Funny Stories from The Aristocats.
(The background cover: Ev'rybody Wants To Be A Cat - The Aristocats, was arranged and played by me on bass flute).
The original concept for the film was actually going to be about a family of humans.
The original story was going to be about a family of humans who were stranded in the French countryside.
The original concept for the film was eventually scrapped and replaced with the story of a family of aristocratic cats.
The Aristocats was released in 1970, and it was the last film that Walt Disney personally approved before he passed away.
The famous jazz musician Scatman Crothers provided the voice of Scat Cat in The Aristocats.
The villainous butler Edgar was supposed to have a song and dance number, but it was ultimately cut from the film.
The voices of Duchess and O'Malley, the two main characters in The Aristocats, were provided by
Eva Gabor and Phil Harris, respectively.
The process of animating a film like The Aristocats involves drawing thousands of individual frames by hand.
The Aristocats was the first Disney animated film to use the process of Xerography, which allowed animators to transfer their drawings directly onto the cels.
Cels, or celluloids, are clear sheets of plastic that were used in traditional animation to create each frame of a film.
The process of creating one minute of traditional animation requires approximately 1,440 individual drawings.
During the scene where the kittens are playing the piano, the animators actually had to teach the kittens how to tap the keys with their paws.
The film's creators actually considered having a sequence where the cats get high on catnip, but ultimately
decided against it.
During the filming of The Aristocats, one of the animators accidentally spilled coffee on some of the cel drawings, creating a unique coffee stain effect that ended up being incorporated into the final film.
One more funny anecdote: during the filming of The Aristocats, the filmmakers hired a live cat to observe the kittens for inspiration, but the cat ended up falling asleep on.
In the original script, the villainous butler Edgar was actually supposed to succeed in his plan to get rid of the cats, but test audiences found it too upsetting and the ending was changed.
The original concept for The Aristocats was actually much darker, with a plot centered around a group of alley cats trying to rescue a kidnapped cat from a gang of vicious dogs. The story was later toned down to make it more family-friendly.
The Aristocats was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Original Song and another for Best Original Score.
While it didn't win either award, the film was still a huge success, grossing over $55 million at the box office.
During the production of The Aristocats, one of the animators accidentally drew a bottle of whiskey into one of the scenes, but the mistake wasn't noticed until after the film was released.
When it was brought to their attention, the animators quickly drew a milk bottle over the whiskey bottle to cover it up.
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