Trivia / The Rescuers

• Actor-Shared Background: Eva Gabor is from Hungary, which happens to be the country Bianca represents at the Rescue Aid Society. Makes sense, as there is no hiding Gabor's accent.
• Children Voicing Children: 9-year-old Michelle Stacy voices 6-year-old Penny.
• Completely Different Title: "The Adventures of Bernard and Bianca" in France. "Bianca's Big Adventure" in Japan. Or simply "Bianca and Bernard" (or "Bernard and Bianca") in certain other countries.
• Creative Differences: Animators Frank Thomas and Milt Kahl disagreed about the sequence in which Brutus and Nero try to blow Miss Bianca and Bernard out of a pipe organ. Kahl felt that the alligators clowned too much, thus losing their menace. In response, and with playful spite, Thomas retaliated that he felt Kahl's own Madame Medusa loses her menace moments later when she falls off of a chair, after Mr. Snoops clumsily pushes it from beneath her feet.
• Creator Backlash: Animator Don Bluth was said to have finally had enough of Disney repeatedly falling short of their reputation with this film and, shortly thereafter, he led an infamous mass exodus of animators to his garage-based studio. He later said that the mice's Skintone Sclerae was a particular pet peeve of his.
• Creator Couple: Jeanette Nolan voices Ellie Mae, while her husband John McIntire plays Rufus.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Bizarrely, the Italian dub had Penny voiced by a young boy.
• Descended Creator: Story artist Larry Clemmons also voices Gramps, the turtle.
• Died During Production:
  • Joe Flynn (Snoops) died unexpectedly in 1974, three years before this film was released. The voicework for the film was done around 1973.
  • This, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, was the last movie that director and longtime Disney animator John Lounsbery worked on before his passing in 1976, one year before the movie's release. Art Stevens took over directing duties after John's passing.
  • This is the last released animated film to have any involvement at all from Walt Disney himself; he was involved in the very early stages of the film. By the time the film was released, Walt had been gone for over a decade.
• Dueling Dubs: The film was dubbed into Japanese twice. The first was released in 1981 and featured Noriko Shindo as Miss Bianca and the late Yasuo Yamada as Bernard. Nineteen years later, a new dub was produced for a home video release, with Noriko Ohara reprising her role as Miss Bianca from The Rescuers Down Under and Yoshito Yasuhara taking over for Yamada as Bernard; this was eventually carried over to the Disney+ streaming service.
• Late Export for You: The film was first released in Japan in 1981, four years after its initial theatrical release in 1977.
• Medium Blending: The fireworks going off when Orvile lands at Devil's Bayou, aren't animated, but are recorded footage of real-life fireworks. As Disney was still in their cost-cutting "Dark Age", it was easier (and cheaper) for the production staff to composite the characters over live action film, than to try and animate convincing fireworks.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The original 1977 theatrical trailer showed an extended shot of Orville's landing, set against a sunrise backdrop, not seen in the actual film.
• Non-Singing Voice: Just as she did for Gabor in The Aristocats, Robie Lester provided the uncredited singing voice of Miss Bianca during "Rescue Aid Society".
• One-Take Wonder: According to Milt Kahl, Geraldine Page nailed every single one of Medusa's lines in one take.
• The Other Darrin: For the 2000 Japanese dub, everyone besides Gorō Naya (Rescue Aid Society Chairman) was recast.
• Posthumous Credit: This was Joe Flynn's last film. He recorded his lines as Mr. Snoops only a few weeks before his untimely death from drowning in July 19, 1974. The film was released three years later.
• Role Reprise: In the second Japanese dub, Gorō Naya reprised his role as the chairman from the 1981 dub and Noriko Ohara reprised her role as Miss Bianca from The Rescuers Down Under.
• Swan Song: While an inadvertent one for Joe Flynn, Jim Jordan (of Fibber McGee and Molly) was in his eighties at the time of recording, and hadn't performed in anything since his first wife and comedy partner Marian's passing over a decade ago. He would later do a guest appearance in 1976 on Chico and the Man, his last live-action role, but due to the film's lengthy production, it came out afterward.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Disney first optioned The Rescuers shortly after the publication of the original novel, which involved rescuing a depressed poet from a prison in a frozen wasteland, but the project was shelved because of the political overtones involved in depicting the totalitarian government that ran the prison.
  • The second attempt was based on the sixth book in the series, Miss Bianca in the Antarctic. It was going to be a vehicle for Louis Prima (King Louie of The Jungle Book (1967)), playing Louie the Bear, and, according to the video in the link, to be about a polar bear using a pair of mice to help him escape from the zoo and to save his friends at the North Pole. This version was scrapped shortly before Prima lapsed into a coma and it was Retooled into the movie we know today, which is based mainly on the second book in the series, Miss Bianca.^note Prima never regained consciousness from his coma, and died the year after the finished film was released.
  • Even after it was Re Tooled away from being a vehicle for him, Louis Prima was still going to be in the movie with his intended character reworked. In the original draft, Bernard and Bianca were going to talk to Louis the Bear about Penny where he revealed she came to the zoo often. He also sang a song called "Peoplitis". It may have been cut for time as Prima did record the song and, presumably, his lines.
  • Also, before it was completely retooled, the movie's antagonist and villain was originally going to be Cruella DeVille. In fact there is a bit of a Development Gag there - Madame Medusa not only has a similar car and drives very similarly to Cruella, but also her jet ski looks to be inspired by Cruella's car.
  • Less a development gag and more the result of one animator's insane jealousy. Milt Kahl, one of Disney's Nine Old Men, had been insanely jealous of his colleague Marc Davis's animation of Cruella and Medusa was his attempt to finally "outdo" him.
  • In the planning phase, Orville the albatross was originally a pigeon. It was changed after Ollie Johnston remembered watching a True-Life Adventures film about how clumsy albatrosses are on their takeoffs and landings.
  • Originally, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers was supposed to be a Rescuers TV series. Consider the expies:
    Chip + Dale = Bernard
    Gadget = Bianca
    Monterey Jack = Jake
    Zipper = Evinrude the dragonfly
  • Had Penny not been replaced with Jenny, Oliver & Company would have instead been Disney's first sequel/spin-off in the canon, preceding Down Under by two years (not counting The Three Caballeros, which follows the Good Neighbour policy but doesn't continue any story from Saludos Amigos).
  • The producers intended for the popular 1970s pop duo Carpenters to do the movie's music, but scheduling conflicts forced them to reluctantly decline. Having to turn it down was especially hard for Karen Carpenter to do, as she was a big fan of Disney.
  • Brutus and Nero are called alligators in the concept art◊, but the in the film itself Bianca calls them "crocs", suggesting that they are crocodiles. However, some spinoff material (such as this book) still calls them alligators.
  • An original scene that never made it into the final film involved one in which Madame Medusa was sewing the Devil's Eye diamond into Teddy. This is still kept in the official picture-book adaptations of the movie.
  • Cuba was once considered as the setting.
  • Originally, the Rescue Aid Society was to be placed in a hole somewhere, until the idea of a luggage bag in the basement of the United Nations building came up.
• Write Who You Hate: As revealed on Walt Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, Madame Medusa was based on Milt Kahl's ex-wife, Phyllis Bounds Detiege. Milt was married 3 times and she's his only wife he divorced (the other two died from illness).
• Write Who You Know: Milt Kahl based Madame Medusa on his ex-wife, who was also Walt's sister-in-law, who he particularly hated.
• Madame Medusa's jet ski, or "swampmobile", appears to be powered by a jet engine. This is evidenced by the jet engine-like rear exhaust and the distinctive jet noises the vehicle makes. However, in a later scene in the film, a normal four-stroke engine is shown under the hood at the front.
  • It's possible that the jet ski is powered by a motorjet, an early form of jet engine where the compressor is powered by a separate (in this case internal combustion) engine, rather than the jet itself.

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