The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)
Directed by Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow and Dave Monahan (live action)
Shown from left: Spelling Bee (voice of Cliff Norton), Humbug (voice of Les Tremayne), Milo (voice of Butch Patrick), Tock, the watchdog (voice of Shep Menken)
“Everything’s a big waste of time. When I’m in school, all I want to do is be out. When I’m not in school, I want to be someplace else. If only something could happen sometime.” So laments Milo, the bored grade schoolboy at the beginning of The Phantom Tollbooth.
He gets that “something” to “happen sometime,” finding himself on an adventure in another world that most definitely serves as the cure for his boredom in this live action/animated movie celebrating its fifty-fifth anniversary this fall.
Based on the 1961 book of the same name by author Norman Juster, and directed by Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow (with Dave Monahan helming the live-action segments), The Phantom Tollbooth opens with jaded Milo, played by Butch Patrick (of Little Eddie from The Munsters fame) coming home from school and complaining to his friend over the phone about how uninteresting everything is.
Suddenly, a tollbooth appears in his house, along with a small sports car, and Milo finds himself driving off to the Wonderland-like Lands Beyond. Here, he finds areas all differently themed, such as the Doldroms, which are all about boredom, the Mountains of Ignorance, Dictionopolis (all about words), and Digitopolis (all about mathematics). They are all watched over by the Castle in the Air and are at odds. Milo finds he must save these lands by rescuing the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason.
On his adventure, Milo meets an eclectic array of denizens of this land, such as Officer Short Shrift, the Whether Man, Tock the dog, Dr. Kakofonous A. Dischord, and Faintly Macabre the Not-So-Wicked-Witch.
The Phantom Tollbooth first surfaced as a film project in 1966 at MGM. Jones had come to the studio in 1962, when he founded his Sib Tower 12 Productions (which he started with his business partner, Les Goldman), creating new Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM, after Warner Bros. closed its animation studio.
In a 1971 interview with Michael Barrier and Bill Spicer for Funnyworld, Jones recalled this period by saying, “Theaters were closing, and television was coming up, and Hanna-Barbera was doing all Saturday morning programs. Friz [Freleng] and I had put together the Bugs Bunny television show for Warner Bros. We had produced, written, and directed the thing together, the only time we really worked together. This method didn’t work out well, either, even though the product was good. It wasn’t my fault or his fault; it’s just that we had always been independent. It was obvious, with rising costs, that Warner’s wasn’t going to spend more than they’ve been spending on shorts, and they wanted to spend less. They finally decided not to do any.”
While at MGM, in addition to the Tom and Jerry shorts, Jones also produced and co-directed the Academy Award-winning short The Dot and Line, and the classic holiday TV special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. With The Phantom Tollbooth, the feature had been completed in 1968, but its release was held up due to issues at MGM, and it wasn’t released until November 7, 1970.
Aside from the compilation film, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979), The Phantom Tollbooth serves as Jones only feature film directing credit. With his regular collaborator Levitow, as co-director, the film bears both of their unmistakable styles.
With backgrounds by Philip DeGuard, the design of the Lands Beyond that Milo enters is a psychedelic, off-kilter setting with the Castle in the Air hanging ominously in the distance, highlighted by flashes of lightning.
Throughout the adventure, the film features songs by the songwriting teams of Lee Pockriss and Norman Gimbel, and Norman Martin and Paul Vance.
The Phantom Tollbooth also boasts a “who’s who” of legendary voice actors and animators. Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Hans Conried, Les Tremayne, Shepard Menken, Thurl Ravenscroft, Candy Candido, Patti Gilbert, Cliff Norton, and Larry Thor are among the notables whose familiar voices can be heard in the cast.
With this, such animation luminaries as Hal Ambro, Corny Cole, Bill Littlejohn, Phil Roman, and Irv Spence are among the many who brought the eccentric characters to life. Of note are the Lethargians, gelatinous masses who try to pull Milo into their lazy morass in a sequence that’s both humorous and ominous. And the character, the “Awful DYNN,” loud noise personified, is a wildly-designed creature who looks like finger paints come to life.
When The Phantom Tollbooth was released, it was well received by critics. Reviewing the film for Cinefantastique, Dale Winogura wrote, “While there is little of the light, endearing sentimentality and stylish charm of, say, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Bambi, The Phantom Tollbooth sees a sophistication in children’s story, characterization and development unusual in a cartoon feature and a delightful change of pace as well.”
And as Andrew Leal noted in Jerry Beck’s book, The Animated Movie Guide, it’s “Definitely recommended for any Chuck Jones fans.” In the fifty-five years since its release, The Phantom Tollbooth has, unfortunately, fallen through the cracks. But, with its anniversary this fall, it’s worth a revisit for its messages of using time wisely and seeking out knowledge. Or, as Tock the Dog notes in one of the film’s songs, “Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.”
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Chuck Jones always picks very unusual sources for animated short films or features or features in this case. I always wondered what a one shot cartoon done by Chuck Jones at MGM would look and sound like, and this is an example of what a Chuck Jones feature film would have been like. I thought this film was OK, and I’m glad I bought it when the Warner archive released it on DVD a number of years ago. It is indeed well worth looking into again. I wonder if the MeTV cartoons channel has shown this film yet.
Chuck did do a couple one shots over at MGM “The Dot and the Line” and “The Bear That Wasn’t”. I’ve always liked both of them. Bear That Wasn’t is interesting because its adapted from a book by Chuck’s old LT co-worker Frank Tashlin.
I recently watched PT and I was rather underwhelmed. This animation had the same problem with all of Jones latter day work, it’s really slow and talky. Jones excoriated TV Animation, calling it illustrated radio and yet that is exactly what his work was from the late 50’s onward.
Walt Disney’s dictum was that films should be educational as well as entertaining. Like the book, the film version of The Phantom Tollbooth offers up both. For much of the story, the educational or cautionary and moralistic elements hold sway. Which could explain how a film like this could be a darling of the critics and not as enthusiastically embraced by its target audience. The film has a clear message, or series of messages, and a clear moral. Kids are very savvy when it comes to edutainment, and they tend to steer clear of such in their off hours.
Its didactic purpose aside, The Phantom Tollbooth offers up delights on many levels. The animation and the character designs have a very Jones look, the colors are bright and vibrant, the character of Milo is identifiable in his reactions to circumstances–neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and apart from the evident message, the story is somewhat unpredictable, with its many variations in setting. It’s a film that could be watched several times. I missed part of it a few years back when it was broadcast on TCM, but later I found the entire film on You Tube and was able to fill in the gaps.
Educational, entertainment, or edutainment–The Phantom Tollbooth is a one-of-a-kind read, and a one-of-a-kind viewing experience. Though it may not be a masterpiece, it is truly a Juster and Jones tour-de-force.
Yet so many take offense to films having “messages” nowadays and just want “escapism”
This film isn’t entirely without merit and there’s a fair amount to like about it, but it has all the flaws of Chuck Jones’ post-WB work in spades.
Irv Spector did uncredited story work on the film and was really mad that his name was left off the credits for reasons unknown. His son, Paul, posted some of his dad’s written treatments and storyboard sketches on his blog back in 2009.
https://irvspector.blogspot.com/2009/03/phantom-toolbooth-mgm-1970.html
Given that the original book was illustrated by Jules Feiffer, it’s interesting to consider what Feiffer and Gene Deitch might have made of this story.
I am would have loved to have seen what Gene Deitch would have done.
I’ll never forget how MGM marketed The Phantom Tollbooth when it first came out. It was run as a Matinee-Only feature film and the theater I saw it at had a “All Adults Must Be Accompanied by a Child” policy to gain admittance. I was lucky the afternoon I showed up, as a friend of mine brought his kid to the show, and he let me borrow his child to enter the theater with. It’s not my favorite Chuck Jones creation, that’s for sure. Chuck was a good director, but my favorite stuff of his is the 1930s animation that he did for Bob Clampett. The Phantom Tollbooth looked like a Hanna-Barbera production with a few more inbetweens and the kind of character design that Jones preferred then. It’s not horrible, but it is feature-length, so it’s not as much fun as a well-animated Looney Tunes short. It tends to preach to the viewer, rather than be entertaining.
That’s a rare opinion if I ever heard of one!
Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer’s book was one of my childhood favorites. Much more engaging for a perceptive kid than Dr. Seuss’s works, which— brilliant as they are— are aimed at a somewhat younger audience. In early adolescence, one might start looking around for something more adventuresome and a bit more challenging to a developing mind. “The Phantom Tollbooth” really delivered there, at least for me, and for several million other bookish and creative-type youngsters.
It’s based largely on verbal humor, ranging from silly puns to more sophisticated wordplay such as the little car that “goes without saying.” As such, it’s not really a great subject for an animated feature. The Feiffer illustrations are a fine fit for this sort of material, because being still drawings rather than animated ones, they engage the reader’s mind just enough to advance the story, while not becoming intrusive to the narrative and its constant verbal juggling act, which is stone cold BRILLIANT!
Parenthetically, I once saw Chuck Jones in a personal presentation of his work at the Foothill College auditorium, around 1980, speaking about his illustrious career, presenting a dozen or so of his most popular and celebrated WB cartoons, and he didn’t mention this film— not even once. Make of that what you will.
So, until now, I never even knew that it existed! The promotional efforts by the studio must have been pretty weak, or almost nonexistent. It’s now on my watch list, so I might have some further comments later. Or maybe not… it goes without saying.
Hey, Tom, I’d enjoy seeing what you think of the film, since the book was a formative part of your childhood, and I bet others would as well. If you get around to watching it, maybe come back and leave your impressions.
I’ve never read the book, but I saw the film a few years ago. I didn’t think it pulled together all that strongly as a movie, but there were things to enjoy about the animation. I’d certainly watch it again if I could see it in better quality.