Before Julie Andrews was Mary Poppins, she really inspired the design of another Disney character.
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Saying that Walt Disney had a lot to gain Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs it would be an understatement. Not only did he borrow money to complete the film, but he also mortgaged his home to help finance it.
Disney Collection / Courtesy Everett
Obviously, the film was an absolute success. But before its release, most of the Hollywood press thought the film would be a box office bomb (in fact, Walt’s wife, Lillian, thought it would be a bomb too).
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snow White it was the first film to release an accompanying soundtrack.
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But snow White it was not the first time that Disney released music from its films to the public. A few years earlier, in 1933, the 78 rpm record for “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” from The three Little Pigs was a great seller (FTR, it was just a single and not a soundtrack).
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Indeed, The three Little Pigs it was so popular that Disney released many different character products.
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In 1930, a Mickey Mouse writing pad became Disney’s first character merchandise. Walt Disney agreed to license the character to a company in New York (for $ 300) because he needed the money at the time:
Mickey Mouse Writing Tablet: First licensed piece of Disney 1930 merchandise # DisneyArchives50
The tablet’s license to write made the studio realize that it could increase its revenue through merchandise.
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“When You Wish Upon a Star” by Pinocchio, was the first Disney song to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.
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During World War II, 90% of what Walt Disney Studios produced went to the Allied war effort (ie, propaganda films, training films, print campaigns, etc.).
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Cinderella it was the first time that Disney filmed the entire film in live action and then used it as a reference to animate the film.
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Disney in the past had filmed certain scenes for its animated films in live-action (for reference purposes for animators). But he chose to do this for Cinderella because they didn’t just want the characters to move as humanly as possible, but also because it would help cut costs, since it would be the model for exactly how the final product should look.
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The narrator for Cinderella – whose voice you hear at the beginning of the film – is the voice actress Betty Lou Gerson, who also did the voice of Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians.
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Lady Tremaine and Maleficent are voiced by the same actor: Eleanor Audley.
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Eleanor Audley is also the voice of Madame Leota on the tour of the Haunted Mansion.
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Eleanor is the voice, but not the face you see in the crystal ball – this is Imagineer Leota Toombs Thomas.
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The Haunted Mansion has the distinction of being located on different terrain in each Disney park that owns it.
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At Disneyland, the attraction is located in New Orleans Square; at Magic Kingdom, it is on Liberty Square; in Tokyo Disneyland, it is located in Fantasyland; while at Disneyland Paris, it is located at Frontierland.
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Sleeping Beauty it took too long to do. It went into production for the first time in 1951 and was not released in theaters until 1959.
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Allegedly, one of the reasons he was in production for so long was because Walt Disney was distracted, since he was building Disneyland at the same time.
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Anita’s design in 101 Dalmatians it was partially based on Julie Andrews.
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At the time, Julie was famous for playing Eliza Doolittle on Broadway in My beautiful lady.
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According to Jeffery Sherman, son of Robert Sherman (of the famous Sherman brothers), he inspired the Mary Poppins “A Spoonful of Sugar”, after telling his father that he had taken the polio vaccine in a sugar cube.
When I was a child, we received the polio vaccine. My father, working at Mary Poppins, asked how my day went. I told him about the vaccine. “Did not hurt? I said they put it in a sugar cube and you ate it. He called my uncle Dick and the next day they wrote “A Spoonful of Sugar”. (1 of 2)
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Dick Van Dyke’s notorious Cockney accent was partly to blame for his Irish vocal coach Pat O’Malley, who, according to him, “didn’t have a better accent than I did”.
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Julie Andrews was not the first person to play Mary Poppins on the screen. It was Mary Wickes, who played the character in 1949 in an hour-long TV adaptation that was part of the CBS program. Studio One Series.
Bernard Hoffman / The LIFE Picture Collection via
So, yes, technically Disney was not the first to adapt Mary Poppins to the screen.
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Coincidentally, Mary Wikes has a role in another classic Disney film – she played Sister Mary Lazarus on Sister Act movies.
Disney Collection / Courtesy Everett
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Disney wanted the Beatles to be the vultures in The Jungle Book, but they refused. Allegedly, John Lennon was the one who didn’t like the idea and refused to be part of it.
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Jon Favreau (who directed the live-action adaptation) tried to honor this by trying to make Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr appear as vultures in the 2016 film, but said he was unable to contact them.
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Disneyland’s King Arthur Carousel is older than the park itself. It was built in 1922 for the Sunnyside Beach Park in Toronto.
Peter Bischoff / Getty Images
Although, when Walt won the carousel, he featured animals other than horses (like deer and giraffes). So, they had to locate more horses to fill the carousel.
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The Enchanted Tiki Room (opened in 1963) was the first Disneyland attraction to have air conditioning.
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They needed to install an air conditioning system to keep the computer system running cold.
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The black hole was the first Disney film to receive a PG rating.
Buena Vista photos / courtesy of the Everett collection
According to the director of the film, Gary Nelson, they tried hard not to get the G rating.
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Early in the development of The Little Mermaid, Joan Collins and Bea Arthur were approached to give Ursula a voice.
Walt Disney Television via Getty Images / Disney / Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
The film’s directors and writers, Ron Clements and John Musker, imagined Bea on paper and approached her agent, who rejected him after seeing the character’s description as having a “Bea Arthur-like low voice” and got angry because they would think of his customer like a witch.
Howard Ashman, who besides writing the lyrics for the film was also a producer, was a fan of Dynasty and imagined Ursula as a glamorous character like Alexis Carrington. However, Joan was reportedly prevented from even auditioning by her boss Aaron Spelling, who thought it would ruin her credibility as an actress to voice a cartoon character.
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The ballroom scene in Beautiful and the Beast features a unique golden and blue color scheme – which was chosen because these colors represent Belle.
Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Belle was in blue at the beginning of the film because she is cooler and more reserved, the golden dress represents that she is now warmer and is no longer the same person she was at the beginning of the film.
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The version of “Beauty and the Beast” that Mrs. Potts sings in the film was the first time that Angela Lansbury sang.
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What is most surprising is that she had stayed up all night the night before and actually hardly recorded it – she was on a flight to go to the recording in New York, when a bomb threat was called on the plane in that she was in. They were forced to make an emergency landing and had to wait hours before they could take off again. But she went into the studio and played outside the park.
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