Russian Rhapsody trivia

**From: chriswyatt**


I just read this on Russian Rhapsody (1944) - Trivia - IMDb:


"In the early 1940s Walt Disney was developing a feature film based on Roald Dahl's book "Gremlin Lore", and asked the other studios to refrain from producing Gremlin films. While most of the studios complied, Warner Bros. already had two cartoons too far into production - Falling Hare (1943) and this cartoon. As a compromise, Leon Schlesinger retitled the cartoons to remove any reference to gremlins. The original title was Gremlins From the Kremlin."

I can't believe Disney had the cheek to ask the other studios not to make Gremlin films .

**From peterhale**


I rather think that there was a kind of "gentlemen's ageement" between the major Hollywood studios not to step on each others toes. Because of the amount of money a top picture could make it was worth investing heavily in preproduction publicity to raise public awareness and expectation. If another studio took advantage of this with a quickie production that cashed in on this publicity they would make a small profit but would dull the impact of the first studio's picture and spoil it's box office potential. By agreeing to avoid 'queering each other's pitch' the studios could safely maximise their profits by preproduction promotion -- an all-win situation.

The Disneys had invested a lot in TheGremlins - not just buying the movie rights but in publishing the Disney version of the book in the US and generally raising public awareness of the idea, so it was quite natural that they should seek to use this 'agreement' -- especially as they could only hope to produce one feature a year.

I think it is an interesting comment on both how important this agreement was to the major stusio bosses,AND how UNimportant they considered their own cartoon output, that they complied so readily!

When Walt finally cancelled the project, in October 1943, largely because the idea had become a fad that was likely to go out of fashion just as quickly, The Gremlins had already cost the studio $50,000.

**From peterhale**


Roald Dahl wrote "Gremlin Lore" as a children's story, based on tales told by his fellow RAF pilots when he was stationed in the Middle East.

Dahl was shot down in Lybia in 1940, and although he rejoined his squadron 6 months later, the pain from his injuries continued to plague him and he was put on the 'disabled' list. He was posted to the British Embassy in Washington as an assistant air attaché. (Britain was working hard on trying to influence US opinion, and bring them into the war.) Here he was interviewed about his war experiences by C. S. Forester, who was writing propaganda articles for the Saturday Evening Post. Dahl wrote up some notes for Forester, who had them published in the Post under Dahl's own name and so started him on his writing career.

His (unpublished) "Gremlin Lore" manuscript was passed around in Washington - legend has it that Eleanor Roosevelt read it to her grandchildren - and it was shown to Disney because of his involvement with "Victory Through Air Power".

Disney was very enthusiastic, and planned a live-action feature with animated Gremlins. The constraints on the project were huge - the RAF were to have 'the power to say no to anything that was done' - but Disney was undaunted and set about preparing the ground: he published the story, as "The Gremlins", in 1943 [NB: the Dark Horse Books reprint is due out on September 13th!] and Gremlin Gus started to appear in "Walt Disney's Comics And Stories" (issues #33-#41).




The Gremlins from Walt Disney's Comics and
Stories - drawn by Walt Kelly
(In Dahl's book 'Widgets' are young Gremlins.
Female Gremlins are called 'Fifinellas'.)