BACKGROUND
The 1970s saw Disney Animation go into a bit of a slump.
Though The Jungle Book (1967) was praised by the majority of critics and viewers, this was at least partly down to the fact that Walt Disney himself ensured his full involvement in the story and development of the animated feature. The popularity of The Jungle Book was likely not because of a growing interest and appreciation for Disney animated films, since the 1960s were not a great time for Disney Animation either.
Sadly, after Walt Disney’s death in 1966, it was clear that the Disney Animation department was struggling and declining at the beginning of the 1970s. Their following two releases of The Aristocats (1970) and Robin Hood (1973) were considered to be “mediocre” and “low-quality” by many.
However, in 1977, the release of The Rescuers would change the direction of Disney’s Animation department. With its touching story and easy-to-follow plot, not to mention its humour and great voice cast, it was received very well by audiences.
Yet, although The Rescuers has been labelled one of the movies that “saved” Disney Animation – something that seems to have been needed every decade or so ever since Disney Animation began – The Rescuers is not a film that many people speak highly of, or speak about at all. It’s one of those Disney films that doesn’t have a huge fan base and is therefore forgotten about by those who don’t love it, becoming just one in a long list of Disney movies, good or bad.
I quite like The Rescuers. It’s not one of my favourites, but it is one that I revisit fairly often, although if The Rescuers was a full hour-and-a-half feature, as became Disney’s standard from their “Renaissance Era” in the 1990s, I probably wouldn’t like it as much. It’s a film that is good partly because it’s not particularly long, only about 75 minutes in total. I could say this about many other Disney films that I like, for example, Cinderella (1950), Fantasia 2000 (1999), and Alice in Wonderland (1951). In this case, it was a good idea for The Rescuers’ storyline not be pushed to fit a standard viewing time, otherwise I think it would’ve been tedious to sit through.
The Rescuers is not the most artistically spectacular or the most clever Disney animated film, but it has charming characters, a fantastically flamboyant villain, and some pretty background scenes, as well as a soundtrack of melancholic but enchanting music.
PLOT
The Rescuers starts with a brief opening scene of a little girl on a riverboat in the bayou, dropping a bottle into a lake. We see this bottle’s journey through the lake and the sea during the opening credits. The bottle is found with a message inside by a group of mice, who take it to the Rescue Aid Society, a team of international mice delegates who answer children’s cries for help. The Rescue Aid Society headquarters is based within the United Nations headquarters in New York City, and the mice delegates travel to the meetings in the bags of the human UN delegates. The Rescue Aid Society has set up an emergency meeting in order to read the message and discuss which mouse or mice should take the assignment should someone need rescuing. There, they find that a girl called Penny, missing from Morningside Orphanage, needs help, however, her message is water-damaged, so that’s all the information they have. Bianca, the beautiful delegate from Hungary, begs to take the assignment, with the Chairman allowing her to choose a co-agent to go with her. She surprisingly chooses Bernard, the nervous janitor, and they set off to find out where Penny may have gone.
After taking some wrong turns on the way to Morningside Orphanage, where Bernard manages to upset a lion at the zoo, Bernard and Bianca make it to Penny’s orphanage. They speak to the resident cat, Rufus, who tells them that Penny would not run away, but that a strange woman who owns a nearby pawn shop had offered her a ride a few weeks before.
Bianca and Bernard go to the pawn shop to look for clues. They find Madame Medusa, a sharp-tongued, easily irritated, gaudily dressed woman. They overhear a phone call: Medusa is complaining that her partner, Snoops, hasn’t managed to get “the girl” to find the diamond, and that she’ll be coming to Devil’s Bayou tonight to remedy that. Realising this girl must be Penny, Bianca and Bernard try and follow her in her car, but she drives like such a maniac that they lose her. The next day, they book a flight to Devil’s Bayou with Fly Albatross Air Service, where they literally fly on the back of an albatross called Orville in a sardine tin – not the safest way to travel, and Bernard, a safety freak, is not happy about that! After a dodgy take-off through the streets of New York, and with some convincing from Bianca, he settles into the journey.
On arrival at Devil’s Bayou, Orville is spooked by fireworks coming from a nearby riverboat and they crash-land into the swamp. They are spotted by Ellie Mae, a muskrat living the swamp, and some of the other swamp creatures who help get Bernard and Bianca to safety. Orville flies off home. Evinrude, a dragonfly and “boat captain”, takes Bernard and Bianca over to the riverboat in his leaf boat. It turns out the fireworks were set off by Snoops and Medusa as Penny has tried to run away again. She is brought back by Medusa’s alligators, Nero and Brutus. As Penny is returned to her room, and just about to give up hope of getting home, Bianca and Bernard finally find her room, and get to talk to her, after some mishaps with Brutus and Nero; Penny’s “guards”.
Penny tells them she’s being forced into a cave to find a diamond, the “Devil’s Eye”, by Medusa, and that she won’t let her go home until she gets it. The three come up with a plan to escape, however, their plan is delayed by the low tide coming in and Penny being forced into the cave again. This time, though, the two mice work with Penny to finally get the diamond for Medusa. Medusa is thrilled but back at the riverboat, she holds Snoops and Penny at gunpoint, telling them she is about to leave with Penny’s teddy bear, much to Penny’s dismay, because the bear is concealing the diamond.
However, Bernard and Bianca trip Medusa with a wire, giving Penny the chance to grab her teddy bear and run. Ellie Mae, Luke, and the rest of the animals come to help, trapping Nero and Brutus in a disused elevator, and Penny runs to Medusa’s swamp boat to escape. It won’t start though, so Luke is told to tip his alcohol concoction into the engine to get it running. Instead of destroying the engine as you’d expect, the boat starts running! Fireworks are set off inside the boat as a further distraction to stop Medusa and Snoops coming after Penny and she rushes away. The riverboat blows up, freeing Nero and Brutus, who Medusa tries to use as water-skis to follow Penny in the boat. Snoops paddles down the bayou slowly, and laughs as Medusa slams into a pipe and is trapped up it, and her alligators start snapping at her. Her plan has well and truly failed.
Back home in New York, Bernard and Bianca, and the rest of the Rescue Aid Society, watch a news report showing that Penny has handed in the diamond to the police, and it is going to the Smithsonian Museum. She also has finally been adopted by a nice couple. Bernard and Bianca are pleased with the result of the case, but Bianca quickly volunteers them for a new case, even though Bernard just wants a break! The movie ends with the two flying away, again on Orville, in a terrible snowstorm, seemingly to start work.
CHARACTERS & CAST
These two mice detectives, Bernard and Bianca, couldn’t be more different from each other. The Rescuers has strong female leads, with the female characters having, frankly, quite incompetent male counterparts. This is true of Bianca and Bernard to some extent, as Bianca is the Hungarian delegate of the Rescue Aid Society, and she is the strong, solid one within her partnership with Bernard. Bianca isn’t afraid of what may happen to them during the course of this assignment, and is just willing to go with the flow and keep going because rescuing Penny is the most important goal for them. She takes curveballs in her stride, and has the ability to just go with it. Bianca is also incredibly glamourous, not even wanting to buckle her seatbelt tightly on their “plane” so that it doesn’t wrinkle her dress. Bianca is voiced by Hungarian-American actress Eva Gabor. Gabor appeared in stage productions, television series, and films throughout her career from the 1940s until her death in 1995. Some of her credits include portraying Liane d’Exelmans in Gigi (1958), which won all nine of its Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, at the Oscars ceremony in 1959, and Lisa Douglas in the sitcom Green Acres (1965-71). She had previously voiced the also glamourous and beautiful Duchess in The Aristocats (1970) for Disney before The Rescuers, which goes to show that you can even be typecast in animation!
Bernard, on the other hand, is the nervous, superstitious janitor of the Rescue Aid Society. He’s not thrilled at having to go on an assignment, though he is pleased to spend time with Miss Bianca. We see he’s superstitious multiple times during the film, mostly related to the number “13”, like there being thirteen steps on ladders, and the final scene of the film, where Bianca volunteers them both for another case, taking place on Friday 13th January. Bernard is very lovable though, despite being quite anxious and jumpy, wanting to choose the safer route over the riskier, but necessary, ones. Having said that, he isn’t afraid to protect Bianca, and saves her from drowning and from being eaten by one of Medusa’s guard alligators. Bernard is voiced by American actor and comedian Bob Newhart, who starred in his own comedy variety show The Bob Newhart Show (1961-62), for which he won a Golden Globe for Best Male TV Star, and went on to star in the sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), a huge hit at the time. He won three Grammy awards in 1961 for his comedy albums. Modern audiences may remember him as Papa Elf in Elf (2003) and as Professor Proton, a recurring guest role, in The Big Bang Theory (2007-19) for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, and its spin-off show Young Sheldon (2017-24).
Then there’s Madame Medusa, a strong female villain, and her clumsy fool of a sidekick, Mr. Snoops, who is so scared of Medusa he tries to do everything she says to keep her happy, which has varying levels of success! I kind of feel bad for Snoops at times when he is constantly being belittled and talked down to. Mr. Snoops was designed as a caricature of animation historian John Culhane, who was given the nickname “Snoops” for his investigative work around the Disney Studios[1]. He was tricked into posing for drawings, and had no idea he was being used as source material until the film was released. Luckily, he was thrilled with the outcome! Joe Flynn provided the voice of Mr. Snoops. In the 1960s, he was well-known for his portrayal of Captain Wallace Binghamton in ABC’s sitcom McHale’s Navy (1962-66), before going on to appear in a long-line of Disney live-action movies: Son of Flubber (1963), The Love Bug (1968), and as Dean Higgins in the Dexter Riley trilogy of films: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972), and The Strongest Man in the World (1975), alongside Kurt Russell. Joe Flynn sadly passed away in July 1974, just after he had completed his voice work on The Rescuers.
If Medusa looks familiar, that’s because she is modelled after Cruella de Vil, at least partly. Even Medusa’s driving and her car look like Cruella de Vil’s. Originally, animator Ken Anderson had sketched Cruella in alligator-inspired clothing as early designs for Cruella to be the villain in The Rescuers, since she is a kidnapper and was already loved by Disney audiences after her appearance in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). In the end though, it was decided that The Rescuers should not look like a sequel to One Hundred and One Dalmatians, so instead Madame Medusa was merely based on Cruella de Vil.
Animator Milt Kahl designed the character, using his wife, Phyllis Bounds, as reference material, alongside Cruella. The two married in 1968 and would divorce in 1978; they had a bit of a tumultuous relationship. Madame Medusa is a good villainess, as she’s a greedy, selfish, vain woman, capable of kidnapping a little girl, telling the girl she’ll never get anywhere in life, forcing her into a cave where she almost drowns, and then threatening her at gunpoint – and with alligators! She’s a character you love-to-hate because she is funny to watch with her overly flamboyant nature and poor taste in clothes. She’s not magical or talented in any way; Medusa is simply truly evil and despicable. Kahl also used inspiration from the vocal performances of Medusa’s voice actor for the character, stage-and-screen actor Geraldine Page[2]. Page had many roles in screen productions, such as Interiors (1978), for which she won a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress, and The Trip to Bountiful (1985), where she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Page also appeared in the live-action Disney musical film The Happiest Millionaire (1967). Geraldine Page performed on stage in numerous productions. At the time of her death in 1987, Page was performing as Madame Arcati in the Noël Coward play Blithe Spirit; she did not appear for her performance on 13th June that year and was later found dead in her Manhattan townhouse.
The most important character in The Rescuers, though, is little Penny. She has most of the heart-breaking scenes in the film. The first scene of her putting a bottle into the sea as a cry for help is upsetting, even from the outset. We also see her at her orphanage, talking to Rufus, the cat, about how she wasn’t picked for adoption that day and that she never thinks she will be, but Rufus tells her to have faith. Penny must have been terrified, being ripped away from her home by Medusa and being taken to some rundown boat in the middle of the bayou. She is then forced to search for a diamond in a tiny, dark cave, where the tide can rush in. Despite her terror, she continues to do it against her will, and tries her hardest to get free from her captivity and get home. I think she would’ve eventually been able to escape on her own, because Penny is very smart, but it’s good that Bianca and Bernard were able to help her get out quickly. Penny was voiced by child actor Michelle Stacy.
After all that, you need a bit of comic relief! There are a few characters who provide this: firstly, Orville, the albatross, who provides a flight service for small animals. He’s a bit absent-minded, not a particularly good flyer, especially around take-offs, but he’s an, albeit brief, bit of comedy for the audience amongst the darker themes. I do like the scenes we get of him and the mice on their journey to Devil’s Bayou though, as the sunset and landscapes in particular look magical. Orville was voiced by Jim Jordan, who passed away in 1988.
Husband and wife, John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, both voiced characters in The Rescuers: Rufus and Ellie Mae. Rufus is a very kind, cute cat, who is Penny’s friend when she needs one most, and helps Bernard and Bianca find her by telling them about Medusa and her pawn shop. Ellie Mae is the muskrat who is forever nagging Luke – her muskrat husband, I think? – to be useful. McIntire and Nolan would go on to voice characters for Disney’s next animation film, The Fox and the Hound (1981), where Nolan voiced Widow Tweed, and McIntire voiced the Badger.
The rest of the creatures in the swamp who help Bernard, Bianca, and Penny escape at the end are another element of comic relief, as they come to help in full force, not with much of a plan, hitting Medusa with various things, pulling her hair – they might not know how to help, but they definitely give it a go! Luke and Ellie Mae are funny too as they are constantly arguing because Luke is only really interested in his bottle of strong liquor, getting characters to drink it to boost their energy. Luke’s voice may sound familiar to Disney animated film fans as his voice actor was Pat Buttram. Buttram voiced the characters of Napoleon in The Aristocats (1970) and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood (1973) previous to The Rescuers. There is also Evinrude, the dragonfly, who drives a “leafboat” and even goes with Bernard and Bianca on their next assignment, having to right Orville’s failed take-off right at the end of the film. He is very much overworked, the poor fly. In an early draft of the film, the swamp critters were going to be part of the Rescue Aid Society, with their leader being a singing bullfrog voiced by Phil Harris, voice of Baloo in The Jungle Book (1967) and Little John in Robin Hood (1973), but this idea was cut.
PRODUCTION
Disney’s The Rescuers is loosely based on the novels The Rescuers and Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, two of a nine book series, published between 1959 and 1978. Walt Disney optioned the two books that had been published in 1962, with development beginning shortly after. Originally, the first story idea was of two mice rescuing a Norwegian poet from an Eastern European prison after being wrongfully imprisoned, a similar plot to the first of Sharp’s books. The storyline was adapted again and would have followed the mice saving a poet from a Cuban prison, with their escape back to the United States involving an action-packed boat chase through the Bahamas in a hurricane. Walt did not like the political suggestions in either storyline, saying they were dark anyway, so the project was shelved.
A few years after Walt’s death, the idea was picked up again, but this time, it would have involved a penguin and a bear. A penguin ended up coming from the South Pole and being dumped in a zoo. At the zoo, the penguin would have met a performing bear named Willie. The penguin conned the bear out of escaping the zoo with him and going back to the South Pole. But back in the South Pole, the penguin set up a run-down entertainment venue and began to force the bear to perform for his paying penguin customers. The bear became unhappy and sent a message in a bottle, which was found by the mice and discovered to be a cry for help. There were a few issues with this story idea, with one being that a penguin doesn’t make an evil, believable villain. Trying telling that to Wallace and Gromit, and Aardman Animations! The Disney team struggled on this story for a year or two, changing the location back to America and just having it set in a zoo with this same bear, but according to animator Burny Mattinson, they couldn’t get the story to work.
Director Woolie Reitherman became exasperated with the issues around coming up with a decent story for The Rescuers, saying he just wanted a simple kidnap story like in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), so he looked at another of Margery Sharp’s books in the same series, Miss Bianca. There he discovered a new story idea, around an old lady who had kidnapped this young girl. The villain was the Diamond Duchess. The Disney team tried to keep the same bear character from earlier ideas, now naming him Louie with the aim to have Louis Prima voice him. The connection to the story would’ve been that the girl, named Patience in the book, had “befriended” the bear during her visits to the zoo, as it was to be near to her orphanage, and the bear would be able to give clues as to the girl’s whereabouts[3]. Louis Prima had recorded most of his dialogue for the film, as well as some songs, however, he became ill and never regained consciousness from brain surgery in 1975. Though the character of Louie the Bear did end up being scrapped, there is still a reference to the zoo in the final film, when Bernard and Bianca are trying to walk through it as a shortcut, but come across a “grumpy lion”, who scares them away.
One difference between the books and Disney’s The Rescuers is that the book series followed the organisation, the Prisoners’ Aid Society, not the Rescue Aid Society. Character names were changed as well, such as Patience becoming Penny, and Madame Medusa being the new name for the Diamond Duchess. Diamond Duchess also has an evil sidekick called Mandrake in the book, and Patience does not have to search for a diamond, instead being used as a slave. The alligators are bloodhounds called Tyrant and Torment in the novel, and Bernard and Bianca are not, and do not become, a couple in the novels, as they do in the movie. But even their relationship during the development of the film came out differently than planned. It was first thought that they had to be skilled sleuths, and that they would be married. It was soon discovered that with this idea, there would be little conflict and growth, so it was decided to make them unknown to each other before the case, and that they would also be amateurs. The setting is also different between the novel and film, as the novel is set within the “Diamond Palace”, a marvellous and majestic space, unlike the rundown bayou riverboat that Medusa occupies. For Medusa’s hideout, the Disney team thought of making it a pirate fortress, and then an Art Deco mansion, which would’ve more closely matched the story of Diamond Duchess and her palace. But in the end, the choice was for the hideout to be on a riverboat on the bayou[4].
The xerography process, where animators copied their drawings onto cels directly using a Xerox camera instead of having their work “cleaned up” and inked in by other artists, was used again in The Rescuers, despite being criticised by some for making the Disney movies of the 1960s and 70s look “cheap”, even by Walt Disney who was not a fan of the process. However, previously it had only been able to produce black outlines on characters. The Rescuers was the first Disney feature to use colour xerox, where the outlines could be grey instead. The xerography process gave the film a classic look, and looked less sketchy than some of the previous uses of this technology at Disney Animation.
Some animation sequences were reused from previous features, as was quite standard for Disney around this time. For example, the scene of Penny trying to escape through the swamp was reused from The Jungle Book (1967), where Mowgli is running through the forest[5]. Both these animation process choices would’ve kept the budget low, as was necessary to make a profit.
The Rescuers was the last Disney film to be worked on by the “Nine Old Men”, the term for Walt Disney’s original key team of artists, including Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Eric Larson, and Milt Kahl. They spent much of their time on this movie training newer animators, like Glen Keane. Keane was assigned to Ollie Johnston, who had him work on Penny and her small scene at the start of the film. Johnston helped show Keane how to simplify his work and make it look cleaner. The structure for the Animation Department at this time was for there to be an “A Team”, and a “B Team”, with the “A Team” being the more seasoned artists, working on a more prestigious project, and for the “B Team” to work on a simpler film, to train up newer animators. After Robin Hood (1973), the “A Team” were starting work on adapting a book called Scruffy by Paul Gallico, about the monkeys of Gibraltar, set during World War II, and the ancient legend that if the apes die out, the British Empire will lose Gibraltar. When production failed to move this story forward, both teams combined to work on The Rescuers instead, and the newer artists were mentored by the veterans. The Rescuers ended up being considered as the film that changed Disney’s approach to animation and was a transition from the Old Guard to the New Guard[6].
MUSIC
The music in The Rescuers is quite different to the majority of animated films that came before it, and that is because it is quite sombre. There are no songs that have been included for comic relief purposes, and none that could be described as “cheerful”. Nevertheless, I like the soundtrack for The Rescuers, despite its melancholy. Only one song is performed by the movie’s characters.
Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins contributed to all four of the soundtrack’s original songs. The two had previously co-written the lyrics for the song “Gonna Fly Now” from the movie Rocky (1976) before working on the music for The Rescuers. Connors was also known as the lead singer of the pop trio The Teddy Bears in the late 1950s and sang their only major hit “To Know Him Is To Love Him”.
Connors and Robbins co-composed three of the songs here. The first one to mention is “The Journey”, which appears during the Opening Credits. It accompanies the scene of the bottle making its way across the ocean to make it to New York and the headquarters of the Rescue Aid Society. It is a very sad song as it continuously asks “who will rescue me?”, and sets up the tone of the events that follow. It was performed by singer Shelby Flint, whose biggest hits were in the 1960s with “Angel on My Shoulder” and “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”. She also sang on the soundtrack of Clint Eastwood’s film Breezy (1973).
Another song is “Tomorrow Is Another Day”, my favourite song in the soundtrack, because, although it is not a bright and breezy kind of song, it does feel quite calming and almost dream-like. It plays during the scene of Bianca and Bernard flying on Orville the albatross over to Devil’s Bayou. After a panic-inducing take-off, the journey settles into a nice journey over pretty landscapes and a beautiful sunset. It also sees Bernard and Bianca begin to fall in love with each other; it’s a cute song. “Tomorrow Is Another Day” was again performed by Shelby Flint. There is also a brief reprise of the song at the end of the film.
The third song to mention is the theme song of the Rescue Aid Society, aptly named “Rescue Aid Society”. It is performed as a group number by the delegates of the society, but most notably we hear Bob Newhart singing as Bernard, and Robie Lester singing as Bianca, the only delegate running late for the meeting! Robie Lester had previously provided the singing voice for Duchess in The Aristocats (1970), another character that Eva Gabor had voiced for Disney. It’s quite an upbeat song and is also a song that will randomly get stuck in my head from time to time!
The fourth and final song is “Someone’s Waiting for You”. This time, the lyrics were written by Connors and Robbins but the music was composed by Sammy Fain. Sammy Fain had been hired as a lyricist on The Rescuers early on, and had written a couple of songs, but director Woolie Reitherman was looking for a more contemporary sound, so Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins were also approached. Fain had previously contributed to the music for Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953). He also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song twice, once for “Secret Love” from Calamity Jane (1953) and again for “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” from the 1956 film of the same name. “Someone’s Waiting for You” is not completely sad and depressing, because it is meant to be giving Penny hope that she will be rescued soon and that she can be happy again. It’s very sweet and made even better by the fact that shortly after, Penny meets Bernard and Bianca who help her escape. This song was again performed by Shelby Flint.
The Rescuers received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, with “Someone’s Waiting for You”, but did not win, losing out to “You Light Up My Life” from the 1977 film of the same name. It was also up against “Candle on the Water” from Pete’s Dragon (1977), a live-action/animated hybrid film from Disney. This was the last time Disney would be nominated for any Oscar until the release of The Little Mermaid (1989).
The score was composed by Artie Butler. Within the score, I specifically like the instrumental pieces “The Swamp/Escape”, which plays when Penny has run away again and Medusa and Snoops are trying to bring her back; “In the Black Hole/It’s the Devil’s Eye”, because this is a particularly great moment in the film, as the mice and Penny search for this infamous huge diamond; and “Faster, Evinrude, Faster!”, the catchy theme for Evinrude the dragonfly as he is told to drive his leaf boat faster – over and over again…I did say he was overworked.
RECEPTION
The Rescuers was released widely in June 1977 in the United States, before being distributed out to other countries. It was received well by critics, who stated that The Rescuers seemed to signal a turning of the tide in Disney’s animation department, and felt that it was much more like the movies that Walt Disney had first produced in Disney’s “Golden Age”, in the late-1930s and early 1940s, unlike the animated movies that had preceded The Rescuers in the 1970s. Viewers liked its touching moments, simple story, and charming animation.
The Rescuers was also successful at the box office, despite being released just a month after the first Star Wars (1977) movie. It made around $48 million worldwide, against a budget of about $12 million, making it the first Disney animated success since 1967’s The Jungle Book. In some countries, such as France and Germany, The Rescuers actually outperformed Star Wars! The Rescuers even won a Special Citation Award in 1977 at the National Board of Review Awards for “restoring and upgrading the art of animation”.
The Rescuers would be re-released in theatres in both 1983 and 1989, before being released on video in 1992 – with an infamous VHS recall happening in 1999. Despite The Rescuers seeming to be a yet another harmless Disney movie, surprisingly, back in January 1999, it was discovered that 3.4 million copies of The Rescuers home video were recalled from the 1999 video re-release, due to two frames of footage containing an “objectionable background image”. This turned out to be a brief, blurry glimpse of a topless woman, which appears in the scene where Bianca and Bernard are flying through the streets of New York on the back of Orville the albatross; she appears in one of the windows. Disney made it clear that in ordinary viewing, these frames cannot be seen as the film runs too fast, however, with video allowing pausing, re-winding and fast-forwarding, this image was then discovered by viewers. Disney insisted on the recall to keep its promise to families of being a family entertainment brand that people can trust[7]. Clearly, some of these VHS tapes were not handed in by parents as part of the recall, as this unfortunate story has been revived again and again over the years, including in 2020.
This led to the Huffington Post interviewing former Disney animator, Tom Sito, to discuss some of these Disney “sexual messages”. The majority of these were hoaxes, or misheard dialogue, however, Sito was asked to discuss the “objectionable image” in The Rescuers. He claimed that all the animators knew about this image and that it had been added into the original 1977 cut as a joke. The executives who had been at Disney around the time of the first release of The Rescuers had left the company by the time the VHS re-release was planned. The new executives had no idea about the image, so used the 1977 negative for that, which is what caused the embarrassing error. Sito ended his comments by stating that the animators were not asked if there was anything in the original footage, otherwise they would have said[8].
LEGACY
But before all that happened, The Rescuers almost had a TV legacy, with a television series being proposed, however, the idea was replaced with Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers (1989-90) because The Rescuers already had a sequel in production, The Rescuers Down Under (1990), which was the first Disney animated feature to get a theatrical sequel. There was brief talk of there being a live-action adaptation of the film around the late-2010s, however, this was quietly dropped from the Disney slate[9].
In terms of a franchise, the sequel is really the biggest thing to have come from The Rescuers, as there is very little reference to the film in the Disney theme parks, and in the media. Bernard and Bianca were available as walkaround characters in the Disney theme parks a few years after the film’s release, but they are much rarer to see now. For example, Bernard and Bianca have only been spotted at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland within the last few years. Bernard and Bianca appeared at the Disneyland after Dark: Sweethearts’ Nite in both 2022 and 2023, but did not return in 2024. Surprisingly, I have also seen pictures online of Orville the albatross and Evinrude the dragonfly as walkaround characters at Walt Disney World and at Disneyland, but these pictures must have been from just after the movie’s release and the two clearly did not last long. In 2022, The Rescuers celebrated its 45th anniversary so new merchandise lines, such as pins and ornaments were released too.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Rescuers was a bright light within a difficult period for the Disney Animation department. Its success may not have lasted into the present day, but it still had a purpose and helped Disney eventually get to their “Renaissance Era”.
I like The Rescuers, and I know there are others out there who do too. This was Disney trying something a bit newer, an action-adventure film, and it did well, even with competition from the likes of Star Wars. It’s a bit darker and more melancholy than other Disney features, but it has a good message: that anyone, big or small, is capable of doing great things – as well as a lesson to not go near strange women!
But the biggest message is about having hope, even in the most difficult and dark situations. As Rufus, the Morningside Orphanage cat, says: “Faith is a bluebird, you see from afar. It’s for real, and as sure as the first evening star. You can’t touch it, or buy it, or wrap it up tight, but it’s there just the same, making things turn out right.”
REFERENCES
[1] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘The Rescuers (1977)’, pp. 67-69.
[2] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Remembering the Rescuers’, MousePlanet.com, 19th January 2022.
[3] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘“The Rescuers” That Almost Was’, CartoonResearch.com, 20th May 2022.
[4] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Remembering the Rescuers’, MousePlanet.com,19th January 2022.
[5] Credit: Mari Ness, ‘Rescuing More than Just Small Girls and Teddy Bears: Disney’s The Rescuers’, Tor (online), 17th September 2015.
[6] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Remembering the Rescuers’, MousePlanet.com, 19th January 2022.
[7] Credit: BBC, ‘Disney recalls video over ‘nude image’, BBC.co.uk/news, 9th January 1999.
[8] Credit: Bill Bradley, ‘Finally, The Truth About Disney’s ‘Hidden Sexual Messages’ Revealed’, HuffPost.com, 17th December 2020.
[9] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Remembering the Rescuers’, MousePlanet.com, 19th January 2022.
The Disney Purist 