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'''Pinocchio''' is the second animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney and was originally released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on February 7, 1940. Based on the book ''Pinocchio: Tale of a Puppet'' by Carlo Collodi, it was made in response to the enormous success of ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs''. The plot of the film involves a wooden puppet being brought to life by a blue fairy, who tells him he can become a real boy if he proves himself "brave, truthful, and unselfish". Thus begins the puppet's adventures to become a real boy, which involves many an encounter with a host of unsavory characters.
The film was adapted by Aurelius Battaglia, William Cottrell, Otto Englander, Erdman Penner, Joseph Sabo, Ted Sears, and Webb Smith from Collodi's book. The production was supervised by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, and the film's sequences were directed by Norman Ferguson, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, and Bill Roberts.

Contents

Characters

History

Production

Release:Reactions & Criticisms

Re-releases: Theatrical & home video

United States theatrical release history

Worldwide release dates

''Pinocchio'' home video release history

Crew

Animation direction

Songs

Songs in film

Songs written for film but not used

Notes

Trivia

External links

Characters

★ 'Jiminy Cricket', voiced by 'Cliff Edwards'. Jiminy is a cricket who acts as Pinocchio's "conscience" and the partial narrator of the story.

★ 'Pinocchio', voiced by 'Dickie Jones'. Pinocchio is a wooden puppet made by Geppetto and turned into a living puppet by the Blue Fairy.

★ 'Geppetto', voiced by 'Christian Rub'. Geppetto is a toymaker who creates Pinocchio and wishes for him to become a real boy.

★ 'Figaro and Cleo', voiced by 'Mel Blanc'. Geppetto's black and white housecat and goldfish, respectively.

★ 'J. Worthington "Honest John" Foulfellow', voiced by 'Walter Catlett'. Honest John is a sly anthropomorphic fox who tricks Pinocchio twice in the film.

★ 'Gideon' is Honest John's dumb, mute, anthropomorphic feline accomplice. His lone hiccup in the film is supplied by 'Mel Blanc'.

★ 'Stromboli', voiced by 'Charles Judels'. Stromboli is a large, sinister, bearded Italian puppet maker who forces Pinocchio to perform onstage in order to make money.

★ 'The Blue Fairy', voiced by 'Evelyn Venable'. She is the beautiful fairy who brings Pinocchio to life and turns him into a real boy at the end.

★ 'The Coachman', voiced by 'Charles Judels'. A corrupt coachman who owns and operates Pleasure Island.

★ 'Lampwick', voiced by 'Frankie Darro'. Lampwick is a naughty boy Pinocchio meets on his way to Pleasure Island. He turns into a donkey while the boys are hanging out.

★ 'Monstro' is the whale that swallows Geppetto, Figaro, and Cleo during their search for Pinocchio.

History

Production

The plan for the original film was considerably different from what was released. Numerous characters and plot points, many of which came from the original novel, were used in early drafts. Producer Walt Disney was displeased with the work that was being done and called a halt to the project midway into production so that the concept could be rethought and the characters redesigned.
Originally, Pinocchio was to be depicted as a Charlie McCarthy-esque wise guy, equally as rambunctious and sarcastic as the puppet in the original novel. He looked exactly like a real wooden puppet with, among other things, a long pointed nose, a peaked cap, and bare wooden hands. But Walt found that no one could really sympathize with such a character and so the designers had to redesign the puppet as much as possible. Eventually, they revised the puppet to make him look more like a real boy, with, among other things, a child's Tyrolean hat, and regular, 5-fingered hands with Mickey Mouse-type gloves on them. The only parts of him that still looked more or less like a puppet were his arms and legs.
Additionally, it was at this stage that the character of the cricket was expanded. Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards) became central to the story. Originally the cricket wasn't even in the film. Once added, he was depicted as an actual (that is, less anthropomorphized) cricket with toothed legs and waving anntenae. But again Walt wanted someone more likable, so Ward Kimball conjured up "a little man with no ears. That was the only thing about him that was like an insect."
Mel Blanc (most famous for voicing many of the characters in Warner Bros. ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoons), was hired to perform the voice of Gideon the Cat, who was Foulfellow the Fox's sidekick. However, it was eventually decided for Gideon to be mute (just like Dopey, whose whimsical, Harpo Marx-style persona made him one of Snow White's most comic and popular characters). All of Blanc's recorded dialogue in this film was subsequently deleted, save for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the film.
The influential abstract animator Oskar Fischinger contributed to the effects animation of the Blue Fairy's wand.^[1]
Film critic Leonard Maltin would later write that "with ''Pinocchio'', Disney reached not only the height of his powers, but the apex of what many critics consider to be the realm of the animated cartoon."^[2]

Release:Reactions & Criticisms

''Pinocchio'' was not commercially successful when first released, and Disney only recouped about half of its $2.3 million budget, which was due in part to poor timing, with the cut-off of European markets due to World War II. By the time the film was released, the mood of Americans had also darkened, also due to the war. People just weren't as keen on seeing fantasy stories as they were in the days of ''Snow White''.
But there were other reasons why ''Pinocchio'' didn't quite pan out on initial release. One thing that ''Snow White'' had that ''Pinocchio'' didn't was romance. There wasn't anything in the way of "falling-in-love-at-first-sight" in ''Pinocchio'', as there had been in ''Snow White'', which apparently was what people had come to expect of in Disney. To add insult to injury, Paolo Lorenzini, nephew of the original story's author, had beseeched the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture to charge Walt for slander in portraying Pinocchio "so he easily could be mistaken for an American," when it was perfectly obvious that the little puppet was in fact Italian. Nothing had apparently come of the protest.
Nevertheless, there were positive reactions to the movie as well. Archer Winsten, who had criticized ''Snow White'', wrote: "The faults that were in ''Snow White'' no longer exist. In writing of ''Pinocchio'', you are limited only by your own power of expressing enthusiasm." Also, despite the poor timing of the release, the film did do well both critically and at the box office in the United States. Jiminy Cricket's song, "When You Wish Upon a Star," became a major hit and is still identified with the film, and later as a fanfare for The Walt Disney Company itself. ''Pinocchio'' also won the Academy Award for Best Song and the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. In 1994, Pinocchio was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2005, Time.com named it one of the 100 best movies of the last 80 years. Overall, ''Pinocchio'' is considered a true-blue classic today, and many film historians consider this to be the film that most closely approaches technical perfection of all the Disney animated features. Link

Re-releases: Theatrical & home video

With the re-release of ''Snow White'' in 1944 came the tradition of re-releasing Disney films every 7 to 10 years. ''Pinocchio'' has been theatrically re-released in 1947, 1954, 1961, 1968, 1975, 1982, and 1989. The 1989 re-issue was digitally restored by cleaning and removing scratches from the original negatives one frame at a time, eliminating age-old soundtrack distortions, and revitalizing the color. The film also received 2 ''Walt Disney Annimated Classics'' video releases in 1985 and 1990.It also was the 1st DVD in the ''Walt Disney Gold Classics Collection'' in 1999 followed by a 60th Anniversary Special Edition and a Special Edition DVD overseas in 2003. It's currently scheduled to be released on a DVD/Blu-ray disc Platinum Special Edition.

United States theatrical release history

February 7, 1940 (original release)

★ February 9, 1940

★ October 17, 1947

★ February 18, 1954

★ January 18, 1961

★ July 7, 1968

★ December 16, 1975

★ December 21, 1982

★ June 26, 1989

Worldwide release dates

Country	Date
Brazil	February 26, 1940
Argentina	March 13, 1940
U.K.	May 21, 1940
Australia	October 24, 1940
Sweden	February 3, 1941
Canada	October 10, 1941
Eritrea	December 3, 1941
Finland	January 31, 1943
Spain	February 7, 1944
France	May 22, 1946
Belgium, Netherlands	June 13, 1946
Norway	September 5, 1946
Hong Kong	December 19, 1946
Italy	November 5, 1947
Poland	February 7, 1949
Denmark	May 25, 1950
West Germany	March 23, 1951
Austria	April 1, 1952
Japan	May 15, 1952
Philippines	October 7, 1952
Lebanon	March 25, 1967
Saudi Arabia	March 13, 1971
Kuwait	October 6, 1985

''Pinocchio'' home video release history

★ July 16, 1985 (VHS and Beta, Classics edition)

★ March 26, 1993 (VHS and Laserdisc, restored Classics edition)

★ April 16, 1995 (VHS, Spanish-dubbed Clásicos edition)

★ October 26, 2000 (60th Anniversary Edition DVD)

Crew

Animation direction

★ Fred Moore (Lampwick)

★ Frank Thomas (Pinocchio on strings and at the puppet show)

★ Milt Kahl (Pinocchio)

★ Bill Tytla (Stromboli)

★ Ward Kimball (Jiminy Cricket)

★ Art Babbitt (Gepetto)

★ Wolfgang Reitherman (Monstro)

★ Hamilton Luske (Coachman)

Songs

Songs in film

The songs in ''Pinocchio'' were composed by Leigh Harline, Ned Washington and Frank Churchill. Paul J. Smith composed the incidental music score.

★ "When You Wish upon a Star" - Jiminy Cricket; Chorus

★ "Little Wooden Head" - Geppetto

★ "Give a Little Whistle" - Jiminy Cricket; Pinocchio

★ "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life for Me)" - J. Worthington Foulfellow

★ "I've Got No Strings" - Pinocchio

★ "When You Wish upon a Star (reprise)" - Jiminy Cricket; Chorus

Songs written for film but not used

★ "I'm a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow" - Jiminy Cricket (this song eventually showed up in ''Fun and Fancy Free'')

★ "As I Was Saying To the Duchess" - J. Worthington Foulfellow (this line is spoken briefly by Foulfellow in the film, however)

★ "Three Cheers For Anything" - Lampwick; Pinocchio; Alexander; Other Boys

★ "Monstro the Whale" - Chorus

Notes

1. Moritz, William. Fischinger at Disney - or Oskar in the Mousetrap. Millimeter. 5. 2 (1977): 25-28, 65-67. [1]
2. Maltin, Leonard (1973). Pinocchio. In Leonard Maltin (Ed.), The Disney Book, pp. 37. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.

Trivia

★ Lampwick is caricatured after Disney animator Fred Moore.

★ The pool hall at Pleasure Island is in the shape of a giant eight ball with a tall cue-shaped structure standing nearby. This is a takeoff on the Trylon and the Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

★ "When You Wish Upon a Star" was ranked #7 in the American Film Institute's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time, the highest ranking on the list among Disney animated films.

★ Among the debris inside the Model Home (which is open for destruction), a print of Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Mona Lisa" can be seen.

★ When Pinocchio is onboard the coach headed for Pleasure Island, he is holding a playing card showing the Ace of Spades thinking that it is a ticket. The Ace of Spades is a symbol of death.

★ One film reviewer compared Pinocchio's first movements and words to the history of cinematic animation itself: the invention of animation ("I can move!"), the advent of sound film ("I can talk!"), and the limitations of animations of cinema itself, the reminder that it's all an illusion ("I can walk!", followed by a stumble).

★ The Blue Fairy was animated using the rotoscope technique.

★ Pinocchio, Geppetto, and Jiminy Cricket, as well as most of the other ''Pinocchio'' characters, appear as regular guest stars on ''Disney's House of Mouse''. In fact, an entire episode of the show was devoted to Jiminy, in which the little cricket becomes Mickey's conscience.

★ Coincedentally, Pleasure Island is the name of a Walt Disney World attraction. It is a collection of 80s style clubs designed specifically for people over the age of 18. Its name bears no connection to the sinister island from the movie.

★ Monstro the Whale is a playable world in the video games ''Kingdom Hearts'' and ''. Pinocchio is also a story-related character in that Riku tries to make off with his heart and use it for Kairi. Also, Queen Minnie assigns Jiminy Cricket to be the journal writer for Sora's adventures in all three games.

★ There was a video game adaptation of this film for both Sega Genesis and Super NES.

★ In Mad Magazine's parody of the first ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' film, Lampwick makes a two-panel cameo as one of the kids in Shredder's gang. In the former of the two panels, Pinocchio himself also appears, being used as a billiards stick.

★ A dark ride attraction based on the story of Pinocchio can be found at Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland (''Pinocchio's Daring Journey'') and Disneyland Paris (''Les Voyages De Pinocchio'').

★ The film was parodied in several Simpsons episodes. In Itchy & Scratchy Land the segment Itchyocchio parodies Pinocchio and Geppetto. In the episode Krusty Gets Cancelled the ventriloquist's dummy Gabbo is introduced to his audience with a great show featuring several other puppets, similar to the scene when Pinocchio performs "I've Got No Strings". Later in the episode a newspaper headline mentions that Gabbo will have "a real boy" operation.

★ In the Disney movie Aladdin, Genie transforms himself in Pinocchio to illustrate his disbelief over Aladdin's promise that he will grant Genie his wish to be free.

External links

★ Official Site

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