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“I didn’t say that, Ernie,” DeCuir said.

“Yeah, well, Ern, John likes to look at people eating,” Kidd said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Lehman said. He walked off by himself for a moment and then came back and asked DeCuir if it were possible to pull out just a few of the booths and not all. DeCuir shook his head.

“I’d have to pull them all out, Ernie, and then put in an apron that comes out about six inches from the present facing,” DeCuir said.

“Why that, too, for Christ’s sake?” Lehman said.

“We need the apron, Ernie,” DeCuir said. “No camera operator is perfect. If his camera jiggles, you’re going to pick up the facing, and without the booths, what is there? Nothing. The apron gives us something in front of the dancers’ feet, so if the camera does jiggle, we’ve got some floor space to show.”

Lehman slapped his palm on a stool. “Well, can’t we have some shots of people in the booths?” he said.

“Sure, Ern, no objection,” Kidd said. “We can establish it, we can have a couple of angles shooting up through the booths. Then we take out the booths and shoot the rest of the number.”

Lehman looked unhappy. “Find out how much it’s going to cost,” he said to DeCuir. “And then I’ll call Stan Hough. I don’t want him on my ass Monday. Let’s get him on my ass now and get it over with.”

The plans for the various premieres of
Dr. Dolittle
continued to take shape through the early autumn of 1967. Rex Harrison had agreed to leave his home in Portofino, Italy, to attend the openings in Copenhagen, London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. In line with Harrison’s itinerary, Arthur Jacobs wrote a memo to the Studio’s New York publicity office:

Like all major premieres in Hollywood, the opening of
Dr. Dolittle
would be covered on television. The usual procedure was to have the show on a local TV channel, and as their limousines pulled up to the theater, the arriving
stars would be interviewed by Army Archerd, the gossip columnist for
Daily Variety
. Arthur Jacobs, however, was angling for a national network pickup of the Los Angeles opening and had been in contact with Joey Bishop to host the premiere on his late-night ABC talk show. Bishop’s show was broadcast live from a studio in Hollywood for the Eastern time zone and taped for later showing at eleven-thirty the same night for the West Coast. Bishop had expressed preliminary interest in doing the
Dr. Dolittle
premiere, but Richard Zanuck had vetoed the live pickup Bishop wanted.

“What I don’t understand is why,” Jack Hirschberg said one afternoon in Arthur Jacobs’ office. A balding, sad-faced man who always looks on the verge of tears, Hirschberg was the publicity man for Apjac. “You can’t buy the kind of exposure you get on Joey’s show.”

“Because of the
Camelot
opening, that’s why,” Jacobs said. He was munching on a cracker. “They had Army Archerd out front. Live. And the picture started fifty-five minutes late. You make an audience wait fifty-five minutes and they hate the picture before it even starts. Dick Zanuck says we start at eight o’clock sharp and if we blow Joey Bishop, we blow Joey Bishop. It’s disaster to make an audience wait fifty-five minutes. We got to get him to tape it.”

Hirschberg’s resigned features saddened even more. “He won’t do it,” he said.

“What time does he go on?” Jacobs said. “Eight-thirty, right? If he goes on live, that means the picture doesn’t start until nine-fifteen the earliest. You want to make the audience hate the picture, Jack, you make them sit there until nine-fifteen. They don’t get out then
until after midnight, they haven’t had anything to eat, the hell with the party after, they go home and get a sandwich and they hate us.” Jacobs demolished another cracker. “We got to get Joey to tape it.”

“He won’t do it,” Hirschberg insisted.

“What do you mean, he won’t do it?” Jacobs said. “We got Rex, Samantha, Newley, Attenborough, Julie Andrews, Burt Lancaster—that’s more names than he’s had on his show since it started. Of course he’ll tape it. That’s too big a star lineup to turn down. He tapes it, then we get a helicopter to fly him back to his studio.”

Hirschberg shook his head.

“And not just the star lineup,” Jacobs said. “What about all the animals arriving in their cars? Of course he’ll tape it. Where the hell else is he going to get a chimp arriving in a Cadillac wearing white tie and tails?”

Hirschberg sighed. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

Jacobs rang his secretary and asked for a glass of diet soda. “Now for the party,” he said.

Hirschberg checked the notes on his lap. “I’ve ordered 1,400 albums,” he said. “Everybody who comes in gets an album.”

“No speeches at the party,” Jacobs said. “And the goddamn food at the
Camelot
party was inedible. We’ve got Chasen’s, so that’s no problem. But we need two orchestras. The
Camelot
party fell apart because they only had one orchestra. The band took five and everyone left. No wonder, the goddamn party didn’t start until twelve-ten.” He was back on his original tack. “These are picture people. They got to get up and go to
work in the morning. So we can’t start later than eight o’clock. We don’t want people to get pissed off and leave. Of course Joey will tape it. If he doesn’t, Dick Zanuck says it’s better to blow the whole show.”

The second sneak preview of
Dr. Dolittle
was held at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco on Friday night, October 20, 1967. In the six weeks since the Minneapolis sneak, the Studio had been at work cutting the picture. The prologue was eliminated entirely, the cartoon-credit sequence pruned drastically and the rest of the film tightened throughout. The night after the San Francisco sneak,
Dr. Dolittle
was to be previewed again in San Jose, and for this showing, two of Anthony Newley’s musical numbers, “Where Are the Words?” and “Beautiful Things,” had been cut down. The final cut of the picture was to depend on the audience reaction in San Francisco and on the still shorter version shown in San Jose.

After the dead reaction in Minneapolis, the Studio had decided to name
Dr. Dolittle
in the advertisements placed in the San Francisco newspapers for the preview. In both the
San Francisco Chronicle
and the
Examiner
, large three-column ads ran in the theater pages that said:

The Fox party was staying at the Fairmont Hotel. David Brown had come out from New York and Richard Zanuck flew up from Los Angeles in a private jet. Arthur Jacobs came in from Europe, where he had been supervising the pre-production details on his musical version of
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
. Before the preview, Zanuck hosted a dinner for the Fox party at Ernie’s, a fashionable restaurant not far from the theater. The executives and production people ate at two large tables, while the two Studio public relations men attending the preview ate at a small table by themselves.

Natalie Trundy was in an exuberant mood. She picked up a silver service plate and jiggled it in her hands, as if to weigh it. “I want one,” she said.

“Forget it,” Jacobs said. He seemed nervous and exhausted. “I’ll call Barney Conrad and he can get us one.”

“Arthur, you miss the point,” Natalie Trundy said.

“I don’t miss the point,” Jacobs said irritably. “Barney Conrad can get me one. We’ll have it by Sunday.”

Natalie Trundy pinched Jacobs on the arm and measured her words slowly. “I want this one, Arthur. I want to steal it.”

Jacobs’ eyes circled the table, settling on Mort Abrahams. “Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“The thrill is in the chase, Arthur,” Abrahams said. He took a silver service plate from an adjoining table and slid it under the tablecloth to Natalie Trundy.

“How do you propose to get it out of here?” Jacobs said. He nodded toward a waiter. “You think that waiter over there doesn’t know what you’ve got on your mind?”

“In my tights, Arthur,” Natalie Trundy said.

Jacobs looked perplexed. “I don’t have enough troubles,” he said. “I got $18 million riding on this picture and you want to walk out of here with a silver plate in your pants.”

Natalie Trundy escaped from Ernie’s with the silver service plate. The captain pretended not to notice, but added the cost of the plate to the Studio’s bill. A fleet of limousines took the Fox party to the Orpheum. A police line had been set up and a crowd of people stood outside the theater gaping at the Studio contingent. In the lobby, Zanuck asked one of the publicity men to get some popcorn and orange drinks for himself and Linda Harrison. Surrounded by Richard Fleischer, Stan Hough and Harry Sokolov, Zanuck looked intently at the audience filing into the theater.

“I told you it was smart to put the name of the picture in the ads,” he said. “Look at this crowd. It’s a lot younger than Minneapolis.”

“You were right, Dick,” David Brown said. “We should have done this in Minneapolis.”

Abrahams came up to the group. “I’ve already counted thirty-seven kids,” he said.

“I didn’t see a single one in Minneapolis, Dick,” Brown said. He turned to Sokolov. “From now on, when we have a big sneak, we’ll run the name of the picture in the ad, like Dick said.”

The Fox party took their seats as the overture began. From the opening credits, it was apparent that the audience was far livelier than the one in Minneapolis. The laughter was not uproarious, but there was a reaction at each comedy sequence and applause at the end of the musical numbers. During the intermission, the Studio party seemed considerably buoyed. David Brown edged through the crowd in the lobby to a covey of Studio personnel.

“I just told Dick cutting the prologue was the logical cut,” he said.

After the intermission, the pace of the picture seemed to drag, but the audience still appeared in good spirits. There was a long round of applause when the picture finally ended and the overture was reprised. The preview cards for the San Francisco sneak had been changed and shortened. Unlike the ones used in Minneapolis, there was no space for grading the performances of the actors nor was there space for commenting on individual scenes. As the audience filled out the cards in the lobby, Sokolov pushed his way up to Jacobs, who was puffing nervously on a thin dark cigarette.

“Great, Arthur, just great,” Sokolov said. “I’ve got to admit, I lied to you in Minneapolis. I thought we were in trouble. But this time …” Sokolov winked and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

The cards were stuffed in boxes and carried back to Zanuck’s suite at the Fairmont. A bar had been set up, but there was not enough Scotch and Zanuck ordered up a few more bottles from room service. Jacobs circled the room, trying to get some ice from the empty glasses
that littered the suite. Natalie Trundy sprawled on the floor next to Abrahams, stacking the cards. Jacobs picked one up.

“ ‘Impossibly bad,’ ” he read. “I would have to pick up that one.”

There were some 800 cards in all and Zanuck did some quick figuring. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “The theater only holds twelve, thirteen hundred people. You figure the people who’ll send their cards in by mail, that means practically everyone there made out a card. I’ve never seen so many cards at a preview.”

“It’s fantastic, Dick,” Brown said.

“Fantastic,” Hough said.

The cards broke down to 457 “Excellent,” 218 “Good” and 125 “Fair.” Sitting at a coffee table, Abrahams pulled out a pencil and a piece of paper and calculated the percentages, comparing them to Minneapolis. He began to frown and calculated the percentages once more, checking them again against the Minneapolis figures.

“How’s it work out?” Jacobs said.

“I can’t figure it out,” Abrahams said. “We’re only a percentage point off. Fifty-six per cent ‘Excellent’ in Minneapolis, 57 per cent ‘Excellent’ here.”

Jacobs looked deflated. “I thought with all these cards we’d be better.”

“You know it was a better audience,” Zanuck said. “We all know that.”

“I could feel it,” Brown said. He began riffling through the cards, picking out the “Excellents” and one or two on which the viewers had scrawled comments.

“Here’s one, Dick,” he said. “ ‘Good for the whole family.’
That’s what we like to see. That’s money in the bank, Dick.”

In a corner of the room, Fleischer was going through the cards by himself. “Most of the ‘Goods’ say the picture was too long,” he said. “With the cuts we have for San Jose tomorrow night, all the ‘Goods’ will be ‘Excellents.’ ”

Jacobs poured himself another drink. “I don’t know about ‘Where Are the Words?’ ” he said. “I hate to lose it. It’s a good number.”

“Arthur,” Zanuck said, “you’ve got to stop thinking about numbers. You’ve got to think about the whole picture. A shorter picture is a better picture.”

Dr. Dolittle
was previewed for the last time the next night in San Jose. Along with the cuts made for the San Francisco preview, the musical number “Where Are the Words?” was eliminated entirely and another Anthony Newley song, “Beautiful Things,” trimmed to the bone. The cards at the small theater in San Jose were the best of all three previews, and after viewing them, Zanuck decided to freeze the picture. It was the San Jose print that was to be shown at the world premiere of
Dr. Dolittle
in London on December 14.