[EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to yet another new column here at SKC! We’re calling this one Strange Cases in which we’ll explore some of the more obscure facts of pop culture history. I’m also happy to introduce our latest contributor to the site, Kate Voss. Say hello Kate.]
There are a lot of facts that you may not know about the infamous Dr. Seuss — for instance, he wrote Green Eggs and Ham as a bet, he only started using the name Seuss as a pen name after getting caught with a pint of gin and a girl in his college dorm room, and he coined the word “nerd.”
Another seemingly unknown and fascinating facet of Seuss’s career came in 1953, with the release of the musical fantasy film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T for which Seuss wrote the story, screenplay and lyrics. Far from the Lorax, Grinch and green eggs, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T presents a much darker side to Seuss’s work.
In a setting resembling the fantastical world of The Wizard of Oz, we meet young Bart Collins whose living nightmare is his piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker, a harsh dictatorial figure. One night, Bart dozes off into an imaginary world where Dr. Terwilliker morphs into a character much like the Wicked Witch of the West, enslaving 500 children to play on his colossal piano 24/7. In his dream, Bart must save his mother from being hypnotized by Dr. T and then save himself. While definitely not a children’s flick, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T features Seuss’s skillful ability to establish an underlying alternative narrative — which in this case is a bizarre Cold War satire.
To be blunt, it is a very strange film filled with quirkiness and imagination. At the time, audiences found it was too dark for children and too offbeat for adults. Needless to say, critics agreed and the film didn’t perform well, despite having the name of established Hollywood figures to back it up, like producer Stanley Kramer, who also worked on such classic Hollywood films as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Seuss himself even called the film a “debaculous fiasco” and removed the film from his official biography with Random House, never again writing for movies.
However unrecognized the film was, it was in fact nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 for the “Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.” These days, some have even claimed it as a cult classic, resulting in a small but true following.
