Dick Van Dyke James Garner and Elke Sommer, "Some Kind of a Nut", "Never a Dull Moment" with Edward G. Robinson, and "Divorce American Style" with Debbie Reynolds and Jean Simmons. But he also starred as Caractacus Pott (with his native accent, at his own insistence, despite the English setting) in the successful musical version of Ian Fleming's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968), which co-starred Sally Ann Howes and featured the same songwriters (The Sherman Brothers) and choreographers (Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood) as "Mary Poppins". In 1969, Van Dyke appeared in the comedy-drama "The Comic", written and directed by Carl Reiner.
Ian Fleming listed "From Russia, with Love" as one of US President John F. Kennedy's ten favourite books. Kennedy and Fleming had previously met in Washington. This accolade and the associated publicity led to a surge in sales that made Fleming the biggest-selling crime writer in the US. Fleming considered "From Russia, with Love" to be his best novel; he said "the great thing is that each one of the books seems to have been a favourite with one or other section of the public and none has yet been completely damned." In April 1961, shortly before the second court case on