Percy

Percy (1971)

The Story Of A Very Successful Transplant

Edwin Antony (Hywel Bennett) is emasculated in an accident which kills a young philanderer. Doctors successfully replace his member with that of the dead man, but refuse to tell him the full story of the organ's origin. So Edwin begins a search which takes him to the philanderer's wife - and also to his many, many girlfriends...

Date of release
1971-02-18
TMDB
4.4 / 10 (14)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Ralph Thomas

Casting

Interesting facts

Percy is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.

Production

Producer Betty E. Box discovered the novel when she and director Ralph Thomas were meeting a publisher about optioning the film rights for another book. They were not available at the time, but the publisher gave them a manuscript by Raymond Hitchcock about a penis transplant. Box took it back to the office to read. "I zipped through it, laughing aloud as I read", she wrote. "Very unusual.

Ralph Thomas enjoyed the book too so they decided to option the rights. These ended up costing four times more than Box originally thought after Hitchcock had his own agent, as opposed to the publisher, do the negotiations. Box and Thomas paid for the rights themselves "not without a fair amount of heart-searching", Box wrote, "as we didn't expect it to be a straightforward financing operation – with the amount required to make a film it seldom i…

In June 1969 it was announced Box had bought the rights for £30,000 (the novel was not published until November). "I know people are saying this is the film that cannot be made," said Box. "But we have already thrashed out a makeshift formula... It will be a comedy film with sex, not a sex film... We are only dealing with something that every man has." "This is a tale of exploration," said Ralph Thomas.

Finance was obtained from Nat Cohen at EMI Films - they provided the entire budget. The poster was designed by John Troke, a publicist who had introduced Box to the book of Doctor in the House 15 years earlier. A script was prepared by Hugh Leonard while Thomas and Box filmed Doctor in Trouble.

"Five years ago I doubt we could have gotten away with it," said Box. "But today it is time we made the human male organ a subject for open, straightforward conversation. I mean, really it is a thing that has been sacred too long."

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

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