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Before Julie Andrews became Mary Poppins, she actually inspired the design of another Disney character.
1.
To say that Walt Disney had a lot to do Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be an understatement. Not only had he borrowed the money to complete the movie, he also mortgaged his house to help finance it.
Disney / courtesy Everett Collection
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 bomb, too).
2.
White as snow was the first film to release an original soundtrack.
3.
But White as snow This was not the first time that Disney has 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?” of The three little pigs was a big seller (FTR, it was just a single and not a soundtrack).
Disney
In reality, The three little pigs was so popular that Disney released many different merchandise of the characters.
4.
In 1930, a Mickey Mouse writing tablet became Disney’s first character merchandise. Walt Disney agreed to sell the character to a New York company (for $ 300) because he needed the money at the time:
Mickey Mouse Writing Tablet First Licensed Piece of 1930 Disney Character Merchandise # DisneyArchives50
The license of the writing tablet made the studio realize that it could increase its income with the merchandise.
5.
“When you want a star”, from Pinocchio, was the first Disney song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song.
6.
During WWII, 90% of what Walt Disney Studios produced was for the Allied war effort (i.e. propaganda films, training films, print campaigns, etc.) .
Bilderwelt Gallery / Getty Images, Lmpc / Getty Images
seven.
Cinderella It was the first time that Disney had first shot the entire movie in live-action, then used it as a reference to animate the movie.
LMPC / Getty Images
In the past, Disney had shot some scenes for its live-action animated films (for animator reference purposes). But he chose to do it for Cinderella because they not only wanted the characters to move as humanly as possible, but also because it would help keep costs down as it would be the model for exactly what the finished product should look like.
8.
The narrator for Cinderella – whose voice you hear at the start of the film – is voice actor Betty Lou Gerson, who was also the voice of Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians.
9.
Lady Tremaine and Maleficent are both voiced by the same actor: Eleanor Audley.
ten.
Eleanor Audley is also the voice of Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion ride.
Disney
Eleanor is the voice, but not the face you see in the crystal ball – it’s Imagineer Leota Toombs Thomas.
11.
The haunted mansion has the distinction of being placed in a different country in each Disney park that owns it.
Disney / disneyworld.disney.go.com
At Disneyland, the attraction is located in New Orleans Square; at the Magic Kingdom, it’s on Liberty Square; in Tokyo Disneyland, it is located in Fantasyland; while at Disneyland Paris, it is located at Frontierland.
12.
The Sleeping Beauty took a long time to do. It first entered production in 1951 and did not hit theaters until 1959.
Disney / courtesy Everett Collection
Apparently, one of the reasons it had been in production for so long was that Walt Disney was distracted, because he was building Disneyland at the same time.
13.
Anita’s design in 101 Dalmatians was based in part on Julie Andrews.
Disney
At the time, Julie was famous for playing Eliza Doolittle on Broadway in My beautiful lady.
14.
According to Jeffery Sherman, son of Robert Sherman (of the famous Sherman Brothers), he inspired the Mary poppins song “A Spoonful of Sugar” after telling his father that he received his polio vaccine on a lump of sugar.
When I was a child, we got the polio vaccine. My dad, working on Mary Poppins, asked me how my day was. I told him about the vaccine. “It does not hurt? I said they put it on a lump of sugar and you ate it. He called my Uncle Dick and the next day they wrote “A spoonful of sugar”. (1 out of 2)
15.
Dick Van Dyke’s notorious Cockney accent was partly to blame on his Irish vocal trainer Pat O’Malley, who he said “didn’t make an accent any better than I did.”
16.
Julie Andrews wasn’t the first person to play Mary Poppins onscreen. It was Mary Wickes, who played the character in 1949 in an hour-long television adaptation that was part of CBS. Studio one series.
Bernard Hoffman / The LIFE Picture Collection via
So yeah, technically Disney wasn’t the first to adapt Mary poppins for the screen.
17.
Coincidentally, Mary Wikes has a role in another classic Disney film – she played Sister Mary Lazarus in the Sister Act movies.
Disney / courtesy Everett Collection
18.
Disney wanted to bring in the Beatles as vultures The jungle Book, but they refused them. Apparently John Lennon was the one who didn’t like the idea and refused to be a part of it.
Disney
Jon Favreau (who directed the live-action adaptation) attempted to pay homage to 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.
19.
Disneyland’s King Arthur Carousel is older than the park itself. It was built in 1922 for Sunnyside Beach Park in Toronto.
Peter Bischoff / Getty Images
However, when Walt first got the carousel, it featured other animals besides horses (like deer and giraffes). So they had to locate more horses to fill the carousel.
20.
The Enchanted Tiki Room (which opened in 1963) was Disneyland’s first attraction to have air conditioning.
Jeff Gritchen / Digital First Media / Orange County Register via Getty Images
They had to install an air conditioning system to keep the computer system that ran it cool.
21.
The black hole was the first Disney film to receive a PG rating.
Buena Vista Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection
According to the director of the film, Gary Nelson, they went out of their way not to get a G rating.
22.
At the start of the development of The little Mermaid, Joan Collins and Bea Arthur were approached to voice Ursula.
Walt Disney Television via Getty Images / Disney / Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
The film’s writer-directors Ron Clements and John Musker envisioned Bea in the role and approached his agent, who dismissed him after seeing the character’s description as having a “Bea Arthur-type basso voice” and was angry that they thought of their client as a witch.
Howard Ashman, who in addition to writing the film’s lyrics was also a producer, was a fan of Dynasty and envisioned Ursula as a glamorous Alexis Carrington type character. However, Joan was reportedly prevented from even auditioning by her boss Aaron Spelling, who believed it would ruin his credibility as an actor to voice a cartoon character.
23.
The ballroom scene The beauty and the Beast features a uniquely gold and blue color scheme – which was chosen because those colors represent Belle.
Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Belle was in blue at the start of the film because she is cooler and reserved, the gold dress represents that she is now hotter and not the same person she was when the film started.
24.
The version of “Beauty and the Beast” that Mrs. Potts sings in the film was the very first take Angela Lansbury sung.
Disney
What is more surprising is that she had been up all night the night before and in fact hardly checked in – she had taken a flight to check in in New York, when a bomb threat was called on the plane she was on. sure. They were forced to make an emergency landing and had to wait hours before they could take off again. But she entered the studio and took him out of the park.
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