10 Fascinating Facts About Disney's Pinocchio
9. Jiminy Cricket Couldn't Look Like A Cricket
A talking cricket existed in the original novel, but his fate came quickly and gruesomely. Early in the book, the cricket speaks to Pinocchio about the dangers of bad behaviour. He immediately resorts to bad behaviour by throwing a mallet at the cricket killing him instantly. This was not the direction Disney wanted to go.
The cricket, now named Jiminy, would instead be very much alive throughout the film, going from a homeless bug looking to warm his toes to Pinocchio’s conscience in his journey to become a real boy, as gifted to him by the Blue Fairy.
Upon his first song sequence of “When You Wish Upon A Star”, he immediately became one of the most recognisable figures in Disney’s animation studio library, making appearances in other films throughout the Disney Canon and earning an Academy Award for Best Original Song for what is now the national anthem of the company.
The design of Jiminy Cricket was crucial as audiences would spend just as much time with him and the title character. As such they wanted something that would be visually pleasing to the target audience and supervising animator Ward Kimball tried to come up with as many cute cricket designs as he could.
Nothing worked, with Disney calling the designs “too gross”, until he decided to forgo the cricket look altogether and make a little green man with a large head. As Kimball put it “the only thing that makes him a cricket is because we call him one”.