Val can spend more time together. In the end, Val and Gil have matured and moved on from fantasy play to makeup, fashion and boys their own age. Cast Peter Sellers as Henry Orient Tippy Walker as Valerie "Val" Campbell Boyd Merrie Spaeth as Marian "Gil" Gilbert Angela Lansbury as Isabel Boyd Tom Bosley as Frank Boyd Paula Prentiss as Stella Dunnworthy Phyllis Thaxter as Mrs. Avis Gilbert Bibi Osterwald as Erica "Boothy" Booth John Fiedler as Sidney Al Lewis as Store Owner Peter Duchin as Joe Daniels Fred Stewart as Doctor Philippa Bevans as Emma Hambler Jane Buchanan as Lillian Kafritz This was the first film appearance for both Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth. Production Development The novel was published in 1958. The New York Times said it was written with "warmth, insight and nostalgia." The pianist's unusual surname, "Orient", came about because Nora Johnson based the character on Oscar Levant, a real-life concert pianist, raconteur, and film actor on whom she had a crush as a teenager. Since the word "levant" means Orient in French (literally the direction from which the sun rises), the name is a play on words. In the film, several allusions to the pianist's unusual name occur when his two teenage fans put on Chinese conical hats, address their idol as "Oriental Henry," kowtow to an Asian-style altar, and adopt vaguely Japanese-sounding names for themselves. Nora Johnson's father Nunnally was a noted screenwriter but he said for three years, "it never occurred to me that it could be filmed, because I couldn't think of two girls to do it. " Johnson said his point of view changed when he saw Hayley Mills in a film and felt it could be done with Mills and Patty Duke. Johnson decided to write the script on "spec" and gave it to his agent to sell - one of the rare times in his career he had done this. In April 1962, Nunnally Johnson said he wanted to adapt the book into a screenplay for 20th Century Fox. Johnson says his daughter had written a script herself but felt it did not work as she was too inexperienced as a dramatist and too faithful to the book. He purchased the screen rights from her and they agreed to split the screenplay fee fifty-fifty. United Artists were interested in buying the script. Henry Koster, who had directed several comedies