beloved British music hall singer, often providing inspiration for the British and French troops and general populace singing rallying patriotic songs. She is also half German and is an undercover German spy, using her feminine wiles to gather information from the high ranking and generally older military officers and diplomats she seduces.

Date of release
1970-06-18
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (38)
Runtime
2h 23m
Genres
Music, War, Drama, Comedy, Romance
Director
Blake Edwards

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Darling Lili is a 1970 American romantic-musical spy film, written by William Peter Blatty and Blake Edwards, the latter also directing the film. It stars Julie Andrews, Rock Hudson, and Jeremy Kemp, with music by Henry Mancini and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. This was the last full musical to have song lyrics written by Mercer.

Production

In 1967, Blake Edwards signed a four-picture deal with Paramount Pictures. The projects he would make were Waterhole No. 3, Gunn, the television series Mr. Lucky and Darling Lili. Julie Andrews signed to play the lead in Darling Lili. Production was to start late in 1967. Executive producer Owen Crump began shooting second unit in 1967.

The film was given a budget of $6 million and Andrews was paid $1.1 million and promised 10% of the film's profits. Edwards wanted to film the aerial dogfight scenes in South Carolina, but was forced to film them in Ireland, with planes from The Blue Max, due to studio demand despite it costing $70,000 per day.

Edwards courted British comedian Benny Hill for a supporting role in the movie. During the audition, he asked Hill if he could do a Paris accent. Being a perfectionist, Hill asked Edwards if he wanted an east side or west side accent, but Edwards was not impressed by his attention to detail and recast the role of Captain Duvalle with Jacques Marin.

Edwards suffered continual interference from Paramount executives while making Darling Lili, and it was eventually edited by the studio largely without his input. The director later satirized the problems he faced in the film S.O.B. (1981), which was also distributed by Paramount theatrically.

Problems with the May 1968 protests in France led to much of the planned Parisian shooting to be done in Brussels, Belgium.

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

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