A Vocal Emergency Sent Disney Scrambling To Recast The Jungle Book's Mowgli
If one were to search for "Disney Recycled Animation" on YouTube, one would find several videos showing side-by-side comparisons of 2D animated Disney films recycling the same bits of animation. It's not much of a "gotcha" if you know anything about the painstaking reality of what it takes to complete a traditionally animated feature film, nor is recycling shots something limited to films or television. (Somewhere, a whole lot of video game programmers are dabbing the sweat off their foreheads right now.) If anything, animators repeating themselves is as inevitable as writers using their favorite turn of phrase over and over. (That's my cue to wipe away my own flop sweat.)
In the case of Disney's animated "The Jungle Book" and "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" (which came out in 1967 and 1977, respectively), the two pictures have more in common than suspiciously identical scenes of young boys wandering around in the wild. "The Jungle Book" protagonist Mowgli the Man-Cub was voiced by Bruce Reitherman, who was then fresh off lending his vocals to Christopher Robin for 1966's "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree." That animated short was later packaged with 1968's "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" and 1974's "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" for "Many Adventures," with Jon Walmsley and Timothy Turner voicing Pooh's human companion in those respective stories.
Originally, however, the role of Mowgli was to be played by David Alan Bailey, who was a few years older than Reitherman and already had roles in famous '60s sitcoms like "Dennis the Menace," "Bewitched," and "The Andy Griffith Show" under his belt. Unfortunately for Bailey, that was before he was struck by that all too common enemy of child actors everywhere: puberty.
A little less 'man,' a little more 'cub'
Curious how Bruce Reitherman came to voice not one but two of the most famous Disney animated characters in the company's history? You can chalk that up to his father being Wolfgang Reitherman, a prolific animation director and a member of Disney's fabled group of animators known as the "Nine Old Men." However, before we launch into another round of nepotism baby discourse, it's worth mentioning that Bruce Reitherman voicing Christopher Robin and Mowgli was as much a matter of convenience as it was his old man giving him a leg-up in the family business (though he did that too).
Bruce Reitherman explained what happened to The Guardian in 2013:
"I was 11 and my dad, Wolfgang Reitherman, was the director so it didn't take much for him to see me on the sofa at home and have his lightbulb-casting moment. I was the voice of Christopher Robin when I was six but had no other acting experience. I just sounded like an ordinary kid.
"The makers wanted someone who sounded very innocent to play Mowgli, to soften the parts where, thanks to his lines, he might come across as a petulant teenager. But in the 1960s, it took four years to make an animated film — so if you cast a kid and didn't get to the cutting room quick enough, you'd end up with an adolescent. And sure enough, the first Mowgli had had to be replaced after his voice broke."
While Bailey's acting career didn't last long once he became a teenager, he thankfully seems to be alive and well as of 2024. That's quite a relief, too, considering what befell other Disney child actors from that era — most infamously, Bobby Driscoll, whose tragic — and wholly preventable — fate is a permanent mark of shame on the Mouse House's history.