How we made The Jungle Book

Bruce Reitherman, Mowgli I was 11 and my dad, Wolfgang Reitherman, was the director so it didn’t take much for him to see me on the sofa at home and have his lightbulb casting moment. I was the voice of Christopher Robin when I was six but had no other acting experience. I just sounded like an ordinary kid. The makers wanted someone who sounded very innocent to play Mowgli, to soften the parts where, thanks to his lines, he might come across as a petulant teenager. But in the 1960s, it took four years to make an animated film – so if you cast a kid and didn’t get to the cutting room quick enough, you’d end up with an adolescent. And sure enough, the first Mowgli had had to be replaced after his voice broke. I loved missing school and being treated like a grownup. What we were doing really mattered to a lot of people, so I knew I had to try hard. This wasn’t like doing homework! Every morning, I’d be sat down with a hot chocolate and a couple of people to go through the storyboards and act out my scenes. It was like having… Read full this story

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