Year: Day to Day Men: February 23

Brown Cable Knit Sweater

The twenty-third of February in 1940 marks the theatrical release date of the American animated musical fantasy film “Pinocchio”. Based on Italian author Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, it was Walt Disney Production’s second animated feature film. preceded by the 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”.

A translated version of Collodi’s novel was brought by animator Norman Ferguson to the attention of Walt Disney in September of 1937 during the studio’s production of “Snow White”. After reading the book, Disney commissioned storyboard artist Bianca Majolie to write a new story outline for the book; however, he found the outline too faithful to the original story. As “Pinocchio” was based on a novel with a very fixed, episodic story, the storyboard outline underwent major changes before its final form. 

In the original novel, Pinocchio was presented as a cold, rude and ungrateful personality. The Disney writers modernized the character for the film and depicted him similar to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy Charlie McCarthy, a mischievous figure who made snide remarks and misbehaved. Originally drawn exactly like a real wooden puppet with pointed nose and bare wooden hands, animators slightly redesigned the figure of Pinocchio to make him more appealing. An animated test scene refined the final adjustments to Pinocchio’s appearance; he became a more innocent, naive, somewhat coy personality with a child’s Tyrolean hat and standard four fingered (three fingers and a thumb) gloved hands similar to those of Mickey Mouse. 

In the summer of 1938, Walt Disney and the story team established the character of the cricket whom Disney named Jiminy. At first only a minor figure in the film outline, the cricket became the character who would guide Pinocchio into making the right decisions. Animator Ward Kimball, who had spent two months animating two unused sequences for “Snow White”, was promoted by Disney to the position of supervising animator for Jiminy Cricket. For the final design of the character, Kimball did not use the characteristic toothed-legs and waving antennae of a cricket. He instead designed a well-dressed little man who had an egg-shaped head with no ears, essentially a cricket in name only.

“Pinocchio” marks the first time an animated film used celebrities as voice actors. Due to the huge success of the 1937 “Snow White”, Disney wanted more famous voices for the second animated Disney production. Popular 1930s musician and singer Clifton Avon “Cliff” Edwards was cast as the voice of Jiminy Cricket. Clifton had in 1929 a number one hit with his “Singin’ in the Rain”. Disney did not want an adult actor for the voice of Pinocchio. He chose eleven-year old child-actor Richard “Dickie” Jones, a B-movie Western star who had just appeared in the 1939 “Nancy Drew..Reporter”.

Austrian-born character actor Christian Rub was chosen for the voice of Geppetto the wood-carver. Comedian and character actor Walter Catlett played the con artist Honest John the Fox and Honest John’s mute, dimwitted feline partner Gideon. Gideon’s hiccups were separately provided by veteran voice actor Mel Blanc. Actor Charles Judels voiced both the villainous  Stromboli and The Coachman who takes all disobedient boys to Pleasure Island. The Blue Fairy who brings Pinocchio to life and transforms him into a real boy was played by actress Evelyn Venable.

Animation on “Pinocchio” began in January of 1938; supporting character animation began in April. After a brief hiatus on the project, revisions on Pinocchio’s character and the film’s narrative structure were completed in September and work resumed. “Pinocchio” took two years and required more than seven hundred and fifty artists and technicians to bring the animated characters to life. The film was a groundbreaker in animation effects. The team of artists gave realistic movement to vehicles and machinery as well as rain, water, lightning, smoke and shadows. 

“Pinocchio” was initially premiered on the seventh of February in 1940 at New York City’s Center Theater on Sixth Avenue. The theatrical release through the nation occurred on the twenty-third of February. Though not initially a box-office success, “Pinocchio” won two Academy Awards in 1941: Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “When You Wish Upon a Star”. Many film historians consider “Pinocchio” to be the film of all the Disney animated features that most closely approaches technical perfection. In 1994, the film was added to the National Film Registry and the American Film Institute, in 2008, selected it the second best film in the medium of animation, after Disney’s “Snow White”.

Insert Images: Directors Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske, “Pinocchio”, 1940, Film Scenes, Producer Walt Disney, Walt Disney Productions, RKO Radio Pictures