Pinocchio - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Pinocchio or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Pinocchio

[manuel]

Ranked #38 on the American Film Institute's list of The 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Time and is the only animated film to appear on the list.

[ronnie]

The pool hall at Pleasure Island is in the shape of a giant eight ball with a tall cue-shaped structure standing nearby. This is a neat takeoff on the Trylon and the Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

[jesse]

In 1940, Victor Young conducted a four-record 78-RPM Decca album of the songs from "Pinocchio". The album featured three songs eventually deleted from the film before its release: "Jiminy Cricket"; "Turn on the Old Music Box" and "Three Cheers for Anything". Cliff Edwards, who did the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the film, was the only actor from the movie who appeared on the album. Also featured were Julietta Novis (who sang the "Ave Maria" in Disney's Fantasia (1940)), The King's Men and The Ken Darby Singers. It is also claimed that around this time, RCA Victor released an album that was supposedly the actual film soundtrack of "Pinocchio", but whether or not it really was the soundtrack has never been confirmed.

[maureen]

Award-winning children's-book illustrator Gustaf Tenggren helped create the European-storybook conceptual design, rendering town streets and the undersea landscapes. His design sketches ultimately influenced design work for Disneyland. Although Tenggren heavily influenced the overall look of the film, he left the Disney studios before the film was completed, and received no credit.

[tamara]

The animators had a difficult time choosing how to animate Geppetto- early models looked too much like Doc from 'Snow White'- so eventually decided to model him after his voice actor, Christian Rub.

[sophie]

The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (as well as the prince in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)) was created using the rotoscope technique.

[aaron]

Mel Blanc provided the voice of Gideon the Cat, and recorded several scenes of dialogue. However, the Disney animators later decided to make Gideon a mute character, a la Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Gideon's three hiccups, plus some gurgling noises for Cleo the goldfish, are all that remains of Blanc's vocal performance in the film. Although Blanc provided some character voices for the "Carousel of Progress" animatronic stage show at Disneyland, this would be his only vocal performance in a Disney film until Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

[jamie]

The animation of the sparkles produced by the Blue Fairy's magic were designed by abstract animator Oskar Fischinger, who was working on the "Toccata and Fugue" sequence of Fantasia (1940).

[aaron]

During the musical number "When You Wish Upon a Star", when a spotlight is seen on Jiminy Cricket, one is able to see two books to the left of the screen, which are "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland". Walt Disney started developing these two stories for the big screen at the time of this film's release, and they would be released respectively in 1953 and 1951.

[clayton]

Carlo Collodi was really Carlo Lorenzini, a journalist and rabble-rouser who settled down to write children's stories. He took his pen name from the town of his mother's birth, Collodi. When he originally published "Pinocchio" in the form of a magazine serial, Lorenzini's intention was to kill Pinocchio by having him hang himself. At the suggestion of his editor, Lorenzini added chapters sixteen to thirty-two, giving the story a happy ending and creating the character of the Blue Fairy.

[jamie]

The character of Jiminy Cricket wasn't introduced into the story until nine months into production. In an early chapter the 1883 novel, Pinocchio killed Jiminy Cricket, who was known only as Talking Cricket, by throwing a mallet at him. However, the Cricket shows up alive in a later chapter with little explanation given.

[steve]

The August 1993 issue of Playboy cited 43 instances of violence and other unfavorable behavior in this film, including 23 instances of battery, nine acts of property damage, three slang uses of the word "jackass", three acts of violence involving animals, two shots of male nudity, and one instance of implied death.

[melinda]

Due to the war, the movie was not released in either Germany or Japan before the 1950s. In 1951, when the movie was released in Germany, it was dubbed with rather unknown actors. Only Horst Buchholz, as the voice of Lampwick, was to become famous in later years. In 1971, the movie was re-dubbed along with other Disney classics such as Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942). The original dub is now unknown in Germany.