An analysis of the three Jungle Book characters which Disney transplanted into their television series, TaleSpin...and how they differ from their earlier incarnations.
Jungle Book Characters Revamped
by JerseyCaptain
Of course, TaleSpin takes these characters, and original ones created just for the series, and places them in an island setting revolving around air transport and shipping businesses, air piracy, and big business. A very different setting from Disney's earlier The Jungle Book movie - which was based upon the early "Mowgli" stories of the original The Jungle Book () by British author Rudyard Kipling (). The setting there was more traditional and relatively realistic for the characters in question (a steamy jungle in remote India during the 1800s).
What I'd like to do is give you a look at how these three iconic characters, from the original Disney movie, changed when they were reimagined for the TaleSpin television series (keeping in mind that they and the other original characters of the movie The Jungle Book had also changed from the way they were originally imagined and written by Rudyard Kipling, their creator).
Baloo: The primary character in the TaleSpin television series, Baloo (a sloth bear...a species found in India) was a supporting cast member in The Jungle Book. In that original movie, he was designed as a shiftless beatnik ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatnik), one whom the other characters (except the human child Mowgli) see as a nuisance. The beatnik character is definitely a reflection of the time period in which the movie was made (1967 - though by then beatniks were fading out, having been more a social trend of the late 50's and early 60's).
In TaleSpin, he is reimagined as a pilot working for a shipping transport company. He takes on a sort of Indiana Jones-ish character (though the general shiftlessness remains). Another trait is also preserved in the TaleSpin series...Baloo's soft spot for kids - and especially orphans. His sidekick, Kit Cloudkicker the bear cub, is an orphan just like Mowgli, the human child raised by wolves in The Jungle Book. In both instances, Baloo takes a strong altruistic and protective liking to them.
Baloo's voice actor in the movie was Phil Harris, who has done other work for Disney over the years. By the time the TaleSpin series began production in the early 90's, however, he was too old to voice the character (as Disney did offer the role to him first). Subsequently, voice actor Ed Gilbert was given the role. He apparently listened to old tapes of Harris (and watched movies and television episodes he was a voice actor in) and practiced Harris' voice until he got the sound just right. And it is an impressive bit of duplication!
(I like both character portrayals, though they are rather dissimilar from each other.)
Louie: A supporting cast member in both the movie and the television series, Louie is quite different in one versus the other. In the movie, he is King Louie, an orangutan who rules over a troupe of monkeys in the ruins of an ancient city buried in the jungle. King Louie was designed to talk like a "scat" singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing), and was something of a treacherous, sneaky, cunning manipulator. He tried to deceive Mowgli into telling him the human secret of fire, in exchange for allowing him to continue living in the jungle with he and his monkey subjects. Bagheera, the black panther who was looking after Mowgli, saw through the trick and, with Baloo's help, rescued Mowgli from King Louie and the monkeys before he fell completely into Louie's trap.
In the TaleSpin series, Louie loses his kingship (or, rather, never had it), and instead becomes a Hawaiian shirt-wearing nightclub owner, and a friend of Baloo. The voice actor who portrayed him in the series, Jim Cummings (who also played Steele in the Balto movie), did a fair job of imitating the voice of the character as originally portrayed by Italian-American scat singer Louis Prima (known for such hits as "Just a Gigolo" and "Buona Sera", which are both often heard in Hollywood movies with Italian-American and/or Mafia storylines).
(Personally, I thought that Louie as a nightclub owner was a farce of what he was in the movie, in which he was an amazing character. In the series, however, he certainly lost his edge.)
Shere Khan: A villain in both the movie and the series, Shere Khan the tiger is another character whose portrayals are very dissimilar from one to the other. In the movie, he is a delightfully-sinister antagonist...one with a deadly cunning and remarkable unflappability which is shattered only by the presence of fire (which he fears greatly). He's so powerfully evil and important that, even when he does not appear on-screen in the movie, the characters spend a heck of a lot of time talking about him, and the terrible, ominous danger he represents (and how if he finds Mowgli he will surely kill him). His portrayal is similar (though much darker in his case) to two other Disney villains - Scar, from The Lion King (though, unlike Shere Khan, Scar is a bit of a sneaky, plotting coward), and Jafar the Grand Vizier from Aladdin (who, like Scar, is something of a sneaky, plotting villain - though much less of a coward). The voice work and delivery are similar in each case. Shere Khan remains as one of Disney's greatest animated villains ever...and certainly one of the most evil.
In the TaleSpin series, Shere Khan is reimagined as a cold, unflappable corporate executive, a businessman who is not above using sneaky, even nasty means to achieve whatever he wants. The deadly cunning and sinister, unflappable cool are gone in this portrayal, and replaced with a detached coldness and moderate ruthlessness. His voice actor in the series, Tony Jay, did a fair job of imitating the wonderful original voice portrayal of the character by British voice actor George Sanders (who died only a few years after The Jungle Book was made). Though I liked the voice work of Sanders much better than that of Tony Jay...it was creepier...more blasé British aristocrat (no offense intended towards any British readers of this article) than Jay's snooty, detached business executive.
(For the reasons noted in the above paragraph, I was hugely disappointed by the Shere Khan character when I saw him portrayed in the TaleSpin series. He was a sad, pathetic shadow of what he was in The Jungle Book.)
It is interesting that the other characters seen in The Jungle Book were never utilized in the TaleSpin series, including Bagheera the black panther, Kaa the python, Colonel Hathi the elephant (as well as Winifred his frustrated wife, and Junior his eager, friendly son), Akela and Rama the wolves, and the vultures. One has to wonder why. Even if they would not be recurring characters, it would have been interesting to see them portrayed even once or twice (in fact, I don't recall whether or not they ever were. It's been since its original airing in the U.S., in the early 90's, since I have seen the series, and the information online about it does not show any indication that those characters were ever used in the series).
Of course, the opinions expressed here are mine...they do not reflect those of every fan or critic of the series (and the movie). In fact, I did enjoy the TaleSpin series when I saw it during its original run. But it certainly took the Jungle Book characters used for it in very different directions.
In TaleSpin, he is reimagined as a pilot working for a shipping transport company. He takes on a sort of Indiana Jones-ish character (though the general shiftlessness remains). Another trait is also preserved in the TaleSpin series...Baloo's soft spot for kids - and especially orphans. His sidekick, Kit Cloudkicker the bear cub, is an orphan just like Mowgli, the human child raised by wolves in The Jungle Book. In both instances, Baloo takes a strong altruistic and protective liking to them.
Baloo's voice actor in the movie was Phil Harris, who has done other work for Disney over the years. By the time the TaleSpin series began production in the early 90's, however, he was too old to voice the character (as Disney did offer the role to him first). Subsequently, voice actor Ed Gilbert was given the role. He apparently listened to old tapes of Harris (and watched movies and television episodes he was a voice actor in) and practiced Harris' voice until he got the sound just right. And it is an impressive bit of duplication!
(I like both character portrayals, though they are rather dissimilar from each other.)
Louie: A supporting cast member in both the movie and the television series, Louie is quite different in one versus the other. In the movie, he is King Louie, an orangutan who rules over a troupe of monkeys in the ruins of an ancient city buried in the jungle. King Louie was designed to talk like a "scat" singer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing), and was something of a treacherous, sneaky, cunning manipulator. He tried to deceive Mowgli into telling him the human secret of fire, in exchange for allowing him to continue living in the jungle with he and his monkey subjects. Bagheera, the black panther who was looking after Mowgli, saw through the trick and, with Baloo's help, rescued Mowgli from King Louie and the monkeys before he fell completely into Louie's trap.
In the TaleSpin series, Louie loses his kingship (or, rather, never had it), and instead becomes a Hawaiian shirt-wearing nightclub owner, and a friend of Baloo. The voice actor who portrayed him in the series, Jim Cummings (who also played Steele in the Balto movie), did a fair job of imitating the voice of the character as originally portrayed by Italian-American scat singer Louis Prima (known for such hits as "Just a Gigolo" and "Buona Sera", which are both often heard in Hollywood movies with Italian-American and/or Mafia storylines).
(Personally, I thought that Louie as a nightclub owner was a farce of what he was in the movie, in which he was an amazing character. In the series, however, he certainly lost his edge.)
Shere Khan: A villain in both the movie and the series, Shere Khan the tiger is another character whose portrayals are very dissimilar from one to the other. In the movie, he is a delightfully-sinister antagonist...one with a deadly cunning and remarkable unflappability which is shattered only by the presence of fire (which he fears greatly). He's so powerfully evil and important that, even when he does not appear on-screen in the movie, the characters spend a heck of a lot of time talking about him, and the terrible, ominous danger he represents (and how if he finds Mowgli he will surely kill him). His portrayal is similar (though much darker in his case) to two other Disney villains - Scar, from The Lion King (though, unlike Shere Khan, Scar is a bit of a sneaky, plotting coward), and Jafar the Grand Vizier from Aladdin (who, like Scar, is something of a sneaky, plotting villain - though much less of a coward). The voice work and delivery are similar in each case. Shere Khan remains as one of Disney's greatest animated villains ever...and certainly one of the most evil.
In the TaleSpin series, Shere Khan is reimagined as a cold, unflappable corporate executive, a businessman who is not above using sneaky, even nasty means to achieve whatever he wants. The deadly cunning and sinister, unflappable cool are gone in this portrayal, and replaced with a detached coldness and moderate ruthlessness. His voice actor in the series, Tony Jay, did a fair job of imitating the wonderful original voice portrayal of the character by British voice actor George Sanders (who died only a few years after The Jungle Book was made). Though I liked the voice work of Sanders much better than that of Tony Jay...it was creepier...more blasé British aristocrat (no offense intended towards any British readers of this article) than Jay's snooty, detached business executive.
(For the reasons noted in the above paragraph, I was hugely disappointed by the Shere Khan character when I saw him portrayed in the TaleSpin series. He was a sad, pathetic shadow of what he was in The Jungle Book.)
It is interesting that the other characters seen in The Jungle Book were never utilized in the TaleSpin series, including Bagheera the black panther, Kaa the python, Colonel Hathi the elephant (as well as Winifred his frustrated wife, and Junior his eager, friendly son), Akela and Rama the wolves, and the vultures. One has to wonder why. Even if they would not be recurring characters, it would have been interesting to see them portrayed even once or twice (in fact, I don't recall whether or not they ever were. It's been since its original airing in the U.S., in the early 90's, since I have seen the series, and the information online about it does not show any indication that those characters were ever used in the series).
Of course, the opinions expressed here are mine...they do not reflect those of every fan or critic of the series (and the movie). In fact, I did enjoy the TaleSpin series when I saw it during its original run. But it certainly took the Jungle Book characters used for it in very different directions.
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LOL oh well. That doesn't change the
comprehensibility of the article. It's just my nitpickiness that is
at work here...)
Baloo was handled a bit better and got some neat extra development (eg. interaction with females, holding genuine duties and responsibilities) he did on occasion have a meaner more self centered tone than the Jungle Book version, the anthro shift seemed to make him more materialistic I guess and he got dollars in his eyes too many times.
It is a shame they didn't use any other Jungle Book characters (par maybe the Kaa reference in My Fair Baloo) then again the film itself neglected so many potentially entertaining characters from the original novel (eg. Tabaqui the Jackal, Shere Khan's personal toadie).
Now if we can get some de anthroed Talespin characters into the next Jungle Book rehash...