Chitty Bang Bang

Chitty Bang Bang was the informal name of a number of celebrated English racing cars, built and raced by Count Louis Zborowski and his engineer Clive Gallop in the 1920s, which inspired the book, film and stage musical Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

The Chittys were built and stored at Higham Park, Zborowski's country house at Bridge near Canterbury, Kent. The cars were so loud that Canterbury reportedly passed a by-law prohibiting them from entering within the city walls. The origin of the name "Chitty Bang Bang" is disputed, but is believed to have come from the sound of an idling aeroplane engine or from a salacious World War I song.

Chitty 1

Chitty 1 was a chain-driven customised Mercedes chassis containing a 23-litre 6-cylinder Maybach aero-engine. It won two races at its debut at Brooklands in 1921, coming second to another Zborowski car in a sprint race at the same event. Chitty 1 was fitted with four seats and a crude, over-sized exhaust pipe, in order to misguide the handicappers and spectators. Its top speed on the day was 100.75 miles per hour (162.14 km/h).

Bang Bang

Bang Bang or Bang Bang Bang or similar may refer to:

People

Technology

Film, TV and books

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a 1968 British musical film loosely based on Ian Fleming's novel Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car. The film's script is by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes and its songs by the Sherman Brothers. The song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was nominated for an Academy Award.

The film stars Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts, Sally Ann Howes as Truly Scrumptious, Lionel Jeffries as Grandpa Potts, James Robertson Justice as Lord Scrumptious and Robert Helpmann as the Childcatcher. The film was directed by Ken Hughes and produced by Albert R. Broccoli (co-producer of the James Bond series of films, also based on Fleming's novels). John Stears supervised the special effects. Irwin Kostal supervised and conducted the music, while the musical numbers were staged by Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood.

Plot

Set in the 1910s, the story opens with a montage of European Grand Prix races in which a particular car appears to win every race. In the final race, the car swerves to avoid a girl and a dog, loses control, crashes, and catches fire, bringing its racing career to an end. The car ends up in an old garage in rural England, where two children, Jeremy (Adrian Hall) and Jemima Potts (Heather Ripley), have grown fond of it. They are told by a junkman that he intends to buy the car from the garage owner for scrap. The children (who live with their widowed father Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke), an eccentric inventor, and his equally peculiar father) implore their father to buy the car before the junkman does, but he does not have the money. While playing truant, they meet Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), a beautiful upper class woman with her own motorcar. She brings them home to report their truancy to their father. Truly shows interest in Caractacus' odd inventions, but he is affronted by her insistence that his children should be in school.

Chitty

The Chitty are a distinctive group of Tamil people found mainly in Malacca and Singapore, who are also known as the Indian Peranakans. As of today, their population stands at 2,000.

Language

Like the Peranakans, the Chitty speak a Malay patois, which is mixed with many Tamil loan words. Many of the Chitty are unable to communicate in Tamil fluently.

History

Historical records stated that the Tamil traders from Panai in Tamil Nadu settled down in Malacca during the sovereignty of the Sultanate of Malacca. Like the Peranakans, they later settled down and freely intermingled with the local Malays and Chinese settlers. However, with the fall of the Malacca Sultanate after 1511, the Chitty eventually lost touch with their native land.

Under the administration of the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonizers, the Chitty eventually began simplifying their culture and customs by adopting local customs. This can be evidenced in the architecture of the Sri Poyatha Moorthi Temple, which was built by Thaivanayagam Pillay, the leader of the Chitty people, in 1781 after the Dutch colonial government gave him a plot of land.

Dick Van Dyke

Richard Wayne "Dick" Van Dyke (born December 13, 1925) is an American actor, comedian, writer, singer, dancer, and producer whose career in entertainment has spanned almost seven decades. He is also a World War II United States Army Air Corps veteran. He is the older brother of Jerry Van Dyke and father of Barry Van Dyke.

Van Dyke starred in the films Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and in the TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis: Murder. He recently appeared in supporting roles in Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb.

Recipient of five Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, Van Dyke was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the Screen Actors Guild's highest honor, the SAG Life Achievement Award, in 2013. Van Dyke has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard and has also been recognized as a Disney Legend.

Early life

Dick Van Dyke was born on December 13, 1925, in West Plains, Missouri, to Hazel Victoria (née McCord; 1896–1992), a stenographer, and Loren Wayne Van Dyke (1900–1976), a salesman. He grew up in Danville, Illinois. He is the older brother of actor Jerry Van Dyke, who is best known for a role on the TV series Coach. Van Dyke's grandson, Shane Van Dyke, is also an actor and directed Titanic II. Van Dyke has Dutch, Scotch-Irish and English ancestry, with a family line that traces back to Mayflower passenger John Alden.