Commander Pott is no longer a married naval man, but a handsome widower-inventor-storyteller named Potts. Gone are Monster Joe and the gloomy French coast, replaced by Baron Bomburst, the Child Catcher, and the autocratic land of Vulgaria. Special effects were overseen by John Stears, who worked on six Bond films and won an Academy Award for “Thunderball.” Dahl’s screenplay offers a loose adaptation of Fleming’s story. It was produced by Cubby Broccoli, written by Roald Dahl (“You Only Live Twice”), and featured Desmond Llewelyn (“M” in seventeen films) and Gert Fröbe (“Goldfinger”). The 1968 film is a production of the post-Fleming James Bond machine. Burningham’s England and France are foreboding places, full of smog, cobwebs, and dark shadows, into which the Pott family ventures to explore a gunrunner’s cave and face off against the villainous Monster Joe and his gangsters. His characters are stolid and compact, with small eyes and short lines for mouths. The grim circumstances surrounding Chitty’s creation and publication seem to stake out a presence in Burningham’s original illustrations. The novel was illustrated by John Burningham and published in October 1964, two months after Fleming’s death (from another heart attack, on Caspar’s twelfth birthday). Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! The Magical Car follows the Pott family-father Caractacus (“the Commander”), mother Mimsie, and twins Jeremy and Jemima-and their semi-autonomous, gadget-laden car. While recuperating in a south coast hotel, he set down some of the nightly bedtime stories he invented and told to his son Caspar. In April 1961, amid a lawsuit disputing the authorship of Thunderball, Ian Fleming suffered a major heart attack.

The illustrations on display are from a picture book tie-in to the film, adapted for beginning readers by Al Perkins. Nor is it the 1968 film starring Dick Van Dyke and Sally Ann Howe. This is not Ian Fleming’s novel, his only work for children. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, illustrated by Barney Tobey, is on display at the New-York Historical Society.

Chitty chitty bang bang book 1968