For decades, Disney has been synonymous with family friendly entertainment.
Yet they actually killed numerous animals while filming a documentary in order to fake
a scene from nature.
Keep watching for the terrible truth.
Walt Disney's first all live-action production was 1950's "Treasure Island," one of the best
adaptations of the novel to date.
As the the AFI Catalog details, the film was made entirely in Britain due to a unique situation
after World War II: Revenues collected by studios in the United Kingdom were "frozen,"
only able to be spent on productions within the country.
This meant an all-British cast, except for young Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins.
Unfortunately for Walt Disney, Driscoll was a little too young at 12 to qualify for a
Labour Ministry permit to work in Britain.
According to the AFI Catalog, this dilemma grew into a court case that fined the studio,
Driscoll, and his father £100 each and barred the lad from working in Britain.
When an appeal was filed, Disney took advantage by rearranging the schedule of the film to
get everything with Driscoll shot before the hearing.
This dodge cost $84,000, which is equivalent to $1 million today, earned a strong rebuke
from the judge, and scared Disney off trying to bring Driscoll back to Britain for any
future films — but he got everything in the can in time, and without any of the horror
stories that defying child labor laws can bring upon a production.
Walt Disney loved animals, and when he began to diversify his filmmaking in the 1940s,
nature documentaries focused on wildlife proved one of the most stimulating experiments for
him.
The "True-Life Adventures" series that resulted were some of Disney's most profitable short
subject films thanks to their low production costs.
In their day, they also brought in considerable praise for bringing the animal kingdom to
moviegoers.
But the picture of nature presented by the "True-Life" series wasn't exactly the unvarnished
truth.
Running narration anthropomorphizes the animals in every one of the films.
These scripts, written in advance, demanded footage that the natural world wasn't always
forthcoming about, so, as Snopes notes, the film crews hired to film the animals sometimes
staged what they needed.
On one occasion — the filming of the 1958 "White Wilderness" – this sadly meant herding
a few dozen imported lemmings off a cliff and into the icy water below for the sake
of a scene meant to illustrate the origins of the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide.
Whether Disney knew or approved of the stunt is unknown; the truth wasn't revealed to the
public until the 1982 documentary "Cruel Camera" sparked outrage over the treatment of the
animals.
Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney, for one, didn't think it was a big deal.
"We've lost a few lemmings.
Okay.
The lemmings probably would have gotten lost anyway."
It's never been easy to combine live action and animation, and it was much harder back
in the 1980s.
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" was a technically grueling shoot.
Actors had to react to co-stars who weren't there, the director and cinematographer needed
to account for where the cartoons would go.
Puppeteers and effects crews needed to manipulate inanimate objects that would be affected by
said cartoons, and animators and effects artists labored in post-production, according to Cinema
Blend, to create the animated characters and composite them into the live footage.
Compared to all that work, the job of a voice actor is supposed to be easy: Turn up in the
recording booth, read your lines, and go home.
Except that didn't apply to Charles Fleischer, voice of Roger Rabbit himself.
He was there on the set to deliver dialogue, provide sight lines for Bob Hoskins, and stand
in for Roger in rehearsals.
In fact, Fleischer was prepared to go the extra mile to help the film along: He told
the Orlando Sentinel that he had a Roger Rabbit costume made for him to wear every day so
he could appear on set in character.
It made for quite the sight in the studio commissary, but who can argue with his methods
when the film turned out so well?
"I came to call it trans-projectional acting.
So that whatever he was doing, I would watch it, and I would project myself into that space."
Walt Disney was unique among Hollywood film producers in seeing television as a boon to
filmmaking rather than competition in the early days of the medium.
After early forays into TV with hour-long specials to promote upcoming releases, Disney
Studios launched the first incarnation of its anthology series, "Disneyland."
It advertised films in production, aired original programming, and helped sell the public on
the theme park concept, with friendly "Uncle Walt" acting as the host.
Disney was, at times, just as jolly as he seemed on TV, but it wasn't effortless for
him to get that onto film, and missed cues and flubbed lines could bring out another
side to his character.
Mouseplanet records an interview with cameraman Bob Broughton, who said that when Disney messed
up his cues, the first words out of his mouth were some choice curse words.
"He goes back and we do another take, [and] the page with his lines falls out on the floor.
So he says 'Oh s---.'
[...] He does it a third time and drops the book.
He says, 'Oh, s--- ... at this rate, I'm going to start flubbing the words oh s---!'
And everyone bursts out into laughter."
Yes, "Ed Wood" is a Disney film — or, at least a Touchstone one.
The weirdness of "Ed Wood" was largely confined to the subject matter of a legendarily awful
director surrounded by outcasts and misfits, and the unusual found family that they formed.
The shoot was reportedly a relaxed, happy affair, but according to screenwriter Larry
Karaszewksi, there was one moment of panic when Ed Wood's widow, Kathy Wood – who was
played in the film by Patricia Arquette – stopped by the set unexpectedly.
Karaszewksi's writing partner Scott Alexander was happy to grant Kathy's request to meet
Johnny Depp, who played the eccentric director.
En route to Depp's trailer, however, Alexander remembered that they were filming a scene
where Wood is miserable, and in a disheveled state of drag.
He and Depp were both worried that it might give her the wrong impression about the tone
of the film; Depp in particular was afraid she might think they were mocking Ed Wood.
But it turned out they needn't have worried.
Upon seeing Depp in his dress and smeared make-up, Kathy smiled and said,
"He looks just like my Eddie!"
Far from being displeased, she ended up giving Depp her late husband's wallet and I.D. which
Depp carried with him for the rest of the shoot.
"Watcher in the Woods" was one of several darker, PG-rated fantasy films produced by
Disney in the early '80s in an attempt to escape the rut that captured the studio after
Walt Disney's death.
And it had impressive credentials.
Its director, John Hough, was a Disney veteran who had also directed horror, and it starred
screen legend Bette Davis, who marked a 50-year anniversary in show business at the time of
the film's initial release in 1980.
Davis was 72 when she filmed "Watcher," and that posed a difficulty for Hough.
Davis' character appeared at different ages throughout the film, and according to Hough's
DVD commentary, she was determined to play the younger scenes herself.
Make-up artists were flown to England from Hollywood to see if it could be managed, but
in Hough's estimation,
"[It] knocked about twenty years off of her age, but not forty."
After screening the test, Hough cleared the room and told Davis he didn't think it worked.
In true movie-star fashion, Davis responded by taking a drag off her cigarette and snapping
back,
"You're god---- right."
Yet another of Disney's early '80s sojourns into the dark side was "Something Wicked This
Way Comes" in 1983.
It was a film long in the making; according to AFI, Ray Bradbury first wrote the story
as a directing vehicle for Gene Kelly before turning it into a novel, and then back into
a screenplay for his friend Jack Clayton to direct.
Sadly, when Disney picked up the project and launched production, it meant the end of Bradbury's
friendship with Clayton.
In "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," the author lamented that his friend
Clayton went behind his back to hire another screenwriter who wasn't as experienced in
the fantasy genre.
Between the script changes and Clayton's direction, the initial cut on the film shown to preview
audiences was a disaster.
After consulting with Disney executive Ron Miller, Bradbury advised rewrites and reshoots.
All the cast and crew returned to service, including Clayton.
But Bradbury himself unofficially directed the reshoots while Clayton watched from the
sidelines.
Ultimately, Bradbury felt that the finished movie still wasn't great, but was at least
better.
"Saludos Amigos" was an odd production from the get-go.
During World War II, the American government asked Walt Disney to go on a goodwill tour
of South America.
Disney recalled his reluctance years later to go on a "handshake tour" until the offer
was amended to allow Disney to make films on Latin American subjects.
"I'd feel better about going down and really doing something than going down and shakin'
a hand."
A small number of handpicked staff accompanied the boss on the trip to gather material.
After all the research and handshaking was done, a handful of cartoon shorts were packaged
together for a 1942 release.
On the screen with those cartoons in "Saludos Amigos" was live action footage of environments,
locales, and cultural practices from South America.
This wasn't staged or slickly produced Hollywood photography but raw 16mm footage from the
artists' tour of the continent.
And according to the Walt Disney Archives, a chunk of the coverage in "Saludos Amigos"
came from Walt Disney's own camera, likely the only time one of the most powerful movie
moguls in history doubled as an uncredited cameraman on his own film.
As well-known as the Disney name is, it was for much of its existence a small studio on
shaky financial ground.
This instability was, in part, due to Walt Disney's tendency to plow any incoming monies
back into expensive productions.
When he spent $9 million, the most expensive film ever made up to that time, on "20,000
Leagues Under the Sea," it was a huge gamble.
The gamble seemed a disaster in the making once filming began on the legendary squid
sequence.
In Disney's "The Making of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," director Richard Fleisher
revealed that even years later he was still pained by the memories of the first attempt
at the scene: a washed-out pink sunset backdrop with cheesy lighting, and a "practically worthless"
squid puppet that fell apart while filming.
Disney was less than happy when he saw the results.
"He said, I've been watching what you're doing here, he said, you're making a Keystone comedy
Cops movie."
Faced with a disaster of an action sequence, Disney told Fleisher to move on while the
technicians at Disneyland built a new squid.
Disney also enthusiastically approved writer Earl Felton's new concept for the battle as
taking place at night in a fierce storm to disguise the puppet's shortcomings.
The new puppet and all the wind and wave machines necessary tore the movie's budget apart, to
the point Disney had to bring bankers to the set to convince them to fork over more cash.
But the resulting sequence still holds up to this day, and the film became one of the
highest grossing movies of the year.
You might think that if there were injuries while filming a movie about a giant gorilla,
especially one filmed before digital effects became the norm for creating such beasties,
those injuries would involve the gorilla.
Not so with the 1998 remake of "Mighty Joe Young," though.
No, the real disaster for "Joe" was thanks to a crane.
During filming, a camera platform was mounted 18 feet above ground with cinematographer
Don Peterman aboard.
Shockingly, the crane supporting the platform snapped.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Peterman and the camera operator were thrown to the
ground.
Peterman suffered a broken leg, broken ribs, and head injuries, but he and the operator
both survived.
Despite the accident, Peterman managed to complete the film and get in one more credit
before eventually retiring.