Trivia for
The Jungle Book (1967) More at IMDbPro »

• The last film personally overseen by Walt Disney.
  
  
• Phil Harris, the voice of Baloo the bear in Disney's "The Jungle Book," also played the voice of a bear in another Disney film: he was Little John in Robin Hood (1973).
  
  
• Baloo means bear in Hindi.
  
  
• 'Shere' as in Shere Khan means Tiger in Persian.
  
  
• 'Shere' as in Shere Khan means Tiger in Hindi.
  
  
• Bagheera means panther in Hindi.
  
  
• Hathi in 'Colonel Hathi' means elephant in Hindi.
  
  
• This film was the last performance for actress Verna Felton who died the day before Walt Disney himself died.
  
  
• A scene with a near-sighted, short-tempered rhinoceros named Rocky, who would encounter Baloo and Mowgli after the fall of King Louie's palace, was cut out of the script after Walt Disney figured that two comic scenes back-to-back was poor movie-making. Rocky was to be voiced by Frank Fontaine, who recorded his lines, and animation went as far as detailed storyboards.
  
  
• Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman were hired as songwriters after Terry Gilkyson wouldn't distance himself from the "darker" side of The Jungle Book. His song "The Bare Necessities" was included in the film, and was the only song from the film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Two other songs written for the film (by Gilkyson) can be heard on the soundtrack CD: "Brothers All" and "The Song of the Seeonee."
  
  
• Came seventh in the UK's Ultimate Film, in which films were placed in order of how many seats they sold at cinemas
  
  
• Walt Disney told his animation crew to "throw away" Rudyard Kipling's book, "The Jungle Book" because the original concept storyboards were too dark and dramatic. During pre-production, Disney assigned animator Larry Clemmons to head story development on the project. He gave Clemmons a copy of "The Jungle Book," and told him, "The first thing I want you to do is not read it."
  
  
• According to Elsie Kipling Baimbridge, Rudyard Kipling's daughter, "Mowgli" is pronounced "MAU-glee", not "MOH-glee". She reportedly never forgave Walt Disney for the gaffe.
  
  
• Darleen Carr who played the voice of The Girl (Shanti) is the younger sister of The Sound of Music (1965) actress Charmian Carr (Liesl von Trapp).
  
  
• The xerographic system, which had been used since One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), was further refined to combine both Xeroxed cels with hand inked details. For example, while the basic animation on the village girl at the end of the movie was with Xeroxed cels, her mouth was inked by hand. The backgrounds also moved back towards the more traditional look of earlier films.
  
  
• The Vultures were originally going to be voiced by The Beatles. The band's manager, Brian Epstein, approached the Disney studios about having The Beatles appear in the film, and Disney had his animators create the Vultures specifically to be voiced by the band. But when Epstein took the idea to the Beatles, John Lennon vetoed the idea, and told Epstein to tell Disney he should hire Elvis Presley instead. The look of The Vultures, with their mop-top haircuts and Liverpool voices, are a homage to The Beatles.
  
  
• This was the last film that Darleen Carr made at the Disney studios. She stopped working at the Disney studio's when Walt Disney died in 1966.
  
  
• Walt Disney died during production of this film. Many people wondered at what the studio's fate would be, particularly the animation division. The film performed extremely well at the box office, ensuring that the animators would not be put out of work. Had the film failed, it is likely that animation would have been closed down at the Disney studio.
  
  
• Voted number 19 in Channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"
  
  
• When Mowgli is tackled by his pack-mates and enthusiastically welcomed home, these key frames were lifted from The Sword in the Stone (1963) when Wart/Arthur is welcomed home by the keep dogs.
  
  
• Kaa's song "Trust in me" was originally written for Mary Poppins (1964) as "Land of sand" but not used.
  
  
• The laughing heard from King Louie when he is tickled by Baloo was originally used in Song of the South (1946) as Brer Rabbit's laughing heard during the Laughing Place sequence.
  
  
• All of the 'scatting' in the film was improvised by 'Phil Harris' and Louis Prima.
  
  
• The Vultures song "That's What Friends Are For" was originally written with Beatles-style beat, but Disney insisted it was changed, so as not to date it to the Sixties. It was rewritten as a barbershop quartet, to make it timeless.
  
  
• Her role as Winifred the Elephant (Colonel Hathi's mate) was the last film role for Verna Felton, before her death in December 1966. Her first role in an animated Disney film was also that of an elephant: she was The Elephant Matriarch in Dumbo (1941).
  
  
• Winifred (Colonel Hathi's mate) is the only female animal to have any dialogue throughout the entire film, as though Raksha (the Mother Wolf) briefly appears at the beginning, she never actually speaks.
  
  
• The 19th animated feature in Disney animated features canon, and the last to be personally supervised by Walt Disney, himself.
  
  
• The first Disney film to be released after Walt Disney's death in 1966, just prior to the film's theatrical release.
  
  
• Just after Mowgli runs away and Bagheera is trying to convince Col. Hati to look for him, Hati's wife Winifred announces if they don't help find him, she will take command of the herd. Hati is outraged at the thought of a female leading. The joke is that elephants herds are led by a matriarch (female), while adult males generally live alone. As the only apparent female in the herd, Winifred should be leading by default.
  
  
• When Gregory Peck was the President of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Science, he tried his hardest to get a full-length animated feature film (most notably the The Jungle Book (1967)) not only nominated for Best Picture Academy Award but actually win the award. He resigned as President in 1970 when other members didn't agree with him about animated films being nominated for the award.
  
  
• Kaa the snake is a completely different character in the film than he is in the original book. In the book, he is a friend and advisor of Mowgli, and the one who rescues him from the monkeys. In the film, he is a villain bent on eating Mowgli.
  
  
• Many cultural scholars (including Edward Schiappa and Susan Miller & Greg Rode) have singled out the King Louie character as a particularly offensive racial stereotype (especially given the political and civil rights climates in America during the time The Jungle Book (1967) was released).
  
  

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