A few years ago, I stood in the wings backstage for my high school’s performances of Oliver! As a backstage manager, my job entailed raising and lowering the curtains, hauling huge (and not-so-huge) set pieces across the stage, attempting to control the craziness of dozens of cast members entering and exiting scenes, and monitoring the whereabouts and productiveness of my half of the backstage crew. It was simply awesome—stressful, of course, but so, so much fun. So when I popped in the film version of Oliver! the other night, all these wonderful memories flooded back. What a lovely film!

“Please sir, I want some more.”

The last musical to win Best Picture during the “golden age” of film musicals, Oliver! (1968, Romulus Films, Ltd. Production; Columbia) marked a farewell to BP-winning movie musicals for 34 years, until Chicago took home the Academy’s highest honor for 2002. In a year that witnessed the invention of Hot Wheels, the beginning of the sketch comedy television series Laugh-In, the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the election of Richard Nixon as President of the United States, Oliver! truly reflects its place in history by achieving a mix of lighthearted fun and violent tragedy. Nominated for 11 competitive Academy Awards, Oliver! won five: Art Direction, Sound, Music (Score of a Musical Picture—original or adaptation), Directing for Carol Reed, and Best Picture. The film failed to win in the following categories for which it was nominated: Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Writing (Screenplay—based on material from another medium), Actor for Ron Moody as Fagin, and Actor in a Supporting Role for Jack Wild as The Artful Dodger (Moody and Wild are both fabulous in this film, by the way!). Oliver! was also awarded an honorary Oscar, which went to Onna White for “her outstanding choreography achievement.”

The novelist Charles Dickens in the later years of his life.

Based on the Broadway play that debuted on January 6, 1963, Oliver!’s original source is the 1837 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist was Dickens’ second novel, published in monthly installments in Bentley’s Miscellany during what proved to be a very trying time in Dickens’ life. He had just become a new father the month prior to the start of Oliver Twist’s publication; and just a few months into the new serial, his beloved sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, who lived with Dickens and his wife Catherine, died quite unexpectedly. In the midst of one difficult time in his life, then, Dickens hearkened back to another: his late childhood, perhaps the most formative period of his existence (He continued to pull inspiration from this great trial of his life in future novels such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations.)

As a child, Dickens experienced some situations similar to that of his protagonist in Oliver Twist. Forced to work in a factory when his father (and the rest of his family with him) was thrown into debtors’ prison, young Dickens found himself part of the lower rungs of society, having to live and work among some very rough personages. It is most likely this horrifying time in his life that led Dickens to consistently evoke pity for the downtrodden and hope for the exiled of society in his great works of fiction. We see this sympathy for the lower classes in Oliver! in the characters of Nancy, Fagin, and maybe even a little in Bill Sykes. Well, maybe. I must be feeling optimistic today since I get to talk about Dickens. He’s a personal favorite of mine!

Oliver and The Artful Dodger in Fagin’s lair.

For more thoughts on Oliver! and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!