As many other Disney fans/animation connoisseurs/weirdos know, Disney’s 1977 film The Rescuers had an R-Rated “easter egg”; a photo of a topless woman inserted, in two frames, in one scene, in the window of a building quickly passing in the background.
No urban legend, this—Disney publicly acknowledged it in 1999, along with a recall of several million VHS copies that it appeared in. Snopes and Wiki confirm it. (I’m going to demur on linking, as they both have screenshots) Neat.
My question is: what was the ORIGIN of the photo used? Apparently, the image was there since the original release in 1977—I’d assume that it was from a magazine (or even a movie still), rather than being an, ah, “original artwork,” but I’m afraid I’m not able to identify tiny, grainy, cropped reproductions of an almost fifty year old Playboy centerfold on sight, or from memory.
But this is the SDMB, so I’m pretty certain there’s someone here who can. So, can anyone help?
[Moderating] Fir na tine, the snark isn’t necessary. The OP is not expressing outrage over the images; he’s just asking a question about their provenance, a question which should have an answer.
You’re right about Mrs. Sahl. The picture in the cartoon looks like a brown curtain is obscuring her face, but that sweater looks like it might be Gwen Wong’s.
Tom Sito, a former Disney animator, has confirmed that the source is a Playboy centerfold but has not said which Playmate. The pose doesn’t match Miss August '64 or Miss April '67.
After some cropping and the help of google images, I think I have the setting and the name, but not the specific picture (chances are that the animators also did put some cover on her face)
Générique Adrienne Moreau. Playmate from March 1963. But one reason why it was not found before is that it was on the French edition of Playboy.
No other pictures from the photo shoot are available in the internet so perhaps one daring doper can check on a French library to see if another picture from her shoot does match the Rescuers image the closest.
And as I have looked at searches of images and video before, the ones trying to remember images or video from the past have a habit of dropping and mixing bits of information (and do get dates wrong too), chances are that the image then was not the centerfold, but it was an image from the shots made of the centerfold in other settings, as Playboy usually does.
The thing that makes me suspect that Google Image search got close to the origin is that the woods and color of the plants in the background are very similar to the Rescuers image. I do think that the original will include those woods in a slightly different position with the Playmate standing in front of those woods.
And I just realized this: It may be that the shoot was made before of after the Playboy one, did I remember wrong or the shots in French magazines were more daring than the American ones? It could be that the shots from the French edition were different or were made locally for the French edition.
That white weave like thing at the bottom of the “window” in the Rescuers image does look like the hammock in the french picture, making it more likely that it is at least the same setting. Not the same exact picture, but another in the set made of the Playmate.
So, can anyone help?
![https://i.etsystatic.com/10740080/r/il/7497d6/1165432289/il_794xN.1165432289_td8o.jpg[/spoiler]](https://i.etsystatic.com/10740080/r/il/7497d6/1165432289/il_794xN.1165432289_td8o.jpg%5B/spoiler%5D){kind=link}