Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) on Netflix

G19711h 57mAdventure Comedy Family

Three orphaned siblings are evacuated from London to the Dorset coast, where Miss Eglantine Price takes them in. She is learning witchcraft and hopes to use it in the war effort.

Netflix3.8/5
IMDb7.1/1043,805 votes
Rotten Tomatoes66%

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Plot summary

Three orphaned siblings, Charles, Carrie and Paul Rawlins, are evacuated from London during the Blitz to the village of Pepperinge Eye, where Miss Eglantine Price reluctantly takes them in. The children try to run back to London, then change their minds when they watch her fly on a broomstick. Miss Price admits she is studying witchcraft by correspondence in the hope of helping the war effort, and offers them a traveling spell worked through the bedknob in return for their silence. When a letter announces her school is closing, she persuades the children to fly the bed to London to find her teacher, Professor Emelius Browne, who built the course from an old book. The book is missing the pages that carry the final spell, so the group sets out to find them.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Julie Andrews was initially offered the part but hesitated, afraid of being typecast; Walsh then contacted Angela Lansbury, who signed on Halloween, October 31, 1969, and when Andrews contacted Walsh to accept, she learned that Lansbury had been cast.
The song "The Beautiful Briny" wasn't written for this film at all; it was originally composed for Mary Poppins to accompany a sequence sending the Banks children to exotic locations, but that scene was cut and the song was reused here instead.
To accommodate the theater's elaborate stage show, 23 minutes were removed from the film, cutting three entire musical sequences, "A Step in the Right Direction", "With a Flair" and "Nobody's Problems", and reducing Roddy McDowall's subplot to one minute.
At a story conference with producer Bill Walsh and screenwriter Don DaGradi, the Sherman Brothers sang a demo version of the song "Eglantine" and Disney fell asleep in his chair, a moment DaGradi later immortalized in a sketch.
Peter Ustinov was considered and Ron Moody accepted the role of Emelius Browne, but Moody dropped out of the project before filming began and was replaced by Mary Poppins alumnus David Tomlinson.
It was the last film released before the death of Walt Disney's surviving brother, Roy O. Disney, a week later, the last theatrical film Reginald Owen appeared in, and the last film work of screenwriter Don DaGradi, who retired in 1970.