MORE PINOCCHIO PROBLEMS
Evolution of the puppet’s personality paralleled the development of his visual design. In Collodi’s book, Pinocchio, which translates as “pine eye”, is an obnoxious devious bratty little troublemaker. At Walt’s own urging, the storymen had already re-conceived him as closer in character to Charlie McCarthy, the nationally popular ventriloquist dummy. Performed by Edgar Bergan (1903-1978) and starring in Disney’s two-part animated feature Fun and Fancy Free (1947), vent figure Charlie was also rather bratty in his own more mature and high-falutin’ way.
Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) renowned author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, saw Pinocchio in theaters in 1940 and praised Disney’s reformation of Collodi’s title character:
“The Pinocchio in the film is not the unruly, sulking, vicious, devious (albeit still charming) marionette that Collodi created. Neither is he an innately evil, doomed-to-calamity child of sin. He is, rather, both lovable and loved. Therein lies Disney’s triumph. His Pinocchio is a mischievous, innocent and very naïve little wooden boy… Pinocchio, he says, is good; his ‘badness’ is only a matter of inexperience…”[1]
Geppetto also got a make-over. At first his appearance resembled Snow White’s dwarf Doc, still spectacled though about a head taller and with more realistic five-fingered hands. In the end, his image was even taller and also leaner, as well as mustachioed and jut-jawed, an appearance more like the voice actor Christian Rub (1886-1956) who portrays him and gives him a vaguely German accent.
The model sheets of supporting characters stayed basically the same and animation on them resumed in April of 1938. Refinements to the story, however, remained in limbo for quite a while longer. Collodi’s original tale was rife with rather bizarre incidents.
Pinocchio tackled an ambitious range of settings, themes, and visual and dramatic effects. The Disney writers plunged into unprecedented story material for animated cartoons… No story idea was off limits, no technical challenge too daunting to pursue.[2]
Exploring them, Disney and his staff ended up with enough material for a film many times its final length! Pinocchio’s attempts to fulfill the Blue Fairy’s instructions for redeeming himself in order to become a “real boy” took him off willy-nilly in all sorts of directions, a structureless story although quite suited to its original weekly serial installments. I am in possession of a torn, tattered and defaced 1939 fourth edition of a Random House book, Pinocchio, Based on the Story by Collodi with Illustrations from the Motion Picture.[3]As damaged as it is, this picturebook remains a treasured possession, especially in that its text and bounteous graphics reveal many then unresolved story issues of a film that would not be released until early the year after this book’s publication. Inspirational art, storyboard drawings, many, many pencil sketches, and finished frames out of sequences omitted from the final film display much material that must have been cut quite far along into production. Among them: the Coachman’s desperate attempts using bloodhounds and cannonfire to prevent Pinocchio from escaping Pleasure Island, hoodlum Lampwick as a donkey sacrificing himself to save Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy as a giant crowned white dove conveying Pinocchio out to sea to rescue Geppetto, and the whale-prisoned old man’s hunger-crazed delirium during which he nearly fries his pet goldfish Cleo!
Given this great diversity of incidents and characters, Walt knew he needed to supply some stronger cohesion to the whole, some focal point to pull it all together. Enter Jiminy Cricket…
In the book, the cricket is an unnamed hundred-year-old voice of wisdom. Pinocchio summarily squashes him against the wall with a mallet. He returns later as a ghost. By mid-summer 1938 Walt had resurrected this insect, but not until January the following year did he posit the bug front-and-center. Jiminy, as he was dubbed, became the film’s emcee/raconteur, bookending (almost literally!) the entire enterprise and establishing the whole story as his own personal “flashback”. In many ways he became the actual central character.
“It’s not only the story of Pinocchio becoming a real boy. There’s this parallel story of Jiminy becoming mature enough to accept responsibility. He’s got an arc of his own.”[4]
By volunteering to be the puppet’s conscience, Jiminy not only keeps Pinocchio focused on his goal of real boyhood, but keeps the film’s focus on it as well.W
The Cricket, besides playing a role in the story, now became the audience’s surrogate and guide to the plot, and the character of the film was transformed.[5]
Co-incidentally, by assigning this lead character’s animation to Ward Kimball Walt also made amends for cutting Kimball’s entirely-animated “Music in the Soup” sequence out of Snow White and headed-off this great artist’s resignation from his staff.
Jiminy Cricket… developed over a period of months in character model with the input of key animators (particularly Ward Kimball) and became a star.[6]
Interestingly, early versions of the cricket actually sported some characteristics of such a bug including a segmented body, pantless spikey legs, long antennae and wings. He resembled the grasshopper in the 1934 Silly Symphony The Grasshopper and the Ants.
I own an also-treasured early faux-wooden reproduction model of Jiminy which retains those body segments. These disappeared in the final design as did his folded wings, which instead became the tails of his coat. His much abbreviated antennae are nearly always concealed beneath his hat and his leg spikes always beneath pantlegs. In fact, the only way we know the final graphic of Jiminy is supposed to be a cricket is because we are so informed by the character himself at the film’s beginning: “I’m just a cricket singing my way from hearth to hearth…” And regarding his name, Kaufman points out,
“…in the 1930s ‘Jiminy cricket’ or ‘crickets’ was a popular expression used as a polite expletive on the order of ‘gosh darn’ or ‘son of a gun’.[7]
[1] Wikipedia under Pinocchio (1940 film)
[2] Kaufman, J.B. in his Library of Congress article about the film.
[3] Random House, New York, 1939.
[4] Kaufman, J.B.: from the audio commentary on the 2010 70th Anniversary Blu-ray release of Pinocchio.
[5] Kaufman, J.B.: Pinocchio, The Making of the Disney Epic, The Walt Disney Family Foundation Press, San Francisco, CA, 2015, p. 154.
[6] Canemaker, John: Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists, Hyperion, New York, 1996, p. 60.
[7] Kaufman, J.B.: op. cit., p. 48.
