Remembering Roald Dahl
Today Roald Dahl would have turned 91 (9/13/1916 - 11/23/1990) - if Google wouldn’t have come up with a special overlay for the logo on its website to honor the author, I would have missed this anniversary … but the logo immediately reminded me that Roald Dahl is not only the author behind such all time favorite stories as “Matilda” (the capital “G” of Google shows Matilda Wormwood enjoying her passion of reading books) or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (twice a very successful moviebut not for Disney; the “l” in Google is depicted by a chocolare bar with the golden ticket from the story in the packaging) and penned the story for the movie-musical “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (for which the Disney veterans Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman penned the songs and music) - no he is also the author of “James and the Giant Peach” which is represented by the giant peach featuring the tiny James as the second “o” in the Google-logo. And that story is actually what reminded me of the connection between Roald Dahl and Disney…
After all the 1961 story of Roald Dahl was made into a motion picture of the same name by Walt Disney Pictures in 1996, featuring a mix of live action and stop motion. Produced by Tim Burton the movie was in a way the “follow up” to the cult-hit “Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas” but never reached its predecessor’s success and status - even so Randy Newman (who later penned the scores and songs amongst others for the Disney Pixar movies “Toy Story” and ”Toy Story 2″) with an entertaining score and songs fitting the pleasantly strange story by Roald Dahl. But wouldn’t this anniversary be a great day to watch the movie for the first time (or rewatch it)?? If you do so, take a close look at the skeletons in the pirate ship scene - there is one looking like Jack Skellington from “Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas”, while another skeleton features the bill, cap, jacket and voice of Donald Duck!!
And before I get too man e-mails complaining: yes, there is also an earlier connection between Roald Dahl and Disney! Roald Dahl wrote the story “The Gremlins” about little mischievous creatures who later on help the Royal Airforce during the 2nd world war. The story was published in 1943 and optioned by Walt Disney for a movie which was never produced. But the original print run of the book featured beautiful drawings by the artists of the Walt Disney Studios. Being long out of print a year ago a re-print with the original illustrations was issued that is still available from the major retailers such as Amazon (for a look at same of the drawings head over to Jim Hill who did a story about the re-release).