How Walt Dis­ney brought The Jun­gle Book to the big screen

Rud­yard Kipling’s ​‘The Jun­gle Book’ has a lot of songs in it, but none of them con­tain the phrase ​‘Oo-bi-do’. Yet that didn’t stop this rugged work of Vic­to­ri­an fic­tion from being trans­formed into a breezy, 76-minute ani­mat­ed fea­ture brim­ming with bar-room blues. Indeed, any­one dis­cov­er­ing the source mate­r­i­al for the first time today would be hard pressed to see how Kipling’s tale could be so ruth­less­ly sim­pli­fied. But then, Walt Dis­ney wasn’t just anyone.

Per­haps fit­ting­ly, the Law of the Jun­gle – which holds sway over the ani­mal king­dom in Kipling’s ver­sion – also played a major part in the pro­duc­tion itself, and by the time Disney’s film prowled into the­atres in 1967, it had more than a touch of claret on its claws. But in order to tell the sto­ry of how Dis­ney brought ​‘The Jun­gle Book’ to the big screen, you have to fol­low the trail back to where it all began: on the print­ed page.

Seething with the mood and mys­tique of rur­al India, ​‘The Jun­gle Book’ was first pub­lished in var­i­ous Lon­don jour­nals in the 1890s as a loose series of poems and short sto­ries. In 1894 they were reworked as a col­lec­tion, with ​‘The Sec­ond Jun­gle Book’ com­ing out the fol­low­ing year. Mis­fits fas­ci­nat­ed Kipling. While his out­look was staunch­ly hier­ar­chi­cal, he dis­liked the cer­e­mo­ni­al trap­pings of Empire, and would refuse a knight­hood twice by 1903 and the Order of Mer­it, again twice, by 1924. With that in mind, it makes sense that the star of his two books is a young lad who becomes some­thing of an odd­ball for two very dif­fer­ent communities.

Mowgli’s fate­ful, life-chang­ing step is sim­ply to wan­der off as an infant while his fam­i­ly is under attack from tyran­ni­cal Ben­gal tiger, Shere Khan. Tak­ing refuge with a fam­i­ly of wolves, Mowgli nes­tles among the cubs straight away and beguiles their par­ents, who adopt him as one of their own. As a boy, Mowgli is schooled in the ways of beasts by the Obi Wan-like pan­ther Bagheera and the sage, avun­cu­lar bear Baloo, gen­tle cus­to­di­an of the Jungle’s cus­toms. Also watch­ing his back is the cun­ning rock-snake Kaa, com­plet­ing a pro­tec­tive trin­i­ty. How­ev­er, Khan’s sly manip­u­la­tion of the wolves forces Mowgli to flee the jun­gle and find refuge back among his own peo­ple, who view him with deep dis­trust. Faced with life as a dual out­cast, Mowgli realis­es that he must face Khan once and for all.

Kipling’s won­der­ment hinges on his use of anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mal char­ac­ters – which is why Zoltan Korda’s 1942 stab at bring­ing Mowgli and co to the big screen is a bit of a let-down. Very like­ly fear­ing the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges involved with cre­at­ing a lit­er­al depic­tion, Kor­da focused almost exclu­sive­ly upon the strug­gle that Mowgli (played by the charis­mat­ic Sabu) endures while try­ing to rein­te­grate with his own kind. Except for Khan, Mowgli’s ani­mal acquain­tances are glossed over, and Kor­da doesn’t attempt to grant them dubbed voic­es. It’s a pret­ty film, but it miss­es huge, vital chunks of what made the Kipling tales so special.

No such restraint applies to 2D ani­ma­tion: a medi­um pur­pose-built for the fan­tas­ti­cal and sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief. Floyd Nor­man, a bona fide Dis­ney leg­end who worked as assis­tant ani­ma­tor on sev­er­al of the studio’s clas­sic fea­tures, explains that, “[Walt] was attract­ed to the Kipling nov­el because of the ani­mals,” an aspect of the book that chimed read­i­ly with the anthro­po­mor­phic mag­ic of such films as Lady and the Tramp and One Hun­dred and One Dal­ma­tians. With his stu­dio an entrenched hit fac­to­ry, and a clear oppor­tu­ni­ty at hand to do things Kor­da didn’t dare try, Dis­ney secured the rights to merge Kipling’s world with his own. But had he bit­ten off more than he could chew?

The man who would test that ques­tion most direct­ly was Dal­ma­tians vet­er­an Bill Peet, then one of Disney’s lead­ing pur­vey­ors of ​‘sto­ry art’ – a blend of screen­writ­ing and sto­ry­board­ing. Work­ing along­side song­writer Ter­ry Gilkyson in 1963, Peet began to push through the jun­gle and imag­ine how Kipling’s book could be refash­ioned as a Dis­ney piece. As it turned out, he was quite enam­oured of his jour­ney, and adapt­ed the mate­r­i­al in a sim­i­lar spir­it to how he’d tack­led Dodie Smith for Dal­ma­tians and TH White for that year’s The Sword in the Stone – Dis­ney­fy­ing, but with an under­cur­rent of respect for the source. Peet was keen to pre­serve Kipling’s myth­ic heft. He was com­plete­ly on the wrong track.

Hav­ing left Peet to his own devices – as he had on Dal­ma­tians and The Sword in the Stone – Dis­ney checked back in when the lat­ter under per­formed at the box-office and was furi­ous with the project’s direc­tion. Peet and Gilkyson were out, and the film was shut down. ​“Nat­u­ral­ly, Bill was not pleased with Walt’s rejec­tion of his vision, and he made his feel­ings known,” Nor­man says. ​“This wasn’t the first time Walt and the vet­er­an writer had clashed. After the usu­al shout­ing match, Peet walked off the motion pic­ture and out of the Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios. We expect­ed Bill to return once things had become less heat­ed. How­ev­er, he’d reached the end of his rope. Bill gave in his notice and nev­er returned, end­ing a career that had begun in the 1930s.”

Accord­ing to Nor­man, how­ev­er, The Jun­gle Book didn’t stay shut down for long. Tasked with lead­ing a fresh mis­sion was Wolf­gang ​‘Woolie’ Rei­ther­man, direc­tor of Sleep­ing Beau­ty, Dal­ma­tians and Stone. ​“Bill Peet had been a solo act,” Nor­man recalls, but now, the Old Mae­stro would enlist the sto­ry team Woolie usu­al­ly utilised. Vet­er­ans Lar­ry Clem­mons and Vance Ger­ry were joined by Al Wil­son, fun­ny­man for [Rocky and Bull­win­kle sta­ble] Jay Ward Pro­duc­tions. Ani­ma­tors Dick Lucas and Eric Cle­worth often dou­bled as sto­ry artists, so they also joined the team. Final­ly, a new­com­er would be recruit­ed from the ani­ma­tion wing: Floyd Nor­man would have his unex­pect­ed intro­duc­tion to Walt’s cov­et­ed sto­ry department.

Tempt­ed away from his draw­ing board as if by the mes­mer­ic Kaa him­self, Nor­man took an uncred­it­ed writ­ing role, and instant­ly grasped what Dis­ney was dri­ving at: ​“When we began the rewrite, Walt’s instruc­tions were clear and sim­ple. The Old Mae­stro said, ​‘Make it light, make it fun and make it enter­tain­ing.’ Despite being a no-noth­ing kid back in 1966, I knew exact­ly what he want­ed: Walt Dis­ney want­ed The Jun­gle Book to be a Walt Dis­ney film.“

That required a dra­mat­ic shed­ding of numer­ous char­ac­ters from the book in an effort to pare down its knot­ty, non-lin­ear struc­ture. Even the wolves had to be down­played, with the script focus­ing more heav­i­ly on the mentor/​mentee rela­tion­ship between Bagheera and Mowgli. Hand­ing off the whole Voice of Rea­son gig to the pan­ther trig­gered two sig­nif­i­cant knock-on effects: Kaa became a much more ambigu­ous snake in the grass, while the Bud­dha-like, easy-going qual­i­ties of the book’s Baloo were turned up to the point where his ani­mat­ed twin became almost like a fur­ry pro­to­type of The Dude.

The project couldn’t have asked for a fin­er pedi­gree of ani­ma­tor. Rei­ther­man – who had come up through the studio’s ranks via Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, Pinoc­chio and Peter Pan – was joined by ele­phant wran­gler John Louns­bery, vul­ture keep­er Eric Lar­son and tiger han­dler Milt Kahl. All four were card-car­ry­ing mem­bers of Disney’s ​‘Nine Old Men’, the crack squad of artis­tic and tech­ni­cal titans who had been with him from the start. Deter­mined to cap­ture light­ning in a bot­tle, Reitherman’s team utilised ​‘xerog­ra­phy’, a tech­nique that enabled the ani­ma­tors’ raw, paper-based draw­ings to be sim­ply pho­to­copied on to the cels, elim­i­nat­ing the need to ink them one by one and har­ness­ing the artists’ more spon­ta­neous flash­es of inspiration.

In keep­ing with the new adaptation’s buoy­ant tone, and Disney’s desire for The Jun­gle Book to be ful­ly on brand, he hired long­stand­ing stu­dio stal­warts in the shape of the ​‘Super­cal­ifrag­ilis­tic­ex­pi­ali­do­cious’ Sher­man Broth­ers to rewrite the film’s song­book. But there was one, vital con­ces­sion on that front, with­out which the film would not have been the same. Nor­man elab­o­rates: ​“Although Ter­ry Gilkyson had been fired we begged Walt to allow us to keep one of his songs. Thank­ful­ly, he let us hold on to ​‘The Bare Neces­si­ties’.” In the voice-artists’ booth, mean­while, an exhaus­tive, nation­wide hunt for the film’s Mowgli cul­mi­nat­ed in Reitherman’s son Bruce land­ing the part, while the cast­ing of George Sanders as Shere Khan direct­ly influ­enced how Kahl drew the character.

As soon as the film began to coa­lesce, morale on the pro­duc­tion ran high. ​“Our main con­cern was keep­ing Walt hap­py,” says Nor­man. ​“Since the Old Mae­stro seemed pleased with the way the movie was going, we were delight­ed. We knew we had an enter­tain­ing movie.”

Which brings us to anoth­er big ques­tion: what was Walt Dis­ney real­ly like? ​“That’s enough to fill an entire book,” Nor­man remarks. ​“I’ve often lec­tured on Walt Disney’s man­age­ment style and his abil­i­ties as a cre­ative leader. Walt demand­ed the best of all those who worked for him. He was a tough sto­ry edi­tor and nev­er sat­is­fied with a job half done. The Old Mae­stro was nev­er gen­er­ous with com­pli­ments – and it was best not to expect any. If you man­aged to sur­vive a sto­ry meet­ing with Walt Dis­ney, you could con­sid­er your­self lucky. Look­ing back at The Jun­gle Book, we now know that Walt’s health was fail­ing at the time. [Dis­ney died of lung can­cer in Decem­ber 1966, 10 months before the film came out.] How­ev­er, he gave no signs of sick­ness and worked with his usu­al vigour.”

So, what are Norman’s feel­ings about how cel ani­ma­tion has large­ly giv­en way to CGI? ​“Anoth­er sub­ject wor­thy of a whole book. I come from the tra­di­tion of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion, and I still con­sid­er the clas­sic Dis­ney ani­mat­ed films to be Disney’s best. While I embrace CGI as a new asset in the film­mak­ers’ tool­box, I do not con­sid­er it the next step in the evo­lu­tion of ani­ma­tion. For me, there is noth­ing old or obso­lete about hand-drawn, tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion, and I eager­ly look for­ward to the day when we can see hand-drawn art back on the big screen. CGI is great in many ways. How­ev­er, the com­put­er and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion can nev­er replace the gift­ed hand of the artist.”

Disney’s The Jun­gle Book is released 15 April. Fol­low Matt Pack­er on Twit­ter @mjpwriter