The Jungle Book (Disney) (1967)

Walt Disney Turned Actor To Build His “Jungle Book” Gast In ‘The Jungle Book,” the last cartoon feature he made, Walt Disney led his troops of animators and background artists with some of the best acting of his career. As a young man Walt had ambitions to be an actor and still holds the record for longevity as the year-in, year-out emcee of a television program, now on the air over NBC-TV as “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.” Throughout production of “Jungle Book” Walt knew exactly what he wanted each of his characters to look like and to do. When Phil Harris scored as the voice of Baloo, a very funny bear in the picture, Walt suddenly was fired up with his visions of Baloo in action. “He showed us how walking down a hall in the Animation building,” reports Ollie Johnston, one of Walt’s top animators. “We were talking about the bear when suddenly Walt started shuffling down the hall, bending over a little, swaying from side to side and snapping his fingers like Baloo does now when he first comes on scene singing ‘Doo-be, Doo-be, Doo-be, DeeDoo’ in that well-known Harris voice. “That’s all we needed for our bear.” “It got so that we used to just sit and stare at him during our story conferences, waiting for him to act out a character or a scene,” Woolie Reitherman, the director, said, ‘and pretty soon he would be at it again, this time perhaps working out that hilarious snake we have that likes to mesmerize everyone. There Walt would be, slowly sliding his feet over the floor and advancing on me with wide-staring eyes and wiggling fingers. We got that idea right away.” The snake, called Kaa, wears the voice of Sterling Holloway, who has provided vocal tones for many a Disney character throughout the years. “The Jungle Book” was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and was written for the screen by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson and Vance Gerry. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman composed five songs for the picture and Terry Gilkyson has contributed an additional song. George Bruns composed the background score. In Technicolor, it will be released by Buena Vista. “The Jungle Book’”’ is being screened locally on an all-Disney program with the animal-adventure film, “‘Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar.” Filmed in the breathtaking mountain country of the Pacific Northwest, “Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar” tells the story of a playful cougar kitten which grows up to work side by side with loggers on the world’s last major river drive. Both pictures, in Technicolor, are being released by Buena Vista. The Old Grey Bear In “The Jungle Book”’ Is Grey For Entertainment Reasons A lot of people who see big Baloo in Walt Disney’s feature-length cartoon comedy, ‘“‘The Jungle Book,” may wonder what an old grey bear is doing there in a coat of such an unlikely color. The greens and browns of the jungle, the blues of the sky and water, and the black of night provide the answer; a brown bear could get lost against that kind of background, as well as would a blue bear, or a green one, even a yellow one, and no one would believe a Polar bear without a field of ice around him. “Anyway, I’m sick of brown, black and white bears,” Walt said, summing up the situation in a story conference Mat JB 1-B (Standard width and coarse screen) Page6é one day. ““What we need is an unusual color, one that will stand out against any and all jungle backgrounds and give our boy a chance to have his every jump and gesture properly spotlighted with the right kind of definition. “So, fellows, what will it be?” His artists tried plum with variations, red with ditto, bronze, purple, beige, green-blue, orange and everything else they could find in the visible spectrum. But Walt shook his head. “What about grey?” he said. No one believed that was even a reasonable request, but they tried it. And it was right. It worked perfectly against everything the picture had to offer in the way of backgrounds. The strangest thing about this story is that hardly anyone even notices the bear is grey until it is pointed out to them, so well does Baloo fit into all his scenes colorwise. “The Jungle Book” was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and was written for the screen by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson and Vance Gerry. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman composed five songs for the picture and Terry Gilkyson has contributed an additional song. George Bruns composed the background score. In Technicolor, it will be released by Buena Vista. “The Jungle Book’ is being screened locally on an all-Disney program with the animal-adventure film, “Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar.’’ Filmed in the breathtaking mountain country of the Pacific Northwest, “Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar” tells the story of a playful cougar kitten which grows up to work side by side with loggers on the world’s last major river drive. Mat JB 2-1 (Standard 2 column width and coarse screen) © 1967 Walt Disney Productions Boy meets girl and life in the jungle for Mowgli has taken a turn for the better in Walt Disney’s all-cartoon Technicolor comedy adventure “The Jungle Book” with the voice talents of Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot, Louis Prima, George Sanders, Sterling Holloway, J. Pat O’Malley and Bruce Reitherman. Walt Disney Dreams Up Pretty Little Girl For “The Jungle Book” Finale A very pretty little girl provides a very romantic little ending to Walt Disney’s feature-length cartoon comedy, “The Jungle Book,” thanks to some eleventh-hour thinking by Walt himself in the last cartoon he would ever produce. Throughout the picture’s years-long production animators and storymen continued to worry about story sequence. The Rudyard Kipling tales which inspired the feature were in themselves a set of separate and isolated story ideas that needed to be woven into some kind of sequential pattern, but Walt was not concerned. “Let’s not worry about the story line now,” he would say. “That will all come in due time. What we need to develop first are sequences that are as funny and entertaining as anything we have ever done. Later we can work out a beginning and an end. In time, though, the finale did become a problem. What do you do with a small mancub who, thrown into the jaws of a jungle when only a baby, manages to win so many friends among the animals that they are finally anxious to count him as one of their own. “Well, but we can’t just leave him there, you know,” Walt frowned. “Because he isn’t an animal at all and it wouldn’t be fair to leave him in that kind of status no matter how popular he is in the jungle.” Then Walt came up with the answer: No need to go into any complicated windup, like building a whole man village on celluloid, filled with complicated and useless-to-the-story people. “We'll have him hear the singing voice of a charming femme fatale of about his own age,” Walt decided. “He’ll meet her, look back uncertainly at his four-legged friends standing up there on the edge of the forest, and then he’ll suddenly know where he really belongs and follow the girl happily down a man-made road.” And that’s the way “The Jungle Book” ends, with Baloo, the bear, signing the picture off with a sigh, a gesture and a few words: “Well, I think he would have made one swell bear.” “The Jungle Book” was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and was written for the screen by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson and Vance Gerry. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman composed five songs for the picture and Terry Gilkyson has contributed an additional song. George Bruns composed the background score. In Technicolor, it will be released by Buena Vista. “The Jungle Book’’ is being screened locally on an all-Disney program with the animal-adventure film, “Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar.”’ Filmed in the breathtaking mountain country of the Pacific Northwest, “Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar” tells the story of a playful cougar kitten which grows up to work side by side with loggers on the world’s last major river drive. Both pictures, in Technicolor, are being released by Buena Vista. COLUMN ITEMS The Academy Award-winning composer team of Bob and Dick Sherman, who wrote five new songs for ‘‘The Jungle Book,’’ last animated feature to be personally supervised by Walt Disney, have long been fans of traditional Dixieland jazz. They had always wanted to do a song in the jazz vein and when Louis Prima was cast as the voice behind one of the cartoon characters, they had their chance. For Prima they wrote ‘‘l Wanna Be Like You,’’ a swinging number that is a highlight of the film. The man who, with Walt Disney, has shared the responsibility for the animated musical feature, ‘‘The Jungle Book,” is director Woolie Reitherman. A lanky, casual gent who began with the Disney Studios 35 years ago as an animator, became the first artist in Disney history to receive overall directorial credit for his work with Disney in 1962 on ‘‘The Sword and the Stone.’’