
When Sherman returned to America in the 1940s, his father Al, a Tin Pan Alley songwriter who had written hits for Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, challenged Robert and his brother Richard to try to earn a living writing songs. “If you look carefully, you’ll notice that in some places we are driving through vineyards and it doesn’t look much like the English countryside,” admitted Dick Van Dyke. One solution was to shoot scenes in the Cote D’Azur. However, the English weather during filming in July 1967 lived up to its unpredictable reputation. Some of the race scenes were set in Box Hill in Surrey.

The Cobstone windmill on the hill where Grandpa Potts, Caractacus and his children Jemima and Jeremy live is near the charming Buckinghamshire village of Turville. Scenes in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were shot in parts of England’s most beautiful countryside and the sites have since become tourist destinations for fans of the film. Some of the English countryside was French “I was in the last scene with all these kids, but I had this pristine white bandage round my head because I had this big cyst on the side.” Cubby Broccoli’s daughter Barbara – who was seven at the time – was also an extra in a fairground scene and, unsurprisingly, her scene was not cut.Ĥ. “I can see why I wasn’t in the final cut,” Collins later said. His scene was edited out, because the director did not like the unsightly bandage near his eye.

At 16, he was cast as an extra in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as one of the Vulgarian children who storm the castle at the end of the film.
