The majority of the cast, with the exception of young American actor Bobby Driscoll who starred as Jim Hawkins, was comprised of well-known English stage and film actors.įilming began at Bristol Harbour in Bristol, England, in July 1949. Walt sent Disney veteran Perce Pearce, who had been a writer on Fantasia (1940) and a story director on Bambi (1942), over to England to produce the film alongside fellow American Byron Haskin as director. Not only did the film present what Walt believed would be “right for Disney to present,” but the book, whose author was a native of Scotland, also lent itself well to the array of actors England had to offer Walt and his team. The first thought was ‘Should I start a cartoon studio there?’ And I didn’t think I could because you have to train the artists for it or else import them I wanted to get into live.”įor the first of four films to be produced in England Walt decided upon a film adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, Treasure Island, which follows the story of a young boy named Jim Hawkins as he searches for a hidden treasure. So, in order to get the funds out of England, wanted me to go to England and do something. “After the war we still had the frozen funds situation in Europe. Reflecting on the situation roughly a decade later in a 1956 interview with the Saturday Evening Post’s Pete Martin, Walt recalled: Instead, he set his sights on a live-action film to take advantage of the already-established film industry and infrastructure in England. He soon realized, however, that training an entirely new staff of animators precluded the possibility of opening a cartoon studio on par with the one in Burbank. Walt initially thought about making cartoons in England. RKO Radio Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios’ distributor, likewise had a large sum of money tied up in England and offered to share in the production costs of a film. After the war, Walt and Roy learned that over a million dollars of box office revenues that had been earned in England could only be spent in England due to new postwar policies implemented to revive their economy.
Five years after these initial thoughts, the perfect opportunity to begin such a project presented itself.