Charly (1968) on Netflix
Charly Gordon, an intellectually disabled man in Boston, attends Alice Kinnian's night school class. Two researchers select him for a procedure that tripled a laboratory mouse's intelligence.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.9/107,852 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes55%
Plot summary
At the bakery where he works as a janitor, Charly Gordon is the target of his coworkers' amusement. He cannot spell his own name, and for two years he has attended a night school class taught by Alice Kinnian, who brings him to two researchers, Dr. Richard Nemur and Dr. Anna Straus. The pair have developed a way to raise intelligence and have proved it on a laboratory mouse named Algernon, and they need a human subject. Charly takes a battery of aptitude tests and races paper mazes against the mouse, losing every time, and is chosen for the operation. Afterward he loses to Algernon once more and is frustrated that he has not become smarter at once.
Cast
- Edward McNallyas Gimpy
- William Dwyeras Joey
- Dan Morganas Paddy
- Marianna Caseas Young Woman (uncredited)
- Leon Collinsas Tap Dancer (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Charly (1968)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cliff Robertson had starred in several television shows that were later filmed with other actors in his roles, such as Days of Wine and Roses, so he bought the rights to Flowers for Algernon himself, hoping to star in the film version of the story he had already played on television in 1961.
- Cliff Robertson hired William Goldman to write the screenplay and paid him $30,000 out of his own pocket, then, unhappy with the work, replaced him with Stirling Silliphant to write a draft.
- In the late 1970s Cliff Robertson wrote and tried to produce a sequel, Charly II, to no avail, during a period of extended unemployment after he alerted authorities to illegal activities by Columbia Pictures president David Begelman.
