The latest Disney classic to come to DVD will be The Jungle Book. For the 40th anniversary of the film, Disney will offer a special edition DVD starting October 2, 2007. As a preview of the many bonus features, several voice actors and filmmakers gathered together at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, CA to share memories of making the film, or inspirations they derived from it in the case of recent animator Andreas Deja. There will be many more stories on the DVD, but here's a preview of the making of The Jungle Book until then.
The Jungle Book Q&A Session
Did the Jungle Book animators study live action footage of you?
Bruce Reitherman: “Yeah, there's a little bit of live-action work done with me that was used by the animators, really as a reference more for mannerisms and I think particular personality bits. These guys can animate human movement like nobody's business. They didn't need my live action work, but they were looking for little bits of particular mannerisms. The way I brush my… I was going to say the way I brush my hair out of my face, but I don't have hair anymore. I can't demonstrate that for you right now. Little bits of mannerism like that. The way I jumped off a rock. There's a moment about 2/3 of the way into the film when Mowgli's been betrayed once again by his pals Baloo and Bagheera, they want to take him back to man's village. Mowgli just walks through the forest and it's a little bit of animation of a human figure. But a lot of [it] looks a little bit like some of the live action stuff I did for the animation - jump off a rock and throw the stick and kick a pebble.”
Did you read the Rudyard Kipling book and how did your involvement come about?
Composer Richard Sherman: “The first meeting my brother Bob and I had on Jungle Book many years ago was actually, we were called into Walt's office with several other people, Woolie Reitherman, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson and Larry Clemmons and a whole bunch of the regulars at the studio. We were all staff people and did our various specialties, but Walt asked us… He sat us all down in his office, looked at us and said, ‘How many of you guys have read The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling?’ And of course nobody raised their hand. Nobody. So sheepishly I said, ‘Well, I saw a movie with Sabu, the Indian kid.’ He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you didn't read the book.’ I said, ‘No, no, no.’ ‘Good. We're going to tell the story of The Jungle Book the Disney way.’ And with that he sat down and he told us how he wanted to see this film. He acted out every part. It was an amazing thing. To hear Walt Disney tell a story was like nothing. It was transfixing. So basically, no, I have yet to read The Jungle Book.”
How old were you when you did Shanti’s voice? What were you doing at the studio?
Darleen Carr: “This is the first opportunity I've had to meet all the rest of these people, with the exception of Richard Sherman, because I had recently been put under contract at Walt Disney. I had done, I think, only one other acting job previous to being put under contract. But I had done the singing for the children in the film The Sound of Music. They needed some professional singers to sort of sweeten what the actors did.”
And your sister was in The Sound of Music?
Darleen Carr: “My sister played Liesl, the 16-year-old. ‘I am 16 going on 17…’ I did some of her singing and some of the other children's singing to sort of make it sound a little better because they were professional actors, not singers. But somewhere along the line, my agent set up an audition for me with Walt Disney. I think Walt was sort of preparing to, as Hayley Mills was getting older and maturing, he was thinking ahead about developing another little girl for his studio. I walked in with my guitar and I sat and probably bored him to death, and sang and played my guitar for 45 minutes. He probably had trouble getting me to shut up. But he put me under contract and then he probably didn't quite know what he was going to do with me, really.
He put me in a couple of his Wonderful World of Color episodes. That's where Richard comes in and Richard actually knows more about how I got to work at Walt Disney than anybody.”
Composer Richard Sherman: “There was this adorable young girl. She was about 14, I think, 13 or 14 years old and I heard her singing. I heard her singing and Bob and I had just finished writing a song called My Own Home for the little girl to sing near the end of the film. I didn't want to be the one to first sing that particular song to Walt. I can sing an ape song and I can sing a monkey song, but I couldn't sing a little girl song. It would be hard. So we asked Darleen.
You were in costume walking down Dopey Drive or whatever it was. She was walking in front of the animation building and I said, ‘Darleen, will you come up to our office? There's a little song I'd like you to…’ And you were very kind. She came up and learned the song in a flash. You were very quick with it. She laid it down on a piece of tape for us. We recorded her with me playing the piano.
A week and a half later, we had this meeting on the concluding sequences in the show. I said, ‘Walt, we have a little demo.’ So I played the tape for him and it was typical Walt. He listened to it very intently and said, ‘Yeah, that'll work. Okay, now…’ And then went on with what he was talking about. But if you knew Walt, you knew that was good because he never in front of you said, ‘Oh, wonderful.’ He'd only do it behind your back. He'd say, ‘They wrote a perfect song, they wrote a great voice.’ But he never said it to us. And so months and months and months go by and then the time has come for the casting of the actual vocal, the orchestra, etc. We were having this meeting and the casting folks [said], ‘We'll have to go listen to some voices and get the right voice for the girl.’ And Walt said, ‘Oh, you've got the voice already. You know, that girl. You know, Darleen. Get Darleen.’ So that was it. You got the part. That's how it happened.”
