Saleslady Marcel de la Brosse as Taxi Driver and Ed Wynn as The Captain (also the narrator, who frequently breaks the fourth wall) Production The novel was published in 1963. There was some talk that Disney would option the film rights and cast Bing Crosby in the lead role. However rights were bought by 20th Century Fox who assigned the project to Nunnally Johnson, Henry Koster and James Stewart, the team that made Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation and Take Her, She's Mine. Johnson later said he "hadn't wanted to do" the film. "I didn't think there was enough material in it, but I really allowed myself to be persuaded to do it. Jimmie [sic] would sign if I would write it, and Koster would get a job if Jimmie [sic] would sign. It all got around that, one depending on another. There was no material in there that justified a picture." Although Nunnally Johnson wrote early drafts of the film, Hal Kanter was brought in to work on it and he gets sole screen credit. Kanter says it was Henry Koster's idea to introduce a captain, played by Ed Wynn, to act as a Greek chorus. Johnson said Koster got this idea from the film Tom Jones. Johnson did not like the device because he felt it did not suit the picture and told Koster to get another writer to do it. He told Koster "You'd better get a good gag man who does those one-line things. I don't do that, and I couldn't do it." Koster hired Kanter and Johnson asked to take his name off the film. Johnson says when he saw Stewart "he told me he didn't know I'd taken my name off of it. He was unhappy about the picture too, but there was nothing to do by then." It was one of the first movies made at the recently re-opened 20th Century Fox studios. Billy Mumy was cast on the recommendation of James Stewart's wife, Gloria Stewart, who taught a Sunday School class that Mumy attended. Johnson later said, "Henry was an old-fashioned fellow, and If it hadn't have been for the fact that Jimmie [sic] Stewart was the leading man in the pictures, he would have expired much earlier than he did. I'm afraid he's through now, you know. But I've seen him, and there's nothing sadder than these old directors who disappear