The Making of The Jungle Book
Cast
Phil Harris played Baloo. Baloo is so named because in Hindi the word for bear is “Bhaaloo”. Phil would go on to voice O’Malley in The Aristocats and Little John in Robin Hood.
Bruce Reitherman played Mowgli. Bruce got the role because he was the director, Wolfgang Reitherman’s, son. Originally the role was given to David Alan Bailey, but because the film took so long to make David’s voice broke and it was no longer the sound they wanted for Mowgli. This isn’t the only time this would happen. Miguel in Pixar’s recent Coco had to be recast for the same reason.
Sebastian Cabot played Bagheera. Sebastian has previously worked with Phil Harris and Bruce Reitherman on “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day”.
George Sanders played Shere Khan. A lot of voice actors in this film were modelled to look like the characters they were voicing, none is more obvious than Shere Khan looking like George.
Shere Khan’s singing voice was Bill Lee who was also Rogers singing voice in “101 Dalmatians”.
Sterling Holloway played Kaa. Sterling has voiced many Disney characters including The Cheshire Cat, Professor Holloway in The Three Caballeros, Winnie the Pooh and Roquefort in The Aristocats.
Louis Prima played King Louie. It was considered having Louis Armstrong, the celebrated singer voice King Louie, but Walt Disney thought that might be a little racist, having an African American playing an ape. He didn’t want another scandal like “Song of the South”. However when “I Want to Be Like You” was nominated for an Academy Award, it was Louis Armstrong who performed the song.
J.Pat O’Malley played Col. Hathi. Hathi is so named because in Hindu the word for elephant is “Haathee”.
Verna Felton played an Elephant named Winifred. This is not the only Disney role Verna has played she was also Mrs. Jumbo is Dumbo (another Elephant), the Fairy God Mother in Cinderella, The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp and Flora in Sleeping Beauty. Winifred was Verna’s last job with Disney and last job ever because she sadly died of a stroke on the 14th December 1966 meaning she never got to see the final film. This was also the day before Walt Disney died.
Chad Stuart and Lord Tim Hudson played the vultures. Originally the vultures were going to be voiced by The Beatles, a popular British band. In fact it was the bands manager Brian Epstein that recommended them for the film. For some reason, the legendary John Lennon, one of the band members vetoed the idea. The design for the vultures had already begun when they were planning for the Beatles to voice the vultures which is why they have those mop top hairstyles that look like the Beatles hair. Walt Disney was never happy about the Beatles appearing as vultures because he thought that would date the film so he made the decision to make them a timeless Barbershop quartet.
John Abbott and Ben Wright played the wolves.
Darleen Carr played the girl. The idea of Mowgli being tempted back to the human world by a girl was Walt’s idea, but it was Ollie Johnston who animated the scene, he didn’t agree with this ending but because he spent so long animating the scene he realised that Walt was right and it was in fact a perfect ending to the film.
Film Development
The Jungle Book was written by Rudyard Kipling which Bill Peet read and brought to Walt Disney’s attention and suggested that it should be his next animated film. The book is very dark and bleak and this was the direction Bill wanted to go with but Walt didn’t agree, he wanted it to be more family friendly so Bill and the original composer Terry Gilkyson were scrapped from the project. Terry’s music was too depressing and fit too much with Bill’s version of the film. The only song they didn’t scrap was “The Bare Necessities”. The rest of the soundtrack was written by The Sherman Brothers.
Bill ended his 25 year relationship with the Disney company and ended his friendship with Walt Disney. The friendship was never repaired because of Walt’s soon passing however whenever Bill would talk of Walt, he did so with fond memories.
Larry Clemmons was brought in to make Walt’s version of The Jungle Book. So that Larry didn’t fall down the same rabbit hole as Bill, Walt told Larry to not read The Jungle Book, which he didn’t.
One character scrapped from the film was the character of Rocky, a rhino who would have been voiced by Frank Fontaine, he would have been in the scene with the vultures and would of added a bit of comedy to the film being that he’s partially blind and very silly. Rocky eventually got his shining moment in the live action remake of the film in 2016.
Walt Disney sadly passed away on December 15th 1966 from lung cancer, his death was during the middle of production of this film, which meant that this was the last animated film that Walt Disney personally had a hand in making. He had agreed that “The Aristocats” should be made but he didn’t have any more involvement than that. With his passing there were a lot of unanswered questions, although he had been poorly for a long time leading up to his death, many of the people he worked with on a regular basis didn’t know he was nearing the end or just how serious his condition was. As it was such a sudden turn of events the animators didn’t know whether the studio would survive.
Luckily The Jungle Book did fantastically well at the box office and it saved the Disney animation company. One of the reasons why historians think it did so well was because it was Walt’s last film and they wanted to see the last thing he worked on.
Recycled Animation
Like many times before Disney choose once again to use recycled animation in order to save time and money. Recycled animation is when animators will reuse animation from previous animated films. This would happen through drawing over existing animation cells with new characters and settings but with similar movements. This process is called rotoscoping.
A lot of people believe that recycled animation is done to save time and this is true, it does, but animators still need to draw the characters which takes time so this isn’t the only reason they used recycled animation. A lot of the reused animation is of dancing or two or more characters coming in contact with each other, which from an animators point of view is more tricky to do. So if you start off with a sequence that you know works it makes for an easier starting point.
Some of the animation used in The Jungle Book would be reused for Robin Hood and some of the animation in One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Sword in the Stone would be used in The Jungle Book.
Awards
When Walt Disney made Snow White, he made the first ever full length animated film, it broke box office records and even today in 2019, the film is one of the most successfully financial in the world. It was given a “Special Achievement Award” at the 1939 Academy Awards. To the public this was a prestigious award but to Walt Disney it was a bit of a snub because it meant that his film wasn’t given the ability to win a real Academy Award meaning the film would have been recognised as being as worthy as live action films. Gregory Peck was the president of The Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences and he recognised how substantial the animated films were, specifically The Jungle Book. Gregory wanted The Jungle Book to at least get nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, however the other members of the board didn’t agree. Gregory felt so disappointed by the lack of recognition animation was given that he left his job. Gregory would have to wait 20 years until Beauty and the Beast was released for an animated film to be nominated.
Music
As I have already mentioned, Terry Gilkyson did the famous “Bare Necessities” and The Sherman Brothers who famously did the music for “Mary Poppins” did the rest of the score. One of the song they did for Mary Poppins but never made it into the film was called “Land of Sand”. You may of heard of it because it made its way into The Jungle Book and was sung by Kaa but it got renamed “Trust in Me”.
The song “My Own Home” was a euphoric moment for both The Sherman Brothers and Ken Anderson, one of the story boarders for the film. Ken planned out the scene for the song “My Own Home” in the exact way The Sherman Brothers envisaged the scene. It was a rare moment where collaborators completely agreed on the planning for a scene. The song was so fitting that it brought tears Ken’s eyes.
That covers everything about the Making of The Jungle Book. Come back on Monday 11th November for a new Disney blog.
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