The Rescuers
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The Rescuers is the twenty-third film in the Disney animated features canon. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions, and first released on June 22, 1977 by Buena Vista Distribution. The film is about a society of mice, called the Rescue Aid Society (RAS), headquartered in New York and shadowing the United Nations, who go about doing good deeds in the world at large. Two of these mice, a hesitant and very New York-sounding Bernard (Bob Newhart) and the elegant, Hungarian-sounding Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor), set about rescuing Penny, a kidnapped girl, with the help of a comical albatross and the various animal inhabitants of the bayou where Penny is being held.
The film was inspired by a series of children's novels by Margery Sharp.
The characters
- Bernard: He is a New York-sounding mouse that has one job: janitor. He is quiet, hesitant and is the most superstitious of the gang as he suffers from Triskaidekaphobia (13 steps on the ladder, Flight 13, 13 steps on the stairs, Friday the 13th), and hates flying. However, when the situation demands it, he is resourceful and courageous.
- Miss Bianca: She is an adventurous Hungarian-sounding mouse. She loves Bernard, and sometimes uses a little humor in problems.
- Madame Medusa: She is a villainess and only cares about The Devil's Eye, an enormous diamond. She has two pet alligators: Nero and Brutus.
- Penny: She is a small orphan girl, abducted by Madame Medusa because she's small enough to fit into the hiding place of The Devil's Eye and retrieve it. She has a beloved teddy bear, which Madame Medusa uses at one point as a new hiding place for the diamond.
- Mr. Snoops: He's Madame Medusa's partner. He is also greedy and hates Penny. His character is based on animation historian John Culhane, who was constantly snooping around the studio at the time the film was made, hence the character's name.
The sequel
There is a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under (1990), set in the Australian Outback in which Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor reprised their roles from the first film. John Candy took the late Jim Jordan's place in the comical albatross role.Re-releases
In December 1983, The Rescuers was re-released with the new Mickey Mouse short, Mickey's Christmas Carol. It was also re-released in the summer of 1989, due to The Rescuers Down Under being released in 1990. The VHS and laserdisc versions of The Rescuers weren't released until 1992, when it was released on those formats in the Walt Disney Classics collection. The 1992 Feature Presentation logo spotted on this particular video release of the movie had a navy blue and black gradient background instead of its usual lilac blue gradient background. The theme music for the Classics logo was also electronically muffled, like all other Disney Classic releases afterward. It was re-released in 1999 as part of the Masterpiece Collection, but was recalled due to a photographic image of a topless woman in the background of New York when they are flying on Orville, the albatross, as mentioned in the following section.
Topless woman controversy
Some prints of the film contain an image (it appears to be a Renaissance painting) of a topless woman hidden in the background of one scene. When the mice are flying over the city, a topless woman is seen very quickly in a window, in just two frames. In 1992, however, the movie was released on video, but didn't have the picture of the topless woman because it was made from a different movie cut.
On January 5, 1999, Disney re-released The Rescuers on video, but complete with the photograph of the topless woman. Disney quickly found it, and on January 8, 1999, they recalled the video tape and laserdisc, and on March 1999, they re-released it with the edited scene. In 2003, Disney released the film on DVD with the edited scene.
The Disney reprints
In 1976, Disney re-printed Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp and it showed a Eva Gabor look-alike Miss Bianca, and a Bob Newhart look-alike Bernard. Disney later recalled the books, and redesigned Miss Bianca and Bernard due to kids having nightmares about the humanistic mice.
Trivia
- This film was the last project for John Lounsberry, one of Disney's "Nine Old Men". In an unfortunate coincidence to Bernard's triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13), Lounsberry died on Friday, February 13, 1976.
- Jeanette Nolan, who voiced the muskrat Ellie Mae, was asked to fake a much thinner and louder voice in order to fit her character.
- Based upon two novels by Margery Sharp ("The Rescuers" and "Miss Bianca").
- At one point, critics claimed that this film would be the start of a new golden age for Disney animation, however, that was forgotten since it was followed by the critical failures of The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron (1985). Today, it is known as the last film of the second golden age, which automatically included The Aristocats (1970) and Robin Hood (1973).
- Contrary to general belief, the opening song, "The Journey," is sung from the bottle's perspective.
- Sometimes, the voices Disney used for their characters helped shape the personalities of such characters, thus, when Eva Gabor was chosen to play the role of Miss Bianca, Gabor's Hungarian nationality was given to the character, making her Hungary's representative at the Rescue Aid Society.
- The Rescue Aid Society was originally the "Prisoners' Aid Society" ('Mouse Prisoner's Aid Society' from Miss Bianca to Bernard into Battle), just as it was in the original Margery Sharp novels.
- Early in story development, Bernard and Bianca were supposed to be rescuing a poet, much older than Penny from a gloomy prison.
- In the novels, Bernard and Miss Bianca have the positions of Perpetual Mr. Secretary and Madam President of the Mouse Prisoner's Aid Society, due to their legendary rescuing career, unlike the film, in which Miss Bianca is regular delegate and Bernard the former janitor.
- The Rescuers was the first Disney animated feature to inspire a theatrically released sequel, The Rescuers Down Under. Since then, Toy Story, The Jungle Book, and Peter Pan have also received theatrical sequels (though all three were originally intended to be sent straight to video and DVD).
- Penny was to later be the star of Disney's Oliver & Company (1988) living in her new home in New York with her adoptive parents; however, the idea was scrapped and all that is left are similarities between the characters of Penny and Jenny.
- Though the film was a huge box office success, the studio never really did get a chance to celebrate their victory since much of the money was used to pay debts, and the rest was used in the making of the monetary failureThe Black Cauldron.
- The Rescuers was the fourth animated film to be set in present day (1977), following One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
- The film was expected to be a success even before entering theaters, which motivated an angered post-producer to sabotage the production by inserting an offending magazine picture of a naked woman into the film. Disney then had to spend millions to repair this when it was discovered in 1999.
- A number of bayou backgrounds in the film were later used in The Little Mermaid during the "Kiss the Girl" sequence.
- After the death of Eva Gabor, a third Rescuers film was scrapped as well as any future Rescuers films.
- A Mickey Mouse watch hangs upon the walls in the Rescue Aid Society organization building.
- This was Joe Flynn's last film. He died in 1974, three years before the film's release.
- Rufus the cat is a caricature of animator Ollie Johnston.
- Animation from Bambi (1942) can be seen in the "Someone's Waiting for You" song sequence. The animation in the scene where Penny attempts to run away comes from The Jungle Book(1967).
- Veteran animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston consider The Resuers their best picture made without Walt Disney, also stating that this film was their return to an animated work with "heart".
- Snoops is a caricature of film historian John Culhane, who made regular visits to the Disney studio during production and was nicknamed "Mr. Snoops" by the animators.
- Bernard (Bob Newhart) complains several times that he hates flying. One of Newhart's comedy routines was called "The Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (And Storm Door Company)", wherein he explains why he hates to fly.
- The film was one of the last Disney classics to be animated by members of Walt Disney's "nine old men".
- Early in development, the character of Cruella DeVil was to be the film's villain, not Medusa. There are similarities between the two characters, one being the outlandish and over-the-top personality both possess.
- Evinrude the Dragonfly, who pushes a small boat in the film, is named after a manufacturer of outboard boat motors.
- The film marked an important point in Disney history; during its production most animators retired and a new crew of younger and less experienced animators took control.
- The first film since Bambi to have more than half its songs sung by an off-screen voice.
- Originally, the Rescue Aid Society was to be placed in a hole somewhere until the idea of a luggage bag in the basement of the U.N. building came up.
- In The Rescuers Down Under Orville the albatross's brother is named Wilbur, a play on the famous Wright brothers.
- Ellie Mae and the Swamp Folk were originally going to carry a small flag that said "Swamp Volunteers". This detail was dropped since this would be the only time they would serve as rescuers.
- The film's producers originally wanted Bernard and Miss Bianca to be married, but that didn't happen until The Rescuers Down Under.
- The film was four years in the making with the combined talents of 250 people, including 40 animators who produced approximately 330,000 drawings; there were 14 sequences with 1,039 separate scenes and 750 backgrounds.
- The classic lullaby song, "Hush Little Baby" was once to take the place of the song, "Someone's Waiting for You". Penny was going to sing this song to her teddy bear.
- The first time Disney practiced camera movements over still photographs to make the opening credits, prior to this, the studio had used the cels with the credits motionless over different still backgrounds, sometimes over one single background as was done in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
- The little girl in Margery Sharp's Miss Bianca is named Patience. The Disney team decided that "Penny" would be a more suitable and memorable name. Early sketches of Madame Medusa showed clear similarities to Garth William's design of the Diamond Duchess in Margery Sharp's original novel, Miss Bianca. The character of Mr. Snoops is a retouched "Mandrake" from Margery Sharp's Miss Bianca. The Devil's Eye diamond theme is loosely based on the Diamond Duchess from Margery Sharp's works.
- The film broke a record for largest box office gains on opening weekend, a record it would keep until the release of Steven Spielberg's An American Tail (1986).
- The island of Cuba was once considered as the setting for the film.
- In one scene, Bernard, Bianca and Penny are in the cave trying to retrieve the Devil's Eye out of the skull of a dead man. Ken Anderson's Multiple Choice Layouts displayed Bianca taking pictures of the skull and Bernard inside the cave.
- An abandoned sequence involved Bernard and Bianca going to a mouse supply room in the International Rescue Aid Society Headquarters. In here, they were supposed to have bins full of items Bernard and Bianca would need on their journey. Once they were packed Rescue Aid would then send them off. Ken Anderson drew conceptual art of this storage room, what was inside of it, etc.
- The last Disney feature in which Spanish dubbing was directed by Edmundo Santos. He died after completing it.
- When the film premiered on DVD on May 20, 2003, not enough copies were available to meet demands. #redirect [[Template:Fact]]
- An original scene that never made it into the final film involved one in which Madame Medusa was sewing the Devil's Eye diamond into Teddy.
- Penny's stuffed bear, Teddy, was planned as an unimportant object in the film; however, it later served to give Penny a touch of personality by constantly using the bear to express her feelings. For example, when she was asked to go down into the pirate's cave, she says, "Teddy doesn't like it down there; he's afraid, aren't you, Teddy?"
- Disney seems to have forgotten about this series completely, for Bernard and Miss Bianca never appeared in other shows or films except for unsatisfactory cameo appearances in the 'House of Mouse' show. They do not appear in the Kingdom Hearts video game series either.
- This film was the last film performance for actor Jim Jordan, best known for his longtime role as radio's Fibber McGee.
Innovations
This film marked the beginning of the use of a more refined xerographic process that restored a softer outline look that previously was not possible with the technology, which so far only had been able to produce black outlines, allowing the use of a medium grey toner and even a purple toner for Ms Bianca's outlines.See also
External links
- [The Rescuers official homepage]
- [AnimatedMovies.net description] (archived at the Wayback Machine)
- [The Rescuers] at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- ["Photographic images of a topless woman can be spotted in The Rescuers"] at snopes.com
- ["Frank and Ollie's Feature Films"] at ["frankandollie.com"]
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