 |
 |
 |
Directed by: Wolfgang Reitherman
Written by: Ken Anderson & Larry Clemmons
Music by: Johnny Mercer, George Bruns, Roger Miller & Floyd
Huddleston
Released on: November 8, 1973 (2 days before my birthday!)
Running Time: 83 minutes
Budget: $5.5 million
Box-Office: $20 million in the U.S.
Robin...
Brian Bedford
Little John... Phil Harris
Sheriff of Nottingham... Pat Buttram
Maid Marian... Monica Evans
Prince John/King Richard... Peter Ustinov
Mother Rabbit... Barbara
Luddy
Lady Kluck... Carol Shelley
Allan-a-Dale... Roger Miller
The crocodile... Candy Candido
Otto... J. Pat O'Malley
Church Mouse... John Fiedler
 |
 |
 |
With Walt
Disney himself gone, the Walt Disney Company had to re-establish itself
as the animation powerhouse that it once was. Although The
Aristocats had been a boxoffice success, many began feeling that
something was lost without Walt. Critics were not unhappy with the animation,
but they felt that the company was not being as original as they had been
in the past. With Robin
Hood, the company hoped to achieve another great success with another
timeless adventure story.
When Robin
Hood came out in 1973, it quickly became Disney’s biggest animated
hit to date. Although critics initially claimed the cartoon was unoriginal
and unmemorable (many citing Disney’s previous live version as a better
one), it has stood the test of time to become one of the company’s most
memorable work from the period."
Some 350,000
drawings were made for the production, with over 100,000 painted cels and
800 painted backgrounds.
The dance sequence
after the archery match uses animation sequences taken directly from earlier
Disney films. Specifically, the dance between Little John and Lady Kluck
is that of Baloo and King Louie in The
Jungle Book (1967); a dancing cat playing a wind instrument is
Scat Cat from The Aristocats (1970);
and Maid Marian dances with the same movements as Snow White in Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
The song
"Love," by George Bruns and Floyd Huddleston, was nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Song. In several sequences, George Bruns sought to capture
the flavor of the period by using medieval instruments such as French horns
and harpsichords, and occasionally just a mandolin.
Director
and animator Don Bluth commented on the film, saying that "there is a lot
of entertaining animation in [Robin Hood]. Ollie Johnston's Prince
John and the character Sir Hiss were hilarious. As a film it did not fare
well in the theaters. Disney's first major success after Jungle
Book (1966), was The
Rescuers (1976). We believe that the marketing for Robin Hood
just didn't reach the family audience. Most people, at that time, were
not even aware that Disney still produced animation. At least, that is
what we ran into a lot of the time. Robin Hood cost about $5.5 million
and probably cost about the same to market in the US alone. We're not sure,
but the movie probably grossed less that $20 million in the US theatres
and even less overseas. So, the film probably did not make profit for the
company. If a film "grosses" $20 million, the theaters get to keep approximately
50% of this money. So if Disney spent $5.5 mil on production and $5.5 mil
on marketing and they only got back $10 million. Then they lost $1 million.
Plus it costs more to market in the foreign countries. So, they probably
lost money on the foreign release as well. On the other hand, the Rescuers
cost approximately $7.5 million and Grossed $45 million world-wide on it's
first release. While maybe not as funny as some of Prince John's scenes
in Robin Hood,
The
Rescuers had a better story and seemed to attract a bigger audience.
Remember, The
Rescuers story was about rescuing a little girl from kidnappers
while Robin Hood was mainly about adult characters in a story that
had been told quite well in live action and is considered a classic."
Did you know
that the voices behind the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John and Lady
Kluck first all already appeared in The
Aristocats, in quite different roles?
The
Sheriff of Nottingham was one of many secondary roles Disney offered to
Pat Buttram (1915-1994): this talented actor had lended his voice to Napoleon
in The Aristocats three years earlier
(1970), and would later do the same to Luke in
The
Rescuers (1977), Chief in The
Fox and the Hound (1981) and one of the bullets in Who framed
Roger Rabbit (1988). His last role was that of Possum Park Emcee
in A Goofie Movie (1995), recorded a few months before his death,
and released a year after.
Phil
Harris (1904-1995) not only voiced Little John: he gave his heart to two
other sympathetic characters, Baloo from The
Jungle Book (1967), and Thomas O'Malley in The
Aristocats (1970)!
Carol
Shelley (Lady Kluck) was also the voice of Amelia Gabble in The
Aristocats (1970) and more recently one of the Fates in Hercules
(1997).
The
little voice behind the Church Mouse, John Fiedler (born in 1925), is most
famous for his incarnation of Piglet since the very first Winnie the
Pooh movie in 1977, including the recent The Tigger Movie (2000)!
Peter
Ustinoff (Prince John & King Richard) has had a very prolific
movie career over the past 6 decades. One of his most famous roles
remains that of Belgium detective Hercules Poirot in several adaptations
of Agatha Christie novels, including Death on the Nile (1978).
He lended his voice more recently to the old major of the 1999 TV-movie
The
Animal Farm -the same year he appeared in a TV version of Alice
in Wonderland along with Whoopie Goldberg and Miranda Richardson.
|
||||||||||||
