Mr. Limpet is Truly Incredible!

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (Warner Bros. 1964) was one of the first live action/animation feature length films that really left an indelible impression on me as a youth. The "technology" was nothing new, even back then, but you really only experienced this kind of magic in cartoon shorts or very brief sequences, such as Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse's classic dance duet in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh. Bringing live action and animation techniques together in feature length films become more popular during the 60's and 70's. Movies like Disney's Mary Poppins (64), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (71) and Pete's Dragon (77) are some examples.

If you're not familiar with the movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, I really urge you to rent it. But keep in mind, this is early 1960s and you can't expect the vibrancy and sharp animation quality that you'll find in today's HD, 3D, Surround experience. Perhaps this is the reason that a remake of this film, also by Warner Bros. studios, starring Zach Galifianakis is currently in the works.

The 1964 version stars Don Knotts as Henry Limpet. Long story short, Limpet is a bespectacled, nerdy bookkeeper whose uncorrected vision is poor enough to keep him from enlisting in the war (WW2). His passion and hobby are fish. He loves the marine world of fish so much that while spending a day at Coney Island in New York, he accidentally falls in the water off the pier and is transformed into a fish himself, "nature correcting her error" he later surmises.

This is where the story turns from live action to animation. Limpet, along with his new found friends, Ladyfish and Crusty, an ill-tempered hermit crab, cruise the Atlantic. Mr. Limpet discover Nazi U-boats wreaking havoc on the Allied convoy fleets and decides to join the war effort by spotting Nazi subs and reporting their location to the U.S. Navy convoy so they can destroy the menace and win the war in the Atlantic. Limpet is later commissioned and paid, sending his government checks to his land-based wife Bessie, who all this time thought she was widowed. In the end, Limpet is promoted and continues to work for the navy training porpoises for future missions.

Not only is this a great movie with a compelling and dramatic storyline, but I find it interesting that this movie has been as strangely prophetic in forecasting the future use of marine mammals as Jules Verne was in his uncanny ability to preconceive such future advancements as the atomic submarine (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and From the Earth to the Moon, his fictional account of man's travel into space. Today dolphins are commonly used in the detection of underwater mines. But just as the dog's keen sense of smell makes it ideal for detecting land mines, the U.S. Navy has found that the biological sonar of dolphins, called echolocation, makes them uniquely effective at locating sea mines so they can be avoided or removed.

In fact, marine mammals are so important to the Navy today that there is an entire program dedicated to studying, training, and deploying them. It is appropriately called the Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP). I remember after watching The Incredible Mr. Limpet, as a kid, wishing too that I could become a fish. But with the prospect of working for the U.S. government at today's paltry wages and streamlined benefit programs…forget it! If I were a fish you can look for me at the spawning grounds…