If you watch the Disney movie Jungle Book,you may notice a distinct similarity of the Vultures to The Beatles. I have heard numerous stories from "The Beatles were asked to do the voices and refused,mainly through John Lennon throwing a fit" to "The Beatles were asked to provide the voices and their scheduling simply didn't have room for it". Nevertheless,although one could say that the carrion birds could resemble any sixties British band, there are some individual features they have that remind me very much of The Fab Four. I cannot deliver a YouTube clip, unfortunately--that stinks,because some of the voices they did end up with are strikingly similar to the Beatle to which each one corresponds.You just gotta hear them!
Ah, well..Let's explore.
Ziggy is the "John" vulture.He is the main joker, the instigator of trouble and is...well....chunky.
Dizzy is our "George".He is extremely deadpan and his voice has a most humorous resemblance to the real George's. He is also by far the skinniest and the most hunched-over,matching Harrison's thin frame and often hunched shoulders.
Buzzy is the "Ringo" version of the Vultures.He's the shortest,has the deepest voice, a huge beak,and virtually no chin. I might also add that when he speaks, you hear a little snare drum in the soundtrack.
And then there's Flaps, the "Paul". He speaks in quick, short sentences and has the "pretty" look of the four, with big dreamy eyes and an often-puckered mouth.
Here is Ziggy coaxing the others, or rather shoving them, off the end of their branch to go down and hassle Mowgli.
The Vultures pick on Mowgli,cracking jokes at his strange apearance(they have no idea what a human is) until they realize they've hurt his feelings and regret doing so. Look how Dizzy is standing, looks so very like George.
The four sing like a barbershop quartet,but Dizzy, Flaps and Ziggy (George, Paul and John) start the main harmony and Buzzy adds a low part at the end, again like Ringo.
Despite their shabby appearance and slight obnoxiousness, the Vultures have hearts of gold and welcome Mowgli into their circle (okay, the Beatles were more tightly knit than that). But here, Dizzy and Flaps look especially like George and Paul, I think. With Dizzy, it's the "hair". Flaps just has that ever-cheerful-Paul expression.
4 comments:
Thank you so much for this analysis of The Jungle Book vultures! After watching the film recently, it was exactly the kind of analysis I was looking for. So, from one Disney geek to another, well done! :-D
thanks for this,,, saved a lot of guessing,, shame it wasnt their original Beatles voices though.. that would have been so cool...Kris Owler Chad Stuart as Flaps the Vulture
Lord Tim Hudson as Dizzie the Vulture
Digby Wolfe as Ziggy the Vulture and Buzzie the Vulture was voiced by J. Pat O'Malley
https://youtu.be/MGTWmrnPdgk
'Lord' Tim Hudson (born February 11, 1940, Prestbury, Cheshire), was an English DJ in Los Angeles for KFWB during the 1960s, and was the manager of The Seeds and The Lollipop Shoppe.[He has also been a voice actor, an artist and a sports manager.
Chad and Jeremy are an English singing folk rock duo originating in the 1960s, comprising Chad Stuart (born David Stuart Chadwick, 10 December 1941, Windermere, Cumbria) and Jeremy Clyde (born Michael Thomas Jeremy Clyde, 22 March 1941, Dorney, Buckinghamshire). They were part of the British Invasion, a large influx of British rock and pop musicians to the American music scene.
Digby Wolfe (4 June 1929 – 2 May 2012) was an English actor, screenwriterand university lecturer in dramatic writing.
James Patrick O'Malley (15 March 1904 in Burnley, Lancashire – 27 February 1985) was an English singer and character actor, who appeared in many American films and television programmes from the 1940s to 1982, using the stage name J. Pat O'Malley. He also appeared on the Broadway stage in Ten Little Indians (1944) and Dial M for Murder. A New York Timesdrama critic praised O'Malley's performance in Ten Little Indians, calling him "a rara avis, a comedian who does not gauge the success of his efforts by the number of laughs he induces at each performance"
A close comparitive look will reveal that Buzzie does indeed look like J. Pat O'Malley, who was a popular English comic in the U.S. at the time. I don't think he was meant to be mistaken for a Beatle.
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