With the new live-action-meets-CGI Jungle Book topping the worldwide box office, it’s time to step back and remember what
Disney wrought back in 1967, when the animated and musicalized version of
Rudyard Kipling’s jungle tales was released. The 1967 film is known as the last
animated feature personally supervised by Walt Disney himself, prior to his
death on December 15, 1966. More so than the current version—which contains
moments of genuine darkness that seek to entice older viewers—the 1967 Jungle Book is mostly light-hearted,
crammed full of comedy and jazzy musical numbers.
One of the 1967 Jungle
Book’s innovations was its use of well-known celebrities to provide voices
for the animated characters. This tradition today permeates film animation:
stars find purely vocal roles an easy paycheck, and enjoy participating in
family-friendly projects they can show to their young children. Think of Tom
Hanks and Tim Allen in the Toy Story films,
or of James Earl Jones and Jeremy Irons in The
Lion King (not to mention Robin
Williams in Aladdin) to
realize the importance we place today on appealing and above all familiar voices. The current Jungle Book is no exception: its
all-star cast features such Hollywood leading lights as Bill Murray (Baloo the
Bear), Ben Kingsley (Bagheera the Panther), Idris Elba (the dangerous tiger
Shere Khan), Scarlett Johansson (an insssinuating Kaa the Python), and none
other than Christopher Walken as the king of the apes. Even the late Garry
Shandling makes an appearance.
Neal Gabler, in his masterful biography, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, gives an account of how celebrity voices came to be used in
the 1967 film. It seems Disney—preoccupied with his idea of building Florida’s
EPCOT Center—had little use for this
particular film project. When he was finally persuaded to look in on what his
animation staff was up to, he was not pleased. He found the story too sober,
and the “man-cub” Mowgli not particularly appealing. As Gabler puts it,
“despite his preoccupation with other projects and his lack of interest in this
one, [Walt Disney] quickly salvaged the production, as he had done so many
times in the past, by suggesting that singer Phil Harris, known for his loose,
boozy, throwaway style, voice a bear named Baloo who befriends Mowgli.” Disney
loved Phil Harris’s test track, and was soon full of ideas about how this
lively character could help transform the project. Here’s Gabler once again:
“The bear, who had been intended as a minor figure, became the film’s co-star,
converting the picture from a series of disconnected adventures into the story
of a boy and his hedonistic mentor—a jungle Hal and Falstaff.”
All of this might be correct, but years ago I heard a
slightly different tale from Hal Smith, a versatile comic actor known to some
as Otis Campbell, the town drunk, on the Andy
Griffith Show. Hal was an experienced voice-actor, who’d worked for Disney
on a Winnie the Pooh short. When he
came in to audition for Baloo’s role in The Jungle Book, he decided to speak in
the magnolias-and-husbpuppies style of Phil Harris. The Disney folk thought
this was brilliant -- and promptly went out and hired Harris. Soon, such
celebrity voice talent as Louis Prima were added to the mix, and were given
prominent musical numbers so as to show off their musical chops. (Prima played
– with panache -- a scat-singing ape, King Louie.) Thus a new approach to
animation was born. Unfortunately for Hal Smith, he suffered from the rule of
unintended consequences. He never worked for Disney again.
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