Moviefone Editorial

Tag: walt-disney

Steven Spielberg Teases ‘The BFG,’ Reveals All-Time Favorite Disney Movie

Believe it or not, in his long, storied career, director Steven Spielberg had never made a movie for Disney. Until now.

His new film, “The BFG,” based on Roald Dahl‘s classic children’s book about a Big Friendly Giant, will be released July 1st. The legendary director is featured in the summer issue of “Disney twenty-three” magazine, the quarterly publication of Disney’s D23 fan club, and we’ve got an exclusive sneak peek. In an interview with the magazine, Spielberg shares details on making “The BFG,” working with the brilliant composer John Williams, his favorite Disney movie, and his excitement at finally collaborating with the Mouse House.

“I have directed films at every studio except [The] Walt Disney [Studios],” Spielberg said, in an exclusive excerpt. “This was the first time that I got to make a picture that has Sleeping Beauty’s castle — and has Disney embossed on the beginning and the end of the picture — and I’m really proud of that.”

Like a lot of us, Spielberg’s connection to Disney started in childhood, and never went away. “‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs‘ has always been my favorite Disney movie,” he says of the 1937 classic. “I saw it in a movie theater during its ninth revival, when I was only probably 7 or 8 years old. And it stuck with me. And it’s with me today, remembering it as vividly now and being so frightened and terrified as I was when I was a little kid, and at the same time so filled with the feeling of satisfaction at that amazing ending and pride in ‘Snow White.’”

Spielberg now has grown children of his own, and because of them he was familiar with Dahl’s 1982 book. “I’ve spent all my years as a father reading great children’s books to my kids and ‘The BFG’ was one of them.”

The main character, besides a young girl named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), is the Big Friendly Giant, played by Mark Rylance, who just won an Oscar for Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies.” To bring the world of giants to life, Spielberg used motion capture technology. As he explains in the magazine, “Motion capture allowed us to plan scene by scene and then have the visual effects team bring them to life as living, breathing characters. Hopefully, you’re going to forget that there’s any special effects in ‘The BFG,’ because it’s invisible. You will just believe they exist in the same world.”

In terms of the movie’s music, it’s no surprise that Spielberg would turn to his longtime collaborator John Williams, a five-time Oscar winner who has scored most of Spielberg’s films since 1974. “I will tell John my story by showing him my cut and he goes away and eight weeks later, he tells a story musically,” Spielberg explains. “He has done this brilliantly with ‘The BFG.’ Every moment is accompanied by a little bit of a musical reminder that there is another layer of story being told.”

Fans can watch the story as it unfolds this July, and read more from Spielberg in the summer edition of “Disney twenty-three.”

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May 11, 2016
Why Disney’s Live-Action ‘Jungle Book’ Has Deep Roots in ‘Bambi,’ ‘Lion King’

In anticipation of Disney‘s live-action adaptation of “The Jungle Book,” Moviefone had the opportunity to chat with director Jon Favreau about what inspired him to re-imagine the beloved animated classic.

Opening this Friday, Favreau’s movie takes us back into the jungle with Mowgli and friends using cutting-edge technology that renders an incredible, photo-realistic world in 3D. When you see it, you’ll be shocked by the knowledge that “The Jungle Book” was shot entirely in Downtown Los Angeles using practical sets and Dolby vision laser projection. In other words, if you thought movies like “Avatar” and “Life of Pi” looked amazing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

We also get some of what we love from the original musical Walt Disney production but fit to reflect the time and outfitted with a stellar voice cast. Newcomer Neel Sethi plays Mowgli and is joined by Sir Ben Kingsley (Bagheera), Lupita Nyong’o (Raksha), Bill Murray (Baloo), Scarlett Johansson (Kaa), Idris Elba (Shere Khan), Giancarlo Esposito (Akilah) and Christopher Walken (King Louie).

With all of this in mind, we couldn’t wait to talk to Favreau about raising the bar on visual storytelling using a tried and proven method: the Walt Disney way.

Moviefone: What I took away the most from your take on “The Jungle Book” was just how steeped in Walt Disney’s philosophy for storytelling it was. You did what he did with fairy tales and the classic Kipling story to create a new take on a beloved movie. How did you go about mining the core of the original film’s narrative to build your own vision?

Jon Favreau: You just can’t make the movie exactly like the old one. It wouldn’t work live-action, so we had to make some changes to it. Hopefully, we honored the legacy of the original one enough that you feel satisfied if you’re expecting that, but yet you’re seeing something that goes further in some ways.

Enough people who love Disney have seen it that I feel comfortable that we didn’t at least put them off — that we didn’t do our homework and embrace the original. That was an important film for me.When tackling this project, what helped you focus on the story you wanted to tell as you researched the original?

It’s interesting because it’s not like going back to the original movie unlocked all those puzzles. The trick that I had done on “Iron Man” that had worked pretty well was: the first thing I do is try to remember and brainstorm for the images and the things I remember most clearly because if it sits clearly in your memory it’s probably been prioritized and is most important. And so “Bare Necessities” was a big one, and “I Wanna Be Like You,” King Louie and the crumbling temple, and Kaa with his hypnotic eyes, and the boy being woozy, and me being scared. And then floating down the river and singing, and Shere Khan and the torch, and the elephants and the baby elephant.

I make a big list of all that stuff, and then I look at the materials because, when you watch it fresh, you’ll connect with different things. I wanted to make sure to include all those images that I had connected to. And then I actually took a lot of cues from the way the plot unfolds the story because that was actually well done. Walt’s a great story man, and that was very different from the book. We looked at the books, too, to get inspiration. Certain things the books were better at. I like the treatment of the elephants in the books. I like the treatment of Ikki, the porcupine, I liked Raksha, the mother. So I kinda pick and choose between the two. I think me being such a fan of the material and connecting with it gave me confidence that my instincts were going to be the instincts of others like me.

With that wealth of information, how did you tread through it and not let it overwhelm your vision for “The Jungle Book”?

They say a book is like designing a boat, and a screenplay is like designing an airplane. It has to lift. Once you hit the end of that runway, the thing has to take off. And if it doesn’t fly under its own engineering, it falls apart. So there are certain rules you have to stick by. You have to keep the pace at a certain rhythm, you have to have the right mixture of emotion and tone, and once you lock into that you could get clues from other movies. Honestly, as much as we looked at “Jungle Book,” we looked at “Bambi,” we looked at “Pinocchio,” we looked at “The Lion King.” For the PG version, we made, there were more clues in those films than there were in “The Jungle Book” for how to present it, because we always found ourselves tonally: a little too young, a little too humorous. So whenever we brought in a musical element or a humorous element from the original, we found ourselves really having to be careful that we didn’t trip up the whole film.On a recent trip to the old Ink and Paint building over at Walt Disney Studios, I saw a multi-plane shadowbox for the opening scene of “Bambi,” which I immediately thought of during the opening of your film in its composition.

We looked at that shot. We looked at the opening of “Bambi” because back, when he was doing Bambi, Walt was still flushed with success and revenue from “Snow White,” which was a huge hit and, unfortunately, over Walt’s career, they were operating to diminishing returns from that point on. But Walt was so passionate that he would convince Roy, his brother, to give him the resources and the people that he needed. “Bambi” was really the one where he wanted to raise the bar like they were able to do in “Snow White” and that was his labor of love for many, many years.

I don’t know if he was ever fully satisfied with the version that came out judging from the notes that I had read, because the studio was coming into a lot of other challenges. I think the war was coming on or the strike. I think it was the strike for that film, and there was definitely a version of the film he was going for and what was nice is that he got stenographers keeping notes of all their story sessions. On the Blu-ray of “Bambi,” you hear them talking about how they were gonna make the animals look photo-real, and the tone of the performance vs. how cartooney they were in “Snow White,” how realistic they were presenting them, and the way there were gonna show the photo-real backgrounds, and how they would stylize things. And the way they would treat the hunter, and the way they would treat the weather. Hearing it in his read-back transcript, it was almost like having him available to us. And he really was wrestling with a lot of things people wrestle with today. Certainly, we did.

So we drew inspiration looking at the shots. The beauty of the shots in “Bambi” were unsurpassed by the time we got to the ’67 “Jungle Book” film. Although character animation was still hitting a high watermark because you had the Nine Old Men around. I think most if not all of them were still around for the animated emotional moments. You didn’t have the same lushness of the multi-plane, nearly the amount of artists designing a project like this. And, although it was a big success for them financially, it wasn’t embraced in the same way the films like “Snow White” were in its day. So I think by trying to channel the entire Disney legacy and then also “The Lion King,” which came afterwards (that was affected very much by “The Jungle Book” if you hear the animators of that one speak). I think that one was essential in having fun musical moments but also having scary moments, where characters are in serious danger.

And taking cues from Walt there makes so much sense, it immerses you in Mowgli’s world, with its practical and CGI surroundings.

He used to do that with his “Alice” and old “Laugh-O-Gram” stuff by having a live-action girl in an illustrated world. It was something he was first drawn to. So yeah, we really tried to honor the legacy but tried to do something new and exciting that just stands on its own two feet.

We’ve got to talk casting; this is an incredible ensemble. What inspired you to approach the talent attached to the film?

That’s a big part of my job. You know Walt Disney in “The Jungle Book” was the only time he did celebrity casting because those people were famous back then before the film, so I think it gave me permission to go after higher people like Christopher Walken or Idris Elba.

Loved the cowbell reference by the way. So meta!Did you catch it? I’m so glad it’s in there. That was an on-set discovery. That was a prop in the background that I pulled and I said, “Oh my god, this is what Mowgli has to use. I knew he had to touch something that would get the attention of King Louie and I saw the cowbell off to the side and I pulled that in and swapped it out for the prop that we had designed for it.

Awesome. Sorry, back to casting…

With Christopher Walken and Bill Murray, I let them really be themselves and be recognizable through the characters. I think that was part of what made the original special as well.

Disney’s “The Jungle Book” opens Friday, April 15th.

April 12, 2016
Disney’s Live-Action ‘The Jungle Book’: What You Need to Know

The first in-depth look at Disney‘s “The Jungle Book” was unveiled in Los Angeles last month, at a special presentation hosted by Walt Disney Studios and director Jon Favreau. We were able to exclusively experience the advanced 3D tech the film was being shot with and get a sense of how the adaptation of the beloved Disney classic aims to stand apart from the original.

Held at Hollywood’s El Capitan theater, the event’s emcee was none other than the director himself. Favreau introduced a selection of preview clips and delivered insight into what made now the right time to remake “The Jungle Book.” As it turns out, producer Alan Horn grew up on the Mowgli books by Rudyard Kipling, and Favreau grew up a fan of Walt Disney‘s animated classic. Together, they wanted to collaborate on a project to push technology forward and agreed that “The Jungle Book” had the characters, emotion, and music to make it the best option.

“Alan said, ‘Look at the technology, look at “Life of Pi.” Why not use the technology to make a whole world that transports you? Why be limited by going off and shooting plates?’ Let’s really embrace this technology and see what we could do if we push it to its limit.” – Jon Favreau

Dolby Extended Dynamic Range Laser Projection is the state-of-the-art technology that Disney and Favreau are using to bring “The Jungle Book” to audiences. It boasts photo-real imaging to recreate textures and environmental detail. Favreau’s adaptation seeks to bring a tangible cinematic world as far as our eyes can perceive. In the test footage we got to see, the CG (computer generated) elements, like water, lighting, and even wind, were astounding. It was hard to tell a rendered scene apart from real-life images. The process is advancing with animals as well, as now fur and skin can be recreated with near photo-realistic perfection.

Immersing an audience — and an actor — in a believable CG world has it’s challenges, but Disney uses an effective technique that is part practical and part optical illusion. The way the shots are set up goes something like this: Neel Sethi (Mowgli) performs in an active foreground on a practical set (i.e. real life), then the CG animators work to make the background and animal characters fully realized through the technology, seamlessly blending the real with the imaginary.

“If there was a giant we were standing on the shoulders of it was ‘Avatar.’ The first time I saw ‘Avatar,’ I got it, what this whole big screen 3D format thing was about. I got why I had to go to the movies to see that. I don’t know if anyone’s ever outdone the way the 3D was done there. So we shot native 3D using the PACE system, the system that Jim (Cameron) had been a part of developing and we used simulcap and all this technology that people haven’t really been using.” -Jon Favreau

The sights and sounds of the jungle previewed showed off how far the tech has really come since James Cameron‘s “Avatar.” In a scene in which Shere Khan (Idris Elba) begins to sniff out Mowgli’s presence, Sethi’s presence among the CG characters and environment is hard to discern. The way that Favreau places physical set pieces around the actor creates a sense of real space. Meaning, if he hides behind a rock, the rock is actually there.

“So if the kid’s walking 12 feet in the cut of the movie that we have, we built 12 feet of jungle. Each set was built for a shot. The art department or production designer would wheel in one set. We’d film that and across the street in Downtown LA we’d have the other set being prepped. We’d go back and forth and back and forth. It was a very cool efficient process” – Jon Favreau

In a scene in which Shere Khan chases Mowgli through a ravine, the mud the young actor runs through is real. So the trick to blurring the lines between a real and a CG space is in having the actor be affected by the environment, like the mud caked on his feet as he hops on a CG animal and escapes.The ability to really sell these scenes to an audience is a testament to young Sethi’s acting skills. He completely embodies Mowgli with charisma and real, child-like wonder. There’s a reason he was the kid — out of 2,000 who auditioned — to get the part.

“You need the personality and the humor and the charm and the emotion of the characters. That’s really what ‘Jungle Book’ represents. People don’t think about action, it’s fun to have it but really what you think about is the characters and the relationships. Neel really seems to capture for me what I remember of Mowgli in the film. He wasn’t just a cookie-cutter kid. He had spunk and a little swagger. He’s just a great kid and I loved working with him.” -Jon Favreau

Sethi’s acting further elevates the CG techniques Disney and Favreau are pushing to advance. Keep moving forward is a Disney mantra Favreau lives by, and he believes that, if Walt were alive today, he, too, would be experimenting with new, cutting-edge tech.

“I love film, love what Chris Nolan and ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Hateful Eight’ are doing. I don’t want to see film go away. But, at the same time, I think we have to push technology as far as we can because there are other things that digital art is better for. When it comes to such complicated visual effects and putting all these elements together, I want to continue to see digital continue to grow. I don’t want to see anything eliminated; I want to see everything perfected, including film.” – Jon Favreau

We also got a small glimpse of Bill Murray‘s work as the voice of Baloo, singing his signature tune and nailing the lovable bear’s endearing slyness. As Favreau explained, the key to using music in “The Jungle Book” this time around is to only use it when it makes sense for the movie. Favreau consulted with composer Richard Sherman, but no songs beyond “Bare Necessities” were confirmed to be in the movie.

“You’re trying to honor the memories of the people who grew up with this stuff but you’re also trying to make a movie that will appeal to the full audience. There is music but it’s not a musical.” -Jon Favreau

But how can you not have Christopher Walken, who will be playing King Louie, sing? In the last clip presented, we got our first real look at Mowgli meeting the King of the Monkeys. The reveal of the gentle giant hilariously balances action with comedy. Of course, Walken is a riot.

“Because this character lives in the ruins of man, there was a magical quality to him anyway. Who do you pick to play that character? It has to be Chris Walken.” -Jon Favreau

A fun tidbit Favreau shared is their solution to Louie being an orangutan in the animated film, which is inaccurate since, well, orangutans don’t live in India. This time around, they made Louie a mythical creature believed to have inhabited India; he’s basically a Sasquatch with orangutan-like qualities. Animators took special liberties with Walken’s mo-cap performance to imbue the character with the actor’s expressions. It can be a bit eerie, but it works really well.Near the end of the presentation, Favreau was joined on-stage by visual effects supervisor Rob Legato, who had previously worked on “Avatar.”

“In this particular project, which was really exciting, is that we’re creating a total photo-real world that we could recognize is real. We’ve all seen pictures of animals. We’ve all seen how they move, how they walk and how they talk. The really fun portion of this and why it was great to work with Jon is that we had the same sensibility. To actually create a real movie where the suspension of disbelief is easier to let go of because it looks like it could be conventionally filmed.” – Rob Legato, Visual Effects Supervisor

From what we’ve seen so far, Disney’s “The Jungle Book” is shaping up to be a must-see. Let’s be clear: Walt Disney Studios’ adaptation won’t be a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but uses the animated classic as a foundation, expanding Mowgli’s story through Kipling’s original tales in a stunning new format.

You can see for yourself when Disney’s “The Jungle Book” opens April 15th, 2016.

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February 22, 2016
8 Best Classic Disney Movies Made Under Walt’s Watch

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More than any other movie studio, Disney reflects its creator, Walt Disney.

He produced the first-ever full-length animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” nearly 80 years ago. And before his untimely death in 1966, Walt gave us so many beloved classic films that shaped our imaginations, filled our dreams, and gave us song after song to sing.

His legacy lives on, but there’s no question that there’d be no “Frozen” or “Beauty and the Beast” without Walt. In honor of Disney’s upcoming birthday this week, here are the eight best movies that he gave the world in his lifetime.

December 4, 2015
‘Lady and the Tramp’: 19 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Disney Classic

Since its release 60 years ago this week (on June 22, 1955), “Lady and the Tramp” has been not just one of the most beloved Disney animated features ever made, but also one of the great romances in screen history.

Still, as often as you’ve seen it, there’s still plenty you may not know about how the canine classic came to be, So grab a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and chow down on 19 of “Lady”‘s behind-the-scenes dish.
1. It took nearly 20 years to get the film made. The main character originated in sketches made by Disney animator Joe Grant in 1937, based on his own spaniel, whose name was Lady. Grant envisioned a short cartoon about a dog who’s puzzled by the arrival of his masters’ newborn baby.

2. By 1940, Walt Disney had imagined expanding the short into a feature and adding a dog-hating housesitter, two mischievous Siamese cats (then named Nip and Tuck), and a suitor for Lady, a mongrel who might be named Homer or Rags or Bozo. Unable to settle on a name for the wandering, homeless pooch, Walt decided to just go with Tramp.

3. In 1943, Walt read Ward Greene’s short story “Happy Dan: The Cynical Dog” in Cosmopolitan magazine, the tale of a stray who revels in his ability to manipulate humans all over town into giving him free meals. Disney bought the film rights, but it took another eight years to merge the dog tales into the “Lady and the Tramp” screenplay.

4. In 1953, two years before the film’s release, Walt had Greene expand his story into a novel, so that moviegoers would be familiar with the tale by the time the movie came out.

5. The scene where Darling opens a gift-wrapped hat box to find the puppy Lady inside is based on an incident from Walt Disney’s own life, in which he presented his wife Lillian with the Christmas gift of a Chow puppy in a hat box.
6. Peggy Lee was perhaps the first major star to sign on as a voice actor in a Disney cartoon. The torch singer voiced the roles of Darling, pound hound Peg, and cats Si and Am. She also co-wrote all the songs (with Sonny Burke) and sang four of them (“What Is a Baby,” “La La Lu,” “The Siamese Cat Song,” and “He’s a Tramp”).

7. In 1988, Lee sued Disney over music royalties from the successful video release. It took three years, but she won $2.3 million.

8. Barbara Luddy was 46 when she voiced the youthful Lady. She would go on to perform the voices of the fairy Merryweather in Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” and Kanga in several of Disney’s “Winnie the Pooh” shorts.

9. Lee Millar, who voiced Lady’s master, Jim Dear, was the son of Verna Felton, who voiced the part of cat-loving visitor Aunt Sarah. She had earlier played the Fairy Godmother in Disney’s “Cinderella” and the Queen of Hearts in the studio’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

10. Larry Roberts, who voiced Tramp, was a stage actor and stand-up comic. “Lady and the Tramp” was his only film role.

11. Other veteran voice artists were brought in from outside the studio. Alan Reed (later the voice of Fred Flintstone) was Boris, the Russian wolfhound. Comic Stan Freberg was the whistling beaver who frees Lady from her muzzle.
12. The iconic spaghetti scene almost didn’t happen. Walt nixed the idea, assuming that the spectacle of two animals scarfing down pasta in tomato sauce would be messy and awkward. But animator Frank Thomas worked up a rough version of the scene that changed Disney’s mind.

13. The model for Tramp was actually a female mutt that co-screenwriter Erdman “Ed” Penner spotted on the street. The dog vanished into the bushes, but Disney staffers ultimately found her again in the pound, where she was just four hours away from being put down. Once rescued, she lived happily ever after at the Disneyland pony farm.

14. Disney employees brought their dogs to the studios as models for the animators. One of the models for Lady was Felton’s own Spaniel, Hildegarde.The other was Blondie, the spaniel of co-director Hamilton Luske.

15. “Lady and the Tramp” was the first animated feature shot in the widescreen CinemaScope format. It’s still the widest cartoon Disney ever released in theaters.
16. The CinemaScope process meant that the film was essentially made twice: Once in the standard, nearly square aspect ratio, and once in widescreen, after Walt decided to try the new format that was expected to lure people away from those new square boxes in their living rooms. But Walt learned that many theaters were still not equipped to project CinemaScope movies, so he released both versions.

17. The movie cost $4 million to make. During its initial run, it earned $7.5 million. It was the studio’s biggest hit since “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” 18 years earlier.

18. Since 1955, Disney has re-released “Lady” into theaters five times. Over the years, it’s earned back $93.6 million in theaters

19. Lady and Tramp can both be spotted on a shadowy London street during the twilight-bark sequence in “101 Dalmatians.”
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June 22, 2015
Disney’s ‘Cinderella’: 25 Things You Didn’t Know About the Beloved Fairy Tale Classic

We never get tired of the story of Cinderella, and whether we know it or not, the version we never get tired of is the one put forth by Walt Disney 65 years ago. The 1950 animated feature, released 65 years ago this week (on February 15, 1950) was an instant classic, and its this version we think of when we imagine all the visual details of the story — the slipper, the pumpkin, the fairy godmother, the mice, and Cinderella and Prince Charming dancing all over the palace grounds.

Still, as many times as we’ve heard the story or seen the cartoon, there’s still more to be mined from the 17th-century fairy tale. (Indeed, Disney is releasing a new live-action retelling next month.) As many times as you’ve seen the 1950 classic, there’s plenty you may not know about it — how the actress who played Cinderella landed the part without even knowing she’d auditioned, how the movie was responsible for some musical innovations, and how close Disney was to financial ruin before “Cinderella” provided a fairy-tale ending. Here, then, are the secrets of “Cinderella” — just be sure to finish reading them before midnight.

1. Before “Cinderella’s” release, the Disney studio was $4 million in debt. Over the previous decade, such animated features as “Fantasia,” “Pinocchio,” and “Bambi” had been costly flops. World War II had cut the studio off from its lucrative overseas audience. The animated features it had released in the interim had been compilations of shorts, like “Fun and Fancy Free” and “Melody Time.”

2. The return to ambitious narrative features, then, marked both a creative and financial gamble for the studio, the first time in eight years it had made such an attempt. Had the film failed, it would have bankrupted the Disney company.

3. There are many versions of the Cinderella tale in European folklore, but Disney chose the one made familiar by French author Charles Perrault in 1697. He’s the author who introduced to the tale the key elements of the fairy godmother, the pumpkin-turned-coach, and the glass slippers. In his version, along with the small creatures turned into Cinderella’s driver and horses, there’s a group of lizards transformed into footmen. Alas, the Disney cartoon leaves the reptiles out — but the new, live-action version does not!

4. Ilene Woods landed the voice role of Cinderella without even knowing she’d auditioned. Her friends, songwriters Mack David and Jerry Livingston (part of the trio, along with Al Hoffman, who composed all the songs from “Cinderella”), had her sing on the demo recordings for the movie’s tunes “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” “So This Is Love,” and “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” They sent the demos to Walt Disney, who liked her voice so much that he cast Woods in the lead role without giving her a formal audition.

5. William Phipps provided the speaking voice of Prince Charming. His singing voice, however, came from Mike Douglas, the future daytime talk show host.

6. Eleanor Audley performed the voice of Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepmother. Later, she would also play the villainous Maleficent in “Sleeping Beauty.” Disney animators designed both characters to look like Audley as well.

7. Lucifer the cat was voiced by June Foray, the cartoon voiceover artist later best known for playing Granny in the Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, and Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale in the Bullwinkle cartoons.

8. Verna Felton, who voiced the Fairy Godmother, was a frequent Disney player, having worked on “Dumbo” (as both Mrs. Jumbo and the elephant matriarch). She went on to voice the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland,” Aunt Sarah in “Lady and the Tramp,” the fairy Flora and the queen in “Sleeping Beauty,” and another elephant, Winifred, in “The Jungle Book.”

9. Veteran Disney sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald, who voiced Mickey Mouse for 30 years (the first man other than Walt himself to voice the iconic character), worked on “Cinderella” as the voices of mice Jaq and Gus and as Bruno the dog. He’d go on to make animal noises in “Alice in Wonderland” (the Dormouse), “Peter Pan” (the tick-tock of the clock-eating crocodile) “Lady and the Tramp” (the chorus of howling dogs), the Chip and Dale shorts (he was Chip), various Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh cartoons (as buzzing bees), “The Jungle Book” (various animals), and “The Rescuers” (Evinrude the dragonfly).

10. As with many of the Disney animated features, actors were hired as visual models to act out the sequences as studies for the animators. Helene Stanley, who was the live-action Cinderella, went on to perform the same duties for Princess Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty” and Anita in “101 Dalmatians.” Jeffrey Stone was the visual model for Prince Charming.

11. Several sequences failed to make it into the final film. One early sequence had the prince hunting a deer (shades of “Bambi”!), only to reveal that the hunter and prey were pals playing a game.

12. In another unused sequence, Cinderella imagines herself as an army of identical young women, dispatched to finish her chores so that she can attend the ball. She was to sing a tune, called “Cinderella Work Song.” The song was scrapped but the title modified into “The Work Song” for the tune the mice warble when they’re creating her gown.

13. A third eliminated sequence had Cinderella eavesdropping on her stepmother and stepsisters gossiping about the mystery woman at the ball, with Cinderella showing amusement at their unawareness that she herself is the woman they’re talking about. Walt Disney had this sequence cut because he thought it made the heroine look spiteful and risk audience sympathy.

14. A cut version of the ending had the Grand Duke learning Cinderella’s identity and bringing her to the castle, where the prince expresses surprise but not disappointment that Cinderella is a servant and not a princess. Then the Fairy Godmother was to appear and restore Cinderella to her appearance the night of the ball. Walt nixed this sequence because he found it too long and argued that it denied viewers the emotional payoff of having the prince discover Cinderella’s identity himself.

15. With the hiring of David, Livingston, and Hoffman, “Cinderella” marked the first time Disney had turned to established professional songwriters from outside the studio. But Disney also kept the publishing rights on their compositions, with “Cinderella” also marking the launch of the Walt Disney Music Company, which introduced a new revenue stream from sheet music publishing and, later, soundtrack albums.

16. The soundtrack was also a trailblazer in its use of double-tracked vocals. Walt came up with the innovative idea of having Woods sing harmony with herself on a second and third vocal track on the song “Sing, Sweet Nightingale.” Woods recalled that, upon hearing the finished recording, Disney remarked, “How about that? All of these years I’ve been paying three salaries for the Andrews Sisters, when I could have only paid one for you!”

17. The film cost $3 million to make. Over the years, it has earned back more than $85 million, not adjusting for inflation.

18. As the biggest hit Disney had enjoyed in 13 years, since “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Cinderella” generated enough cash flow not only to save the studio, but to allow it to create its own distribution company (“Cinderella” had been distributed, like past Disney features, by RKO), finance several live-action and animated films, enter the world of television production, and build the Disneyland theme park.

19. “Cinderella” was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song (“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”).

20. David, Livingston, and Hoffman would go on to write the songs for DIsney’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

21. The studio re-released “Cinderella” in theaters six times: in 1957, 1965, 1973, 1981, 1987, and 2013.

22. In recent years, Disney has released two direct-to-video sequels: “Cinderella II: Dreams Come True” (2002) and “Cinderella III: A Twist in Time” (2007).

23. Cinderella Castle, the signature landmark at the Magic Kingdom park in Disney World in Florida, is designed to look like the palace in the movie, albeit with some modern amenities — elevators, a restaurant, a beauty salon (the “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutique”) and a VIP hotel suite.

24. Along with the Sleeping Beauty Castle at the center of Disneyland in California, Cinderella Castle is the basis for the logo seen at the beginning of all Walt Disney Pictures films and home video releases, as well as Walt Disney Television productions and Disney Music Group projects.

25. Woods claimed Walt Disney once told her Cinderella was his favorite among his films’ heroines. “I think it was the rags-to-riches tale,” she speculated. “Of course, then I didn’t know how many times Walt had risked it all to realize his dreams.”
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February 15, 2015
Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’: 25 Things You Didn’t Know About the Animated Classic

Given how revered Disney‘s “Pinocchio” is today, it’s hard to believe it was a flop when it was first released exactly three quarters of a century ago. Upon its New York City premiere, on February 7, 1940, critics hailed the film as a masterpiece, and even to this day, many prefer it to Disney’s pioneering first animated feature, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Yet it took the film many years and multiple re-releases to make a profit.

Today, of course, the legacy of “Pinocchio” is inescapable. Everyone’s image of the puppet-boy with the nose that grows when he lies comes not from Carlo Collodi’s original novel but from the kid with the Tyrolean hat and the Mickey Mouse gloves, as drawn by Disney animators. And the opening tune, Jiminy Cricket’s “When You Wish Upon a Star,” is ubiquitous as the theme music played before every Walt Disney movie and home video release.

Still, as indelibly as “Pinocchio” has been imprinted on your memory, there may be plenty you don’t know about the film, from who voiced the characters to the technical breakthroughs behind it to the unusual lawsuit threatened by the author’s nephew. Here, then, are 25 things you probably didn’t know about “Pinocchio.” May our noses grow if we’re lying.

1. Carlo Collodi wrote the original novel in installments in an Italian magazine in 1881. It was published as a book two years later.

2. The name “Pinocchio” literally means “little wooden head.”

3. The hardest part of the production was making Pinocchio a sympathetic character. Collodi’s story was rewritten to remove the wooden boy’s mischievous (even malicious) streak and make him more passive. But the trickier part was making him look more like a human boy than a block of wood.

4. According to a 1938 New York Times article, Walt Disney tossed 2,300 feet of footage, representing five months work, “because it missed the feeling he had in mind.”

5. It took 12 artists 18 months to come up with a look for Pinocchio that was rounded and cute enough to pass muster. Animator Milt Kahl finally hit upon the idea of drawing him as a human boy and then adding the puppet’s nails and joints.

6. In Collodi’s story, Pinocchio kills the cricket with a hammer, though the insect comes back as a ghost. Nonetheless, Walt included him and decided to let him live. He came up with the name Jiminy and the idea to make him wear clothes and walk and talk like a person.

7. Other differences from the source material: In the book, the Blue Fairy has a team of animals working for her, including a poodle (her coachman), a group of mice (to pull the coach) and a snail (a messenger). Impresario Stromboli is called “Mangiafoco” (“fire-eater”) in the novel, and Pleasure Island is called “Toyland.” And the sea creature that swallows Geppetto and Pinocchio is a giant shark, not a whale.

8. Cliff Edwards, a.k.a. Ukelele Ike (the name he used as a popular novelty-tune singer in the 1920s and ’30s) auditioned for the voice of Pinocchio, but the 43-year-old had too much grown-up in his voice, so he was cast instead as Jiminy Cricket.

9. Dickie Jones, a 12-year-old who had also appeared in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” landed the role of Pinocchio. He also voiced Alexander, one of the boys on Pleasure Island.

10. Future Broadway dance legend Marge Champion, then married to Disney animation director Art Babbitt, was the physical model for the Blue Fairy, acting out the character’s movements on film for the animators to study. She had performed a similar task for Disney’s Snow White.

11. The voice of the Fairy was provided by Evelyn Venable, an actress best known for her roles in “Death Takes a Holiday” (opposite Fredric March) and “The Little Colonel” (alongside Shirley Temple). She was also the model for the initial Columbia Pictures logo of a woman holding a torch.

12. According to the Times, character actor Walter Catlett, who voiced the theatrical con artist Honest John the fox, based his characterization on two famous acting brothers whose name started with B — presumably, John and Lionel Barrymore.

13. Honest John’s sidekick, Gideon the cat, was initially a speaking character, voiced by Mel Blanc, better known today as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and most of the other “Looney Tunes” characters from rival studio Warner Bros. But then the filmmakers decided to make Gideon a mute, like Dopey in “Snow White,” and all of Blanc’s voice work as Gideon was cut from the film, save for three hiccups. Blanc also voiced Geppetto’s pet cat Figaro, in the scene where the feline sneezes.

14. Voicing the roars of Monstro the whale was Thurl Ravenscroft, later best known as the voice of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes mascot Tony the Tiger.

15. Ravenscroft and his singing group, the Mellomen, also performed a song called “Honest John,” which was ultimately cut from the film.

16. Some 2,000,000 drawings were used in the creation of the film, 300,000 of which appear in the final print.

17. Much of the film’s visual richness comes from Disney’s famed multiplane camera, used to give the painted environments an illusion of depth. In “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which gave the multiplane camera its first real workout, the cinematographer could approach the multiplane set-up only from above. But for “Pinocchio,” the Disney team developed what it called a universal crane that could approach the set-up from any direction, like a crane-mounted camera on a live-action set.

18. The studio thought highly enough of the film’s visual artistry that it staged exhibitions of original artwork at the Brooklyn Museum and two other New York galleries to coincide with the film’s Big Apple premiere in February 1940.

19. The film cost $2.3 million to make, about twice as much as “Snow White.” It earned back less than $2 million during its initial run.

20. Some theorized that the movie did poorly initially because it’s so grim. Pinocchio is terrorized throughout the movie, and four of the five villains who torment him get off unpunished.

21. The film eventually made a profit during its re-release in 1945. Disney would put the film back into theaters a total of seven times between 1945 and 1992.

22. Paolo Lorenzini, Collodi’s nephew, asked the Italian ministry of popular culture to sue Disney for overly Americanizing his uncle’s creation. “Pinocchio’s adventures are an Italian work of art and must not be distorted to make it American,” he stated. There’s no evidence that any action was ever taken toward his complaint.

23. The film won two Academy Awards for its music: an Oscar for Best Original Score (credited to Leigh Harline, Paul J. Smith, and Ned Washington) and a Best Original Song prize for Harline and Washington’s composition, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” It was the first animated feature to win competitive Oscars.

24. Ravenscroft would land singing and speaking roles in many other DIsney animated features over the next half-century, from “Dumbo” to “The Brave Little Toaster.” His voice can still be heard on such Disneyland attractions as The Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

25. Edwards went on to voice the role of Jim Crow in Disney’s “Dumbo” (1941), where he sang “When I See an Elephant Fly.” He reprised the role of Jiminy Cricket in numerous Disney cartoons over the next two decades.
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February 7, 2015