The World of Henry Orient is a 1964 American comedy-drama film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Peter Sellers, Paula Prentiss, Angela Lansbury, Tippy Walker, Merrie Spaeth, Phyllis Thaxter, Bibi Osterwald, and Tom Bosley.

The original story was inspired in part by Nora Johnson's own experiences as a schoolgirl, as well as by a real-life incident involving singer Tony Bennett and two teenage fans.

[citation needed] In New York City, concert pianist Henry Orient pursues an affair with a married woman, Stella Dunnworthy, while two adolescent private-school girls, Valerie "Val" Boyd and Marian "Gil" Gilbert, stalk him and write their fantasies about him in a diary.

Henry's paranoia leads him to believe that the two girls, who seem to pop up everywhere he goes, are juvenile private detectives sent by his would-be mistress' husband.

In reality, 14-year-old Val, the bright, imaginative daughter of wealthy international trade expert Frank Boyd and his unfaithful, snobbish wife Isabel, has developed a teenage crush on Henry after seeing him in concert, and has involved her best friend Gil.

In the end, Val and Gil have matured and moved on from fantasy play to makeup, fashion, and boys their own age.

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.

[8] In April 1963, George Roy Hill announced that he and producer Jerome Hellman had bought the screen rights and would film it for their Pan Arts company which had a deal with United Artists.

[14] According to a 2012 article in The New Yorker by John Colapinto, director George Roy Hill handpicked Walker from hundreds of actresses who auditioned for the role of "Val".

The filmmakers were so impressed with her performance that they reshaped the film during editing to focus more on her character, and shot the scene of her walking through a snowy Central Park months after production had wrapped.

Walker claimed that the resulting Hollywood gossip made others reluctant to cast her and contributed to her decision to stop acting in the early 1970s.

"[5] Johnson says the film performed strongly at the box office in New York but struggled elsewhere and failed to return its costs.

[16] Johnson also thought Peter Sellers, while funny, played the role too broadly, and that the film would have worked better with Rex Harrison.

[21] William Goldman, in his study of the 1967–68 theater year, The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway, claimed that the musical was of high quality but was old fashioned, and "had the misfortune" to open just a week after all the critics "were overcome by Hair," which had a modern sound.