The Jungle Book

Wolfgang Reitherman’s 1967 animation follows Mowgli, the boy the jungle tries to move to the man village once Shere Khan returns. The distance from the source was policy. Walt Disney handed the writer Larry Clemmons a copy of Kipling and told him the first thing he wanted was for him not to read it. Bill Peet’s faithful, darker treatment had already been rejected as too gloomy. The songs took the same filter: Terry Gilkyson wrote a batch, all but one were dropped, and The Bare Necessities took an Academy Award nomination, losing to Talk to the Animals. Casting came first too. Phil Harris was told not to be a bear but to be Phil Harris, and much of Baloo is improvised. Louis Armstrong was considered for King Louie and dropped over the racial optics, so Louis Prima got it. When Mowgli’s first voice broke, Reitherman cast his own eleven year old son Bruce off the sofa at home. The wolf cubs were redrawn from the puppies in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. A good fit if you accept a 78 minute film that spends itself on Harris and the songs, not Kipling’s plotting. Not for you if you want Mowgli’s decision genuinely tested, since the middle is a run of encounters, not a rising story.