An American Tail - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[wesley]

The character of Gussie Mausheimer - a wealthy German socialite with a speech impediment which causes her to use the W sound in place of her R's and L's - is voiced by Madeline Kahn. The character's heritage, accent and distinctive speech pattern are identical to Lili von Shtupp, Madeline Kahn's character in the classic Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles (1974).

[ray]

Pat Musick, the voice of Tony Toponi, based his New York accent on a childhood friend of hers.

[ethel]

This is the first Amblin Entertainment's animated film.

[miriam]

Fievel and Tony's relationship is similar to that of Oliver and the Artful Dodger in Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" and Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn from Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer".

[albert]

In designing the look of the film and its characters, Don Bluth worked with Amblin Entertainment and the Sears marketing department (Sears had a major marketing push on the main character). He decided to make a stylistic shift from the more angular "modern style" of animation of the time to a style similar to Disney animation from the 1940s, where the characters have a more soft and cuddly feel. This proved successful, and at release many critics praised the "old fashioned style" of the film's look and feel. This was during a period when the market for nostalgia was particularly strong among baby boomers, who at this time were seeking products for their young children, and only three years before the beginning of the Disney Renaissance for the studio Bluth once worked for.

[michele]

During production, director Don Bluth staged a demonstration of the difference between limited TV animation and the full animation used in the film. He had his staff stack up animation cels by his feet into two piles, one representing two minutes of limited animation, the other two minutes of full animation. The TV pile reached only to Bluth's shoelaces; the film pile went all the way up to eye level.

[steve]

Butch Hartman who would create the Nickelodeon show The fairly odd parents (2001) was an uncredited animation checker on the giant float scene, it was one of his first jobs in animation and one of the few he's done for theatrical releases.

[kristen]

Don Bluth: [object] Fievel's hat.

[tammy]

Tony Jay voices the larger of the three mice who own the factory.

[scarlett]

The first theatrically released animated film to star Tony Jay, later he'd go onto voice Monsieur D'Arque in Beauty and The Beast (1991), Lickboot in Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992), Reginald in All Dogs Go to Heaven II (1996), Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), reprise his role as Dr Lipschitz in the Rugrats Movie films, Dr Rosenthal in Recess: School's Out (2001), the narrator in Treasure Planet (2002), and reprise his role as Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2 (2003).

[ruby]

When Fievel is running away from the cats during the cossacks' raid, his hat falls from his head and stands at the entrance of a snow tunnel. Fievel retrieves it at the final moment, right before one of the cats gets there, in a moment reminiscent of producer Steven Spielberg 's Indiana Jones.

[sophie]

Warren Hays who played the voice of the Irish Singer Mouse on the boat later went on to work with the Pixar Film Company. He worked as the Systems Administrator and Systems SUpporter of A Bug's Life (1998), the Information Systems Manager of Toy Story 2 (1999), the Information Systems Manager & Lead of Finding Nemo (2003), and Desktop and Infrastructure: Pixar Studio Team of Up (2009).

[albert]

Dom DeLuise had worked previously with Don Bluth in The Secret of NIMH (1982), and DeLuise even added material to the script at various points. During the song A Duo, he suggested they stop the music where the lyrics mention "back scratch" and have Fievel actually scratch Tiger's back.