The One That Didn’t Want Us to Grow Up
After the disappointing reception to Alice In Wonderland, Disney was back on the hunt for a critical and commercial hit. Luckily for Walt, the answer lay in a film based on a book that had been absorbed in his brain since he was a kid in Marceline, Missouri, where he saw a travelling production of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan/the Boy Who Never Grew Up and he was hooked immediately…. no pun intended. And years later, he played the part himself in a high school production and srongly identified with the perpetual youth of the character. When someone askd him about it years later, he stated “no actor ever identified with the part he was playing more than I”. Appropriate, when you consider that the man never actually DID grow up.
So, Walt wanted to make this film from the get go. As far back as 1935, he expressed a desire, nay, a LONGING, to make a film based on J.M. Barrie’s play, in fact he wanted it to be the second film he made, right after Snow White. As fate would have it, he was forced to wait EIGHTEEN YEARS to make it, mainly because of rights issues. So, when Barrie died in 1937, he left the rights to the play and the subsequent book to the Great Ormond St. Hospital in London. Barrie had worked with Paramount to produce a silent movie adaptation in 1924 and they still held the film rights. So, Ormond St. suggested that Disney work with Paramount on an animated movie, but Walt declined. However, in 1939, he finally got his hands on the animation rights and production on the adaptation started immediately.
At this point, the studio was already drowning in animated projects; Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi were already well under way. And whle an early reel of Peter Pan using concept art had already been used, Walt couldn’t spare anyone to work on it, because everyone was already working on everything else. It wouldn’t be until 1949 that production on Pan would restart with early 1953 as the intended release date.
THE STORY
The Darling children, of Bloomsbury, London, have been weened on the stories of Peter Pan, the boy with no shadow who never grew up. Wendy, John and Michael, believe that Pan is a real person and make him the hero of all their nursery games, with Wendy being the primary story teller. Our story begins on Wendy’s last night in the nursery, because her father believes it’s time for her to grow up, and stop stuffing the boys’ heads with a lot of silly stories, as he sees them. Later that night, Peter himself flies through their window and hunts the house for his missing shadow. Once he finds it, he takes the three kids to Neverland, where they meet with (outdated) Indians, get in arguments with mermaids, and of course, fight with pirates, led by the notorious Captain Hook, who has a big score to settle with Pan, because let’s just say, Hook didn’t always have a hook.
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So, this film was a passion project, first and foremost, so Walt wanted it done right. But he felt animation tech hadn’t sufficiently progressed to produce the sequences he wanted; nor that the animators were even skilled enough to do it, since it had been five years since the last full length film they worked on.
Working from the concept artwork of the great Mary Blair, the Nine Old Men were reassembled to work on the animation for Pan; which would be the last collaborative effort for the entire gang, with those geniuses staying at Disney for decades to come, but they would never all work on one film together again. And for the voice actors, Walt brought in some past collaborators, Bill Thompson, Kathryn Beaumont and Bobby Driscoll, though in Bobby’s case, it was to be for the last time; because he never worked for Disney again after that.
As with previous films, live - action references were utilised again, though in this case, the voice actors themselves were the references, with Driscoll, Beaumont and Hans Conreid, who voiced Captain Hook. Margaret Kerry served as reference for the hot headed and jealous fairy, Tinker Bell, by acting with oversized props to actively reference the character’s scale.
In the pre production stage in the 40s, Disney Legend Frank Churchill wrote several songs, but only one survived once production restarted in ’49, and it’s one that didn’t even make it into the film. Instead Broadway composers Sammy Fain and Sammy Cahn were brought in to write the soundtrack and Oliver Wallace provided the score. The guys originally wrote the melody for “Second Star to the Right” for Alice in Wonderland, but reworked it for Pan. It ended up not mattering much, though, since the songs and score failed to get Oscar nominations.
Pan opened in February ’53 to mostly positive reviews, though some took issue with the liberties taken with the original work. While it’s now a cherished Disney property, the once again comically outdated depiction of Native Americans make the film as a whole suffer. The exaggerated designs play on racist stereotypes and the Chief is played as a huge sexist, to say nothing of the fact that he’s voiced by a white guy.
As with all now - outdated cultural depictions, it’s easy, and perhaps best, to accept these depictions as products of the time. US Natives were still in their own civil rights movement at the time and it would take them another year to achieve anything from it. However, in later years, Old Man Marc Davis would state his personal embarrassment and regret over such depictions in his work, so it’s nice to see someone holding themselves accountable for the baffling decision to continue the use of such stereotypes in this adaptation.
MY VERDICT
So, just like in the book, and just like Ichabod Crane before him, Peter Pan is a very unlikeable character; he treats both females in his circle terribly, and more offten than not, comes across as a petulant child. Thus, he’s hard to connect with, which is a big problem, since he’s the main character.
Regardless, the animation is very pretty; the gorgeous, iconic flight over London is, with good reason, one of the most famous scenes in Disney history and Pan’s fight against Hook, to those who don’t know it off by heart like I do, is exhilarating. Hook is not scary, in fact he’s one of Disney’s funnier villains, but his design is incredible. Most of the songs are classics and Tinker Bell has become a kind of secondary Disney mascot, making this film one of the most successful achievements in the studio’s legacy.
Is Peter Pan a Disney Classic? It’s not one of my favourites by any means, but it’s cultural impact is obvious. Making it a definite contender for the title of Disney Classic.
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