Peter Pan is a 1953 American animated fantasy adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on J. M. Barrie's 1904 play of the same name, the film was directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson. Featuring the voices of Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried, Bill Thompson, Heather Angel, Paul Collins, Tommy Luske, Candy Candido, Tom Conway, Roland Dupree and Don Barclay, the film's plot follows Wendy Darling and her two brothers, who meet the eternally-young Peter Pan and travel with him to the island of Never Land to stay young, where they also have to face Peter's archenemy, Captain Hook.
In 1935, Walt Disney began considering plans to adapt Barrie's play into an animated feature. He purchased the film rights from Paramount Pictures in 1938, and began preliminary development in the next year. However, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Disney shelved the project when his studio was contracted by the United States government to produce training and war propaganda films. The project sat idle in development for the rest of the decade until it experienced a turnaround in 1949. To assist the animators, live-action reference footage was shot with actors on soundstages. It also marked the last Disney film in which all nine members of Disney's Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators.
Peter Pan was released on February 5, 1953, becoming the final Disney animated feature released through RKO before Disney founded his own distribution company. The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, Upon its release, the film earned generally positive reviews from film critics and was a box office success. Its representation of the Native Americans received retrospective criticism.
A sequel, titled Return to Never Land, was released in 2002, and a series of direct-to-DVD prequels focusing on Tinker Bell began in 2008. A television series featuring the characters, Jake and the Never Land Pirates, was released in 2015. A live-action adaptation of the film was released on Disney+ in 2023.
Plot
In Edwardian London 1904, George and Mary Darling's preparations to attend a party are disrupted by the antics of their boys, John and Michael, who are acting out a Peter Pan story told to them by their elder sister Wendy. An irritated George demands that Wendy drop the stories and move out of the nursery, since "sooner or later, people have to grow up" and also chains Nana the female dog outside because she is a dog and not a nurse. Later that night, Peter himself arrives in the nursery to find his lost shadow. He persuades Wendy to come to Never Land, where she will never have to grow up, and she and the boys fly there with the begrudging help of the pixie Tinker Bell.
A ship of pirates is anchored off Never Land, led by Captain Hook and his first mate, Mr. Smee. Hook wants revenge on Peter for cutting off his hand, but fears the crocodile which consumed the hand, knowing it is eager to eat the rest of him. When Pan and the Darlings arrive, Hook shoots at them with a cannon, and Peter sends the Darlings off to safety while he baits the pirates. Tinker Bell, who is jealous of Peter's attention to Wendy, convinces the Lost Boys that Peter has ordered them to shoot down Wendy. Tinker Bell's treachery is soon found out, and Peter banishes her for a week. John and Michael set off with the Lost Boys to find the island's Indians; however, the Indians capture the group, believing them to be responsible for taking the chief's daughter, Tiger Lily.
Meanwhile, Peter takes Wendy to see the mermaids, who flee in terror when Hook arrives on the scene. Peter and Wendy see that Hook and Smee have captured Tiger Lily, to force her to disclose the location of Peter's hideout. Peter frees Tiger Lily and returns her to the Chief, and the tribe honors Peter. Meanwhile, Hook takes advantage of Tinker Bell's jealousy of Wendy, tricking the fairy into revealing Peter's secret hideout instead.
Wendy and her brothers eventually grow homesick and plan to return to London. They invite Peter and the Lost Boys to join them and be adopted by the Darlings. The Lost Boys agree, but Peter does not want to grow up and refuses. The pirates lie in wait, and capture the Lost Boys and the Darlings as they exit the lair, leaving behind a time bomb to kill Peter. Hook attempts to persuade his captives to join the crew, threatening to make them walk the plank if they refuse. Tinker Bell learns of the plot, just in time to snatch the bomb from Peter as it explodes.
Peter rescues Tinker Bell from the rubble, and together they rescue Wendy, confronting the pirates and releasing the children. Peter engages Hook in combat as the children fight off the crew, and defeats him. Hook falls into the sea and swims away, pursued by the crocodile. Peter commandeers the deserted ship and, assisted by Tinker Bell's pixie dust, flies it to London with the children aboard although the Lost Boys choose to stay with Peter Pan in Neverland.
George and Mary Darling return home and find Wendy sleeping at the nursery's open window. Wendy awakens and excitedly tells about their adventures and that she's ready to grow up but her father who has softened up tells her she can stay in the nursery and even brings Nana back inside. The parents look out the window and see Hook's pirate ship in the clouds. George recognizes the ship, implying that he himself went to Neverland when he was a boy.
Voice cast
Bobby Driscoll as Peter Pan, the cocky and very adventurous leader of the Lost Boys of Never Land, where he resides due to his refusal to grow up. He is frequently accompanied by his best friend, the hot-headed pixie Tinker Bell. Kathryn Beaumont as Wendy Darling, the imaginative and very caring oldest child of the Darling family, who loves to tell the stories about Peter Pan and his adventures. Hans Conried as Captain Hook, a ruthless and obsessive pirate captain who seeks lots of revenge on Peter Pan for having his left hand chopped off and fed to the Crocodile in a battle. Continuing the tradition of the stage play, Conried also voices George Darling, the Darling children's very strict and short-tempered, but loving father and Mary's husband. Bill Thompson as Mr. Smee, Hook's meek and loyal first mate and personal assistant. Thompson also voiced several members of Hook's pirate crew. Heather Angel as Mary Darling, the Darling children's calm and gentle mother and George's wife, who is much more understanding of Wendy's stories than her husband, even though she takes them with a pinch of salt. Paul Collins as John Darling, a very smart and mature beyond his years middle child of the Darling family. Tommy Luske as Michael Darling, the youngest and the most sensitive child of the Darling family, who constantly carries a teddy bear with him. Candy Candido as the Indian Chief, a fierce-looking but well-meaning leader of the Indian Tribe and Tiger Lily's father.
Additionally, Stuffy Singer, Johnny McGovern, Robert Ellis, and Jeffrey Silver provided voices for Slightly, the Twins, Cubby, and NibsThe Lost Boys, Peter's right-hand boys, dressed as various animals. June Foray, Connie Hilton, Karen Kester, and Margaret Kerry voiced the mermaids, vain and shallow inhabitants of the Mermaid Lagoon who are infatuated with Peter Pan. Foray also voiced the Squaw Woman, who orders Wendy to get firewood while everyone else celebrates Peter's rescue of Tiger Lily. Tom Conway was the film's narrator.
Production Early development
Walt Disney was familiar with J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up since childhood, having seen a touring production starring Maude Adams at the Cater Opera House in Marceline, Missouri, in 1913. In 1935, he first expressed interest in adapting the play as his second animated feature film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was still in production at the time. During his acquisition spree in Europe in April 1938, Roy O. Disney went to London to acquire the rights from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, but Paramount Pictures had already secured the live-action screen rights. The hospital unsuccessfully offered to have Disney and Paramount make an agreement; however, by October of that year, Walt had purchased the animation rights from Paramount and commissioned Dorothy Ann Blank to develop the story. In January 1939, Disney signed a £5,000 contract with the hospital, and by May of that year, as the story work was in the preliminary stages, he had several animators in mind for some of the charactersBill Tytla was considered for the pirates, Norman Ferguson for Nana, and Fred Moore for Tinker Bell.
During this time, many possible interpretations of the story were explored. In the earliest treatment, written by Blank on April 14, 1939, the film would start by telling Peter Pan's backstory, which was based on Barrie's 1906 book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. However, during a story meeting the following month, Disney decided that they "ought to get right into the story itself, where Peter Pan comes to the house to get his shadow. That's where the story picks up. How Peter came to be is really another story." Disney also explored the idea of opening the film in Never Land with Peter coming to Wendy's house to kidnap her as a mother for the Lost Boys. Eventually, it was decided that the kidnapping plot was too dark, and Disney went back to Barrie's original play, in which Peter comes to get his shadow back and Wendy herself is eager to see Never Land.
By early 1940, David Hall, who had also worked on Alice in Wonderland, created first exploratory storyboards and concept art for Peter Pan. Later that year, Disney personally attempted to contact Maude Adams, who by then had retired from acting and was teaching drama at Stephens College. Disney notified her of his plans for an animated feature, and requested for her to view an early reel of the film that the studio had produced for her approval. He further affirmed that his studio would send the necessary screening equipment to Columbia College for the presentation and that it could be open to any Stephens College student or faculty member interested in attending. Adams, however, rejected Disney's proposal. In a 1941 studio memo to Kay Kamen, he wrote: "She wouldn't even give me the courtesy of looking at our reel. Her reasons were to the effect that 'Peter whom she created was to her real life and blood, while another's creation of this character would only be a ghost to her'. It seems pretty silly and from my point of view, I would say that Miss Adams is simply living in the past."
Production delays By 1941, the basic story structure of Peter Pan was completed, but later that year, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States military took control of Walt Disney Productions. It commissioned the studio to produce training and war propaganda films, thus pre-production work on Peter Pan, as well as on Alice in Wonderland (1951), was suspended. However, the Bank of America allowed for production on Peter Pan, along with The Wind in the Willows (1949), to continue during World War II. After the war had ended, pre-production of the film resumed with Jack Kinney as director. At the time, Kinney had considered leaving Walt Disney Productions for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio, but wartime restrictions prevented it. Since he did not want Kinney to get out of his contract, Disney appointed Kinney to direct Peter Pan.