Oliver!: stage vs screen

Carol Reed's 1968 film Oliver!, starring Mark Lester as Oliver, Ron Moody as Fagin, Shani Wallis as Nancy, Oliver Reed as Bill Sikes, and Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger, won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It adapts Lionel Bart's stage musical, which opened in London in 1960 and reached Broadway in 1963, itself based on Dickens's Oliver Twist. The film keeps most of the score. Here is what it changed.

Stage

Broadway musical (1963)

Screen

Oliver! (1968), directed by Carol Reed

1. Ron Moody plays Fagin on stage and screen

Ron Moody created Fagin in the 1960 West End production and repeated the role for Carol Reed, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and winning a Golden Globe. He played Fagin as a clown rather than a menace, later explaining that he had feared the part would reinforce an ugly stereotype of Jewish people. Georgia Brown, the stage Nancy in London and on Broadway, was passed over for Shani Wallis, though many felt the role should have been hers.

2. Bill Sikes loses his only song

On stage, Sikes has a menacing solo, "My Name." The film cuts it, so Oliver Reed has to make the villain frightening through performance alone. Nancy's music stays intact: she keeps "As Long as He Needs Me" and "Oom-Pah-Pah," and her story still ends in her death at Sikes's hands after she parts from Oliver at London Bridge.

3. Mr. Bumble loses most of his music

The film drops "I Shall Scream," Bumble's duet with Widow Corney, and "That's Your Funeral," his number with Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry. Harry Secombe's Bumble keeps the title song, "Oliver!," and his solo "Boy for Sale," in which he parades Oliver through the streets to sell him as an apprentice. "That's Your Funeral" was also left off the original Broadway cast recording.

4. Sikes meets his end on a rooftop

In the stage synopsis, the chase ends at London Bridge: Sikes appears at the top of the bridge holding Oliver hostage, a memory of Nancy makes him freeze, and a policeman shoots him while another grabs Oliver. In the film, Bullseye leads Mr. Brownlow and an angry mob to the thieves' hideout, Sikes flees with Oliver as a hostage, and he is shot dead by the police as he tries to cross to an adjoining roof.

5. The Dodger and Fagin get a happier exit

On stage, the constables catch the Artful Dodger at the hideout before he can escape, and Fagin closes the show alone with a reprise of "Reviewing the Situation," deciding it is time to straighten out his life. In the film, Fagin also vows to reform after his treasure sinks into the mud, but the Dodger turns up with a freshly stolen wallet and the two dance off together, still thieves, while Oliver goes home to be adopted by Mr. Brownlow.

6. Oliver's tie to Mr. Brownlow changes

Both versions bring Mr. Bumble and Widow Corney to Mr. Brownlow with a locket left by Oliver's mother, and in both he throws them out for chasing a reward. On stage, he recognizes the picture inside the locket as his own daughter, which makes Oliver his grandson. The film plants the clue earlier, when Brownlow notices Oliver looks like a portrait of his lost niece Emily; he then knows the locket as Emily's, making Oliver his great-nephew.

7. A six-Oscar Best Picture winner

The film was shot at Shepperton Studios from June 1967. It earned 11 Academy Award nominations and won six Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director for Reed, art direction, sound, and Johnny Green's scoring, plus an Honorary Award for choreographer Onna White. Ron Moody and Jack Wild were both nominated for acting, and the film also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

8. A young cast of near unknowns

Reed's film relied mostly on young unknowns, among them Mark Lester as Oliver and Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger, and Wild was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at 16. On Broadway in 1963, Bruce Prochnik played Oliver and Davy Jones, a veteran of the London company and later of The Monkees, played the Dodger. Sikes went to Oliver Reed, the director's nephew, whom the producer suggested without knowing the two were related.

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