Trivia / Song of the South

• Acting for Two: Not only did James Baskett portray Uncle Remus, he also voiced Br'er Fox. Also, when Johnny Lee, the voice of Br'er Rabbit, was called away to do promotion for the picture, Baskett stepped in to voice Br'er Rabbit for the "Laughing Place" scene. Oh, and Baskett also played a butterfly he originally auditioned to play.
• Banned in China: In 2011, Bob Iger said that Song of the South would not receive future distribution in the United States to avoid controversy over its depiction of black people in the Southern US during the Reconstruction era. In March 2020, this was revealed to be an outright ban, as Iger told people at a shareholders event that the film would never get a release on Disney+, not even with an added disclaimer at the beginning, as long as he was in charge.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" continues to enjoy plenty of airplay throughout Disney and gets released on compilation albums. As a result, a lot of people don't realize it was recorded for this film. As Johnny Mercer recorded a cover of it one year after the film came out, people mistakenly thought he wrote it.
• Bury Your Art: Disney has never released the movie on home video in the US (with the exception of occasional clips on VHS, DVDs and Blu-Rays) and it has not appeared on Disney+. Song of the South does occasionally air on TV in the UK, but never on channels owned or operated by Disney.
• California Doubling: Set in Georgia, filmed in Arizona.
• Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer: Reviews and descriptions will sometimes list the film as being an example of Happiness in Slavery, when it is actually set after the American Civil War and Uncle Remus is a free man.
• Creator Backlash: Not exactly the creator/s, but the Disney Company under new management since Michael Eisner-Bob Iger leadership prefers not to talk about this movie too much, even though "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" is considered one of Disney's signature songs (though beginning in The New '20s, they have stopped using the song due to its association with the film). They have an entry for it in their Disney A to Z encyclopedia, but that's about it.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • In wake of the George Floyd protests, Hallmark pulled a Mickey Mouse ornament because it played "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", which came from this movie.
  • While the characters would occasionally pop up time to time in cameos or small roles (House of Mouse, The Lion King 1 ½, and Kinect: Disneyland Adventures), after the aforementioned protests, Disney has decidedly scrubbed all mentions and possible appearances of the characters, mainly by re-theming Splash Mountain to “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure”, omitting "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" and "Splash Mountain Medley" from their Disney Hits Sirius XM radio station, and by the characters being one of the few glaring omissions in Once Upon a Studio.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Because of the film's controversial racial content, Disney has not rereleased the film in the US since its theatrical re-release in 1986, and they are likely to keep it that way, with current Disney CEO Bob Iger making it clear that it will never be re-released on home video or on Disney+ while he's in charge (although some DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs include clips from the animated segments). This means your best shot of watching the film is through unlicensed bootlegs. The film has seen a couple of official VHS and laserdisc releases in other parts of the world (where it's less controversial), but even so, the last official release of the film was the South African VHS in 1999 and outside of rare TV airings on non-Disney owned channels in the UK, Disney has not re-released it since. Unsurprisingly, given the film's elusive nature, official copies tend to be incredibly valuable, often going up for thousands of dollars on second-hand stores.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Sometimes it seems like they won't shut up about Br'er Rabbit and company, billing them as characters "from" Splash Mountain and The Lion King 1 ½. Deliberate Adaptation Displacement? By Disney?
• No Port For You: Practically every country except North America has given this film a home video release on VHS or DVD.
• One-Book Author: Glenn Leedy, who played Toby, never had any other film roles.
• Star-Making Role: This turned Bobby Driscoll into a star, and he was one of Disney's favorite child actors for a few years.
• Streisand Effect: The film would not be as notorious as it is if it were not for Disney trying to hide it.
• Throw It In!: Walt Disney thought up the shot in "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" where they would have a close-up on Uncle Remus, cover the lights with cardboard, remove them when he began singing and give the impression that he was entering a new vibrant world of animation, on the day of the shoot.
• Typecasting: Hattie McDaniel as yet another Mammy/maid character.
• Underage Casting: James Baskett was only in his forties when he played the friendly elderly Uncle Remus. This happened thanks to his hair having already gone naturally gray by that point in time, unintentionally making him perfect for playing the role of an old man.
• What Could Have Been: Song of the South had two screenwriters, who had two rather different ideas of how to handle the matter...
  • The first and primary screenwriter was Louisiana-born Dalton S. Reymond. Available information places Reymond's initial treatment as even more likely to cause Values Dissonance than the final version; he had the white people call black people "darkies" and the black people call white people "massa". Worse, he's the screenwriter who blew off the advisor from the NAACP, Clarence Muse.
  • To try and counter this, Disney hired Maurice Rapf. This wasn't just because Rapf was a more experienced screenwriter, but also because Walt trusted Rapf to have a critical eye on the project and counter Reymond's slant. While Rapf's contributions took out "massa" and "darkey", some portions of his treatment were removed shortly after he was removed, following a disagreement with Reymond. In Rapf's version, the time frame was much better established: Johnny's father is trying to secure money to pay the black laborers, and one character openly states, "We gotta pay these people. They're not slaves." Likewise, Uncle Remus, as he prepared to leave, would have stated that he didn't have to stay and take this. "I'm a free man." Before being removed, he was also angling to make Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear (and a character later removed, Br'er Coon) symbolic of oppressive white people, with Br'er Rabbit as a small and wily black character.

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