The Blue Bird Reviews

The third time was not the charm with the making of THE BLUE BIRD in 1976. It had been a successful play, then a book, but the 1918 silent version (by Maurice Tourneur) and the 1940 version (starring Shirley Temple) were flops. So, when it was decided to sink millions into something that had been sunk before, all the smart people at Fox agreed it was a good idea. A whole bunch of money came from the Soviet Union and this was to be the first Detente movie ever made with USA/USSR cooperation. The story is simple; two peasant children are taken from their home to a fantasy world in search of the bulebird-of-happiness. After 100 minutes, they find that true happiness can be found iat home. Liz Taylor plays four parts, in between getting sick in Russia with dysentery, dehydration. Jane Fonda, as "Night," spent a lot of time talking politics on the set. Cicely Tyson couldn't be lit properly as there were no black women in Leningrad who could play stand-in for her while she changed costumes. James Coco got sick making the film and his replacement, George Cole, had to be flown in. Ava Gardner came out of retirement in Spain to collect a lot of money as "Luxury." It's an old saying that if the picture has a lot of trouble in the making it will surely be a hit. THE BLUE BIRD had more trouble than most pictures in recent history and managed to take in just a tiny percentage of the vast sums it cost to make. So much for old sayings.