The Jungle Book
Short description
The Jungle Book follows Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves in the Indian jungle, who is told by the wolf pack that he must leave for a human village because the man-eating tiger Shere Khan has returned to their territory. Accompanied by Bagheera, a panther who found him as an infant, Mowgli sets out reluctantly. Along the way he encounters the smooth-talking python Kaa, the carefree bear Baloo, and King Louie, an ape who wants to keep the boy for himself. Bagheera and Baloo disagree about how best to look after Mowgli, while Shere Khan closes in.
Wolfgang Reitherman directed the film for Walt Disney Productions, with Walt Disney producing. It is the fourth of the animated features Reitherman directed, arriving between The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats. The voice cast includes Bruce Reitherman as Mowgli, Phil Harris as Baloo, Sebastian Cabot as Bagheera, George Sanders as Shere Khan, Sterling Holloway as Kaa, and Louis Prima as King Louie.
With a budget of about 4 million dollars, the film went on to earn roughly 378 million dollars worldwide, a substantial return for its era. On IMDb it holds 7.6/10 from around 212,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.3/10 from about 6,800 votes. The critics' rating of 7.3/10 from 42 reviews is in line with the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- This is the 19th feature-length Disney animated film and the last one that Walt Disney himself participated in. Disney died in 1966 at the age of 65 while work on the film was still underway.
- Initially, Mowgli was voiced by David Alan Bailey, but work on the film lasted three years, his voice began to change, and as a result, Mowgli in the film speaks with the voice of Bruce Reitherman.
- The last cartoon produced by the company in which Walt Disney himself participated.
- Initially, jazz singer Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) was approved to voice King Louie, but he was later replaced by Italian-American singer Louis Prima (1910-1978). Walt Disney decided that the audience might misunderstand if an African American voiced the ape leader.
- Walt Disney passed away during the production of the cartoon. Had the cartoon failed at the box office, the animation department of his studio would likely have been closed. Fortunately, that did not happen.
- While working on the background, the animators studied real jungles of India.
- The suggestion to make an animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” was first put forward by Bill Peet. Peet worked on the screenplay for a year, but when Walt Disney rejected the proposed script, Peet left the project and resigned from the studio. Disney and Peet’s visions for the future film were too different, bringing their quarter-century professional collaboration to an end.
- Walt Disney dreamed of John Wayne voicing Baloo, but he was busy with other projects and suggested Phil Harris, his close friend, an actor and singer, instead. To a certain extent, Harris voiced Baloo imitating Wayne.
- The public and film critics’ reaction to “The Sword in the Stone” (1963) was rather restrained, and Walt Disney set out to create a film that would be a guaranteed success. He instructed his animators to disregard Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” as he found the storyboard of the original script too gloomy and minor. Disney put animator Larry Clemons in charge of the project, gave him “The Jungle Book,” and immediately forbade Clemons from reading it.
- As composer Richard M. Sherman later recounted, George Sanders (1906-1972), the voice of Shere Khan, categorically refused to sing the song "That's What Friends Are For." Bill Lee (1916-1980) performed the song instead.
- Initially, it was planned that the vultures would be voiced by members of "The Beatles," as the vultures were made characters in the cartoon specifically at the personal request of the group's manager, Brian Epstein, to include his wards in the plot. When Epstein presented this idea to the famous quartet themselves, John Lennon strongly opposed it and advised Epstein to suggest Elvis Presley to Disney. Regardless, the vultures were made to visually resemble members of "The Beatles."
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