19th Century Fox

"Quiet, please," announced the assistant director in discreet, nicely modulated tones. Griped a nearby veteran American technician: "If we were in Hollywood, he'd be saying 'Shaddup!' " But it was not a Hollywood sound stage they were on last week. It was a picturesque, narrow street in the ancient Wiltshire village of Castle Combe, which was also cluttered with sound trucks, mobile generators, scriptmen, Actor Anthony Newley, giant arc lamps that almost topped the moss-grown roofs of the cottages, and a herd of wondering, chattering villagers pressed against the chicken-wire fence, hastily constructed to keep them at bay. Nor is Castle Combe just any pretty village. It is--or was--the prettiest village in England, as certified by polls conducted by the British Travel Association and featured in COME TO BRITAIN posters and advertisements all over the world.

Roughshod. To be sure, Arthur P. Jacobs is not just any Hollywood producer, either. He is the man who is filming The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Hugh Lofting's wry children's classic about the physician who talks to animals, as a $12 million 20th Century-Fox musical extravaganza, starring Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Tony Newley, and a cast of 1,147 other humans and 1,500 beasts. To play the featured role of Gub-Gub the pig, he will need 40 trained piglets (because they grow out of the part so fast). The fabled two-headed pushmi-pullyu will be re-created by two llamas, artfully superimposed on film back to back. Under the circumstances, what could be more natural than for Jacobs to cast Castle Combe as the good doctor's 19th century home town, Puddleby-on-the-Marsh?

He reckoned without the natives. Nine months were spent getting approvals from assorted local councils. Then in May, Fox carpenters set to work making the village even quainter than it was. TV aerials sprouting from gabled roofs were dismantled and a "piped in" system installed. Coca-Cola signs were removed, and because Puddleby-on-the-Marsh is a port, the stream meandering through town was dammed to create an inland sea.

Fox itself was damned in another fashion. Cedric Richards resigned in protest from the parish council, hinting that the reason the company was allowed to "ride roughshod" was because it had bought off some of his fellow citizens. Beresford Worswick, a crusty fugitive from London, summoned the Royal Fine Art Commission to inspect the scene. The commission expressed regret that "a film company should have made alterations to an exceptional English village, instead of adopting the more acceptable practice of building a film set to represent an English village."

The Shocked Americans. Matters reached the explosive stage last week on the night before shooting was scheduled to begin. Police arrested Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, a 22-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys with a 900-year-old pedigree in Burke's Peerage (family motto: "Look Here for a Brave Spirit") on charges of trying to set fire to an outhouse near the dam. A wine importer, Christopher Knight, 23, was also hauled in, accused of trying to blow up the dam itself. On the same night, police also apprehended a car carrying two more young men and a giant poster reading GO HOME, FOX!

Actually, most of the village's 486 inhabitants would far rather have Fox stay. Despite the traffic jams and general confusion, the new telly system gives much better reception than the old, a number of rooms have been let to film folk, some of the locals have been hired as extras--and Rex Harrison and Samantha Eggar are due to arrive any day now. Says Mrs. Nan Tresilian, proprietor of an antique shop called the Unicorn Gallery, and a leader in the save-the-village movement: "The people most shocked are the American tourists. They come in here with their hair standing on end, asking, 'How could you let it happen?' "

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