MORRISON MONDAYS!
By BILL MORRISON
Back in the late 1980s when Disney Animation was entering a period of renaissance with films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Oliver & Company, and The Little Mermaid, the studio was also re-releasing many of its classic animated films into movie theaters.
I was very fortunate to have been working at the Willardson and Associates illustration studio in Glendale, California, in 1987, when the assignment to create a poster image for the re-release of Disney’s Cinderella fell to me. I painted two posters for Cinderella, an advance teaser that featured only the mice, and a release poster that had all the main characters. Disney liked my work, and thus began a long string of movie posters for the House of Mouse that included their new films as well as several classics.
One of those timeless animated masterpieces was The Jungle Book, which came out 58 years ago this past Saturday. The Jungle Book was the first animated film released by the studio after Walt Disney’s death on December 15, 1966, and marked the end of a 30-year run that began with the animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.
Walt Disney took an active role in the making of the film, working on many aspects of production including casting, music, and story development. One problem faced by the story department was how to get Mowgli to leave the jungle at the end of the film and go to the Man Village. Walt went back to the original stories by Rudyard Kipling and found that there was a girl from the village that Mowgli fell in love with, and she was one of the reasons that Mowgli left the jungle. That solution stuck, and they created Shanti, whom Mowgli follows into the Man Village to close the film.
My friend and Disney legend, Floyd Norman, worked on The Jungle Book as a young animator, and I recently acquired a watercolor sketch of Shanti that Floyd did while the film was still in production. Floyd wrote to me about the piece, saying “Directing Animator Ollie Johnston had completed the beautiful animation at the end of the movie. My storyboard partner, Vance Gerry, and I were the only storyboard artists who enjoyed using watercolors.
“I think Vance did a sketch, and this was the finished watercolor sketch I did of the little girl,” he recalled. “I have such wonderful memories about this particular Disney film. I guess you can regard this sketch as something unique since it was Walt Disney himself who gave us the ending of the movie.”
Floyd humbly added, “I’m glad you like my sketch, although I was simply following the design of one of the Disney Masters, Ollie Johnston.”
Floyd’s drawing of little Shanti and his remembrance of working on The Jungle Book gave me a renewed appreciation for the film. This past weekend I celebrated the anniversary of its first public screening at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on October 18, 1967, feeling very blessed to have played a small part in the history of such a beloved and beautiful animated classic.
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NOTE From DAN: The Jungle Book is my fave Disney, other than Fantasia, and reading this gave me the fuzzies. Thanks, Bill!
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Want more MORRISON MONDAYS? Come back next week! Want a commission? See below!
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MORE
— BILL MORRISON’s Golden Age CATWOMAN Is Utterly Breathtaking. Click here.
— When HOWARD CHAYKIN Did THE SIMPSONS — Yes, HOWARD CHAYKIN. Click here.
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Eisner winner BILL MORRISON has been working in comics and publishing since 1993 when he co-founded Bongo Entertainment with Matt Groening, Cindy Vance and Steve Vance. At Bongo, and later as Executive Editor of Mad Magazine, he parodied the comics images he loved as a kid every chance he got. Not much has changed.
Bill is on Instagram (@atomicbattery) and Facebook (Bill Morrison/Atomic Battery Studios), and regularly takes commissions and sells published art through 4C Comics.
