At the end of this week on the 13th of December, the legendary actor Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old. Van Dyke may be best known for his roles in Mary Poppins and The Dick Van Dyke Show, but he also played a character closely related to James Bond in a film closely related to James Bond called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car is a children’s story written by James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming, first published in 1964 shortly after Fleming’s death. In 1968, James Bond film producer Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli brought Fleming’s story to screen in a film musical called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang starring Dick Van Dyke, and he used much of the same crew from the Bond films. The film’s screenplay was co-written by Roald Dahl, who also wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice, and additional dialogue was written by regular Bond series screenwriter Richard Maibaum. The film employed Bond production designer Ken Adam. John Stears did the special effects. Editor and director on the Bond films Peter Hunt was the Production Associate. The film also features Bond-series actors Desmond Llewelyn and Gert Fröbe as well as stunt performers George Leech and Vic Armstrong. The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in the summer of 1967, and it features Pinewood’s Heatherden Hall, which previous stood in for SPECTRE headquarters in From Russia with Love. Filming began immediately following the You Only Live Twice premiere, which Dick Van Dyke attended.
When Dick Van Dyke was interviewed on Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show in 2013, he mentioned that Cubby Broccoli asked him take over the role of James Bond from Sean Connery, but Cubby rethought the idea after Van Dyke reminded him of his legendarily poor attempt at a British accent in Mary Poppins (1964).
Dick Van Dyke played the the lead character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Caractacus Potts—Fleming called him Commander Caractacus Pott in novel. Potts is not much like James Bond, and he does not dress much like James Bond. Van Dyke dressed more like Bond in The Dick Van Dyke Show, wearing stylish suits with cocktail-cuff shirts. Read more about his tailored style in The Dick Van Dyke Show. This blog previously covered the in grey suit in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is a little more Bond-esque than the sportier outfit featured here.
Joan Bridge and Elizabeth Haffenden designed the film’s costumes (credited for ‘Colour Costume Design’), which given the strong fantasy elements of the story are far more colourful and creative than most costumes in the Bond films. Costume house M. Berman Ltd., who worked on many Bond films, made some of the costumes for this film. Western Costume Co. in Hollywood made a Norfolk jacket for Dick Van Dyke to wear in this film, and it’s possible they made other costumes for him.
For the memorable scenes when the car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is revealed in all its glory and the main adventure begins, Potts wears a summery tailored ensemble. This outfit is designed to resemble Edwardian fashions to fit the setting of 1910s England, but it is infused with some hints of mid-1960s style, which itself was inspired by Edwardian fashions. The costume displays the character’s eccentricities through by dressing him in a variety of colours and patterns while avoiding items that clash.
The ecru jacket is made of a heavy and slubby silk or silk-linen blend, and it’s an appropriate jacket for the drive to the beach. The jacket is made in an Edwardian style with four buttons down the front, skinny notched lapels, and soft shoulders with a slight roping at the sleeve heads. The buttons are beige polyester and the buttonholes are brown. Three open patch pockets contribute to an appropriately sporty look. The jacket is detailed with double vents at the rear and one button on each cuff—while not inappropriate for the Edwardian era, these details are likely a 1960s influence. The silhouette looks modern due to its cut with front darts. The jacket is also slightly too short, another influence from the 1960s. Despite the four buttons down the front, this jacket resembles some of today’s popular unstructured jackets.
The waistcoat is an ecru wool with a fine tattersall check. It has six buttons down the front, and in the Edwardian fashion he wears all buttons fastened. Despite King Edward VII being the reason why men started wearing the bottom button on their waistcoat undone and English tailors started cutting the bottom button of the waistcoat to be unfastenable, Pott wasn’t the fashionable type who would have followed the still-recent fashion in his era. The back of the waistcoat is made in a brown satin lining and has an adjustable strap to tighten the waist. The waistcoat, while still wearable today, is the most significant part of this outfit that makes it look like costume today.
The taupe trousers are lightweight, likely cotton judging by their poor drape. They have a flat front with frogmouth pockets, a fishtail back for braces, and trim straight legs. It’s a workwear style, appropriate for a man who labours on his own inventions.
The ecru shirt has an Edwardian-inspired rounded club collar, but unlike the typical detachable Edwardian collar, this collar is attached. The shirt is detailed with a front placket and long, rounded one-button cuffs. Inside the unbuttoned shirt collar he wears a neckerchief in white with a navy print that resembles swirling branches.
His boots are ankle-height mid-brown suede with four eyelets, light-brown laces and thin, dark soles. In some scenes he wears a checked newsboy cap backwards on his head with goggles and brown leather gloves with a long gauntlet in the old military style.
It was quite a special era, that ‘60’s epoch, in which Edwardian tendencies drifted back into the fashion milieu, or when people who actually existed in that time as young adults still lived in the ‘60’s and dressed partially ‘Edwardian’ by rote. I’m reminded of William Hartnell in his ‘Doctor Who’ Edwardian styled double-breasted ‘town coat’ (which everybody mistakes for a morning coat or a frock coat), a style in which an older school headmaster or a university chancellor may have actually dressed at the time.