# Disney-Tolkien Connection? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 4, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389 "2004-10-04T00:14:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roseworm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df788c/32.png) [@Roseworm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roseworm)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/1 "2004-10-04T00:14:57Z")
Dear Straight Dope, Years ago I ran across a fascinating story - In the late 1950s, Disney was possibly planning to make a full-length animated film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s _The Lord of the Rings_. According to the story, Disney’s \*Sleeping Beauty \* (1959) was something of a test, to see if the public had an appetite for medieval fantasy. When \*Sleeping Beauty \* failed at the box office, the LOTR project was scrapped. Is there any truth to this story? \*Sleeping Beauty \* contains several internal clues which tend to support the story. (1) The look of the film is radically different from that of previous Disney fare. It looks very “Tolkien-esque” to me, but that is purely subjective. Art director Eyvind Earle purportedly took his inspiration from Russian folk art (or perhaps Gothic/Renaissance French art). If the story is true, he may have been trying to develop an art style which would be suitable for an animated Tolkien film. (2) In the original story by Charles Perrault, Maleficent is merely a bad fairy, but, in the Disney version, her character is considerably beefed up. Now she is a mighty sorceress, a figure of towering evil - fit consort for Sauron himself. (3) It is easy to see a parallel between Maleficent’s castle in the Forbidden Mountains and Sauron’s tower in Mordor. (4) Maleficent’s minions look suspiciously like diminutive, cartoonish orcs - “orclings”, as I like to call them. (5) The final, thunderous battle between Prince Phillip and the dragon is not found in Perrault at all. It owes everything to Nordic mythology - Tolkien’s principal source of inspiration. In conclusion, it is easy to believe that Disney’s \*Sleeping Beauty \* was a “dry run” for a possible LOTR film. But is it TRUE? Respectfully, [Roseworm234@yahoo.com](mailto:Roseworm234@yahoo.com) ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/2 "2004-10-04T00:27:57Z")
**Roseworm** --this is a great first post. Professor Tolkien had some harsh things to say about Disney. [http://www.mi.uib.no/~respl/tolkien/hearsay.html](http://www.mi.uib.no/~respl/tolkien/hearsay.html) And Disney passed on the film several times after Tolkien’s death. [http://www.mi.uib.no/~respl/tolkien/hearsay.html](http://www.mi.uib.no/~respl/tolkien/hearsay.html) So, after Tolkien died, Disney gave it a look, & a pass. Just as well. It would have been ruined. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/3 "2004-10-04T05:04:23Z")
My wife is a music history professor at UCLA. Every year she teaches a big course on medievalism – how the middle ages are represented in art, literature and film in the 19th and 20th centuries. A lot of the course focuses on the “Big Three” popularizers of the Middle Ages: Wagner, Tolkien & Disney. So … my wife knows a whole lot about Tolkien and Disney … . She says: No Way. In addition to the fact that Tolkien disliked Disney’s movies, she points out that preproduction on _Sleeping Beauty_ actually began before the War, but production was suspended for the duration. _The Lord of the Rings_ hadn’t been published yet when the initial work on _Sleeping Beauty_ began. She allows that it’s _possible_ that the popularity of _LoTR_ in the 50’s might have had _some_ influence during the production of _SB_, but if so it was minor. She’s never stumbled across the acknowledgement of any concrete link in any of the research that’s she’s done. And connections like that are exactly the sort of things she looks for. _SB_ definitely was not intended as a ‘dry run’ for _LoTR_. (BTW, not only did Tolkien dislike Disney, he also disliked Wagner. He thought both of them were doing a poor job of adapting their source material, and in Wagner’s case Tolkien really hated to see the folk tales he loved yoked to the wagon of German nationalism … .) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/4 "2004-10-04T05:32:55Z")
Ack … miscommunication between my wife and me … _ **Cinderella** _ was postponed by the War. _Sleeping Beauty_ was started in 1952, which was still 2 years prior to the publication of _Lord of the Rings_. The problem with _SB_ wasn’t that the public wasn’t interested in medieval fantasy. Disney had had huge hits with both _Snow White_ in 1937, and _Cinderella_ in 1950. The problem (most people think) is that Walt was so pre-occupied at the time with the construction of Disneyland, the production of a number of live-action features, and the launch of his TV series, that he didn’t pay much attention to what his animators were doing. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/5 "2004-10-04T12:18:30Z")
> [@Roseworm](#): > > It owes everything to Nordic mythology - Tolkien’s principal source of inspiration. [nitpick]Do Icelandic and Finnish count as Nordic?[/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![InvidiousCourgette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47c2d/32.png) [@InvidiousCourgette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InvidiousCourgette)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/6 "2004-10-04T12:37:45Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > [nitpick]Do Icelandic and Finnish count as Nordic?[/nitpick] [counternitpick] Nordic: > [@](#): > > Of, relating to, or characteristic of Scandinavia or its peoples, languages, or cultures. Scandinavia: > [@](#): > > A region of northern Europe consisting of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Finland, Iceland, and the Faeroe Islands are often included in the region. [/counternitpick] ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/7 "2004-10-04T12:44:04Z")
I stand corrected. I tend to think more of the Norway/Finland peninsula. Iceland I figured might, but Finns don’t even speak nearly the same language. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/8 "2004-10-04T12:45:16Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > Norway/Finland peninsula Dammit, should be “Sweden”. I hate getting up this early. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/9 "2004-10-04T13:50:17Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > She allows that it’s _possible_ that the popularity of _LoTR_ in the 50’s might have had _some_ influence during the production of _SB_, but if so it was minor. In addition, LOTR did not become massively popular in the US until the 60s. The US hardcover edition was not a major seller, mostly because what little audience for fantasy there was tended to buy paperbacks. In the early 60s, Donald Wollheim published an unauthorized edition (The book had lost US copyright through a technicality), which brought it to the attention of the science fiction/fantasy community. Tolkien managed to regain the copyright by revising and adding the end material and sold the paperback rights to Ballentine books (their early editions have a plea from Tolkien to buy that edition and no other). It was the Ballentine paperback edition that turned the book into a best seller. (Wollheim eventually withdrew his edition and sent Tolkien a token payment). ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disney-tolkien-connection/267389/10 "2004-10-04T16:05:58Z")
Since this is about books and movies, I’ll move this thread to our arts forum, Cafe Society. bibliophage moderator GQ