Walt Disney's Pinocchio 85th Anniversary
In 1940, after two years in production, Walt Disney’s second feature length animated
film,
Pinocchio, was released. At the time of its theatrical debut, Walt had
already earned wide success from his first feature film production Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. But as is the case, the natural question
would be “What is the next feature project for the studio.” It was a conscience
decision from Walt that they should not make a sequel to Snow White because
he was one that refused to rest on his laurels. However, instead he would give
audiences a new story that would feature all the things they could not do
in Snow White and what they learned while making it. During Snow
White’s production in 1937, one of the studio’s top animators, Norm
Ferguson, had brought to Walt’s attention the book, The Adventures of
Pinocchio, which told the story of a living wooden marionette who wanted
to become a real boy.
The
story was first written in 1881 by Carlo Lorenzini, also known as Carlo Collodi.
Collodi was an Italian journalist that later wrote interpretations of classic fairy
tales in the Italian language. This would inspire him to write his own stories
for children to teach didactic,
but important life lessons. The story of Pinocchio first started as a serial for a children’s periodical
before it was later published in book form. The book is an episodic tale about
the adventures of a living puppet that naively ventures out into the world and
learns certain morals that in turn teach the child reader the importance of
work, study, and to be good. The first movie adaptation was a silent Italian live-action
film from 1911. In 1936, an Italian animated feature adaptation was attempted
but due to technical problems, the project was put on hold and never finished.
What the original Collodi tale represented
to Walt was the chance to make a movie that showed the possibilities of
what can only be achieved in the art of animation at that time. And thus, the
studio started pre-production on Pinocchio in September of 1937, before wrapping
up Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, adapting this book would
prove to be troubled from the start. While Snow White was based on a
short fairy tale that could be expanded upon and tinkered with to shape a
suitable film narrative, Pinocchio was based on a book that was a more fixed
story. Also, Walt’s story team was a little too overconfident after Snow White
and jumped right into the project. But after six months of developing the
film, Walt was disappointed with the early work. The issue Walt had was the
fact that the Pinocchio character in the Collodi story was a mischievous and
brash troublemaker that had to learn his lessons the hard way. Early on, the
artists thought of using ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's dummy character Charlie
McCarthy, who was also a smart aleck child, as an inspiration for Pinocchio’s
personality. But after Walt looked at the animation tests done for the
character in his early design, he immediately knew audiences were not
going to sympathize with him and he put the project on pause. After two
unsuccessful attempts to rework the film, one of the studio’s young animators,
Milt Kahl, took on the task of retooling the Pinocchio character. He saw and
was critical that the initial designs the other animators drew focus too much
on the fact that the character was a puppet. What he did was redesign a Pinocchio
that did not look too much like a puppet and that instead looked more as a
normal child with a few needed puppet features. After Milt finished an
animation test of the new design, Walt was pleased, and production was allowed
to continue in September of 1938. Then it was decided to change
the character’s personality. Instead of being an unruly rascal as he is in
the book, the Disney artist made him into an innocent and naïve kid that, throughout
the story, learns to develop a conscience. At the same time, they came up
with the idea of using the character of the Talking Cricket. In the book, the
cricket appears early but then Pinocchio smashes him with a mallet because he was
nagging morals and in later chapters reappears as a ghost. But Walt and the
story crew saw other possibilities for the character. Since Walt believed there
was not enough friendship in the story and the lead character was too naïve to
solely carry the film, it was decided to make the cricket character, now named
Jiminy Cricket, into the conscience and sidekick that tries to help Pinocchio
to make the right decisions. Plus, this would give the character an arc where
he learns to accept responsibility after unexpectedly taking on the role of Pinocchio’s
conscience at the start of the story. With that, the character of Jiminy
Cricket would become the heart of the film and the thing that held it
together.
For this film, Walt thought it should star
more experienced actors to be the voice of the characters. So, they were able to
assemble a team of celebrity voices that had been known to audiences from
their work on radio, stage, and film. The most well-known and famous of
them was the singer Cliff Edwards, who was cast as the voice of Jiminy Cricket.
Edwards first started his career in Vaudeville in 1918 and soon became a wildly
known actor and singer. In 1929, Edwards would star in one of the first sound
films and in 1933 he was featured in a total of 33 movies for MGM. To voice the
lead character of Pinocchio, they brought in child star Dicky Jones after it
was decided to use a real kid actor instead of an adult actor. Jones was an
experienced child actor that before was featured in two movies starring James
Stewart. What he brought to Pinocchio was an innocence and charm that made the
character come to life. Another well-known actor featured in the film was the
voice of Honest John the fox, Walter Catlett. Catlett was first a stage actor
that also starred in classic films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
and later Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). He also provided the live-action
reference for the animators to study. A fascinating behind the scenes story was
that the voice of most of the Warner Bros. cartoon characters, Mel Blanc, was
brought in to perform the voice Honest John’s cat sidekick, Gideon. But they
soon chose to make Gideon a mute character and thus, all of Blanc’s recorded lines
were cut except for three hiccups. While the rest of the cast weren’t as famous
as Cliff Edwards, they were still familiar with the audience of the time and
brought their unique caliber to their respective characters. A particular
casting that was helpful for the film was the lesser known but familiar character
actor, Christian Rub as Geppetto, the woodcarver. The character designers had
trouble settling on how the character should look and the initial designs
resembled a taller version of Doc from Snow White. But after Rub was
cast, the design was made into a caricature of the actor, and he too would
perform the live action reference for the animators.
An innovation the film pioneered was the
use of small sculpture models called maquettes which is still in use to this day
for animation. This idea was the invention of classic Disney artist and writer,
Joe Grant. The process is after the design of the characters are finalized; it
would be sent to a model maker to sculp a miniature clay model that would be
passed to the animators to use as reference to see how the character was to be
drawn at every different angle. Other different models were created for the
production. One was a real working marionette of Pinocchio that was created by professional
puppeteer, Bob Jones. Models of the cuckoo clocks were also made into working
models as reference. A neat trick that was done was that the models for the different
vehicles in the film, such as Stromboli’s caravan, were built as real working
models that were filmed using a stop-motion camera and the footage would be
double exposed and then inked and painted on animation cels seen in the
finished film.
The
music for the film would also become a crucial element. The songs were written
by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington, and the score was by Harline and Paul
Smith. As they learned in Snow White, the songs need to be necessary to
move the story forward instead of stopping the plot to sing a song. For example,
when Honest John sings Hi Diddle Dee and its reprise, he tells Pinocchio
of the fantastic things he will experience that is to mask the fact that he’s
leading the naïve puppet to something that turns out to be bad so the scam artist
fox could earn money. But the one tune from the film audience still remembers
most is the opening song, When You Wish Upon a Star. What’s amazing is
that the idea for the song was to introduce the idea of the wishing star since Geppetto
would wish upon it at the start of the story. But the song would soon become
the official anthem for all Disney.
The film would become bigger and more
elaborate than Snow White with aspects such as the then new special
effects tactics, the distinct art direction from artist Gustaf Tenggren, and
the overall animation because the one thing Walt wanted to get out of this was
perfection. But as they learned while making Snow White, they knew the
most important aspect of the film was the excellent story and rich characters
that matched the technical and artistic perfection. An interesting side to the
film that is still talked about decades later is the dark tone. It was partly
because the original book was also dark, and it is to let the audience see what
terrible things could happen to those that do not follow the rules and cannot
tell right from wrong. While Snow White featured dark content in the
story, this was more intense because the lead character is a child that meets
characters that do not bear any good will to the puppet and his life and future
is threatened throughout the story. But Walt Disney believed that the darkness
helps the viewer appreciate the lighter part of the film and everything turns
out all right in the end.
Pinocchio premiered in New York City on February 7th,
1940, to universal acclaim. The film was more expensive than Snow White
and, unfortunately, the film was not a financial success. The primary reason
was because, in 1939, which was the last year of the movie’s production, the
Nazis marched into Poland to take over the U.S.S.R, thus causing World War II. Because
of that, the film could not be released overseas in Europe, which was a big
source of income for the studio. Joe Grant often said that the box-office
failure of Pinocchio made Walt very depressed. However, a glimmer
of hope showed up during the award season. Pinocchio would end up
winning the Academy Award for both Best Original Score and Best Song for When
You Wish Upon a Star, making it the first animated feature film to win
a competitive Oscar. After Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket would star in
another Disney movie called Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and would continue
to be featured in several Disney productions such as Mickey’s Christmas
Carol in 1983. His voice, Cliff Edwards would later star as the voice of
Dandy Crow in Dumbo (1941) and would continue voicing Jiminy Cricket
until his death in 1971. The little kitten that was invented for the film,
Figaro, proved to be popular with audiences that he would also star in his own series
of cartoons. In these, he would appear as Minnie Mouse’s pet cat, and he was
also teamed up with Pluto in other cartoons.
After the war ended, the film would
eventually make a profit through its theatrical re-releases and later video
sales. Today, Pinocchio is often recognized as the pinnacle of the
golden era of Disney animation because of the level of perfection that was put
into the film in terms of the story, the characters, the music, and the technical
merits that were solely achieved by the magic of Disney. In 1994, the animated classic was inducted into the United States
Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
The
film would also influence modern award-winning filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro,
to create his own animated feature adaptation of the Pinocchio story
that was released in 2022 that also earned critical acclaim and won several
awards, including the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. But what Walt
Disney’s once in lifetime masterpiece proves conclusively is the limitless potential
in a work of art.
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