In the Latin American dubbing, Baloo's voice is provided by Mexican "Golden Age" actor Germán Valdés "Tin-Tan".
It was Walt Disney's lead story man and writer Bill Peet who first suggested making an animated version of The Jungle Book.
Just after Mowgli runs away and Bagheera is trying to convince Col. Hathi to look for him, Hathi's wife Winifred announces if they don't help find him, she will take command of the herd. Hathi is outraged at the thought of a female leading. The joke is that elephants herds are led by a matriarch (female), while adult males generally live alone. As the only apparent female in the herd, Winifred should be leading by default.
Kaa the snake is a completely different character in the film than he is in the original book. In the book, he is a friend and advisor of Mowgli, and the one who rescues him from the monkeys. In the film, he is a villain bent on eating Mowgli.
Kaa's song "Trust in me" was originally written for Mary Poppins as "Land of sand" but not used.
Many cultural scholars (including Edward Schiappa and Susan Miller & Greg Rode) have singled out the King Louie character as a particularly offensive racial stereotype (especially given the political and civil rights climates in America during the time The Jungle Book was released).
The 19th animated feature in Disney animated features canon, and the last to be personally supervised by Walt Disney, himself.
The first Disney film to be released after Walt Disney's death in 1966, just prior to the film's theatrical release.
The last film personally overseen by Walt Disney.
The original child actor David Bailey who voiced Mowgli had to be let go as his voice broke during the film's 3-year production.
The stripes on his coat proved to be a nightmare for the animators working on Shere Khan.
The Vultures were originally going to be voiced by The Beatles. The band's manager, Brian Epstein, approached the Disney studios about having The Beatles appear in the film, and Disney had his animators create the Vultures specifically to be voiced by the band. But when Epstein took the idea to the Beatles, John Lennon vetoed the idea, and told Epstein to tell Disney he should hire Elvis Presley instead. The look of The Vultures, with their mop-top haircuts and Liverpool voices, are a homage to The Beatles; one bird's voice and features are clearly based on Ringo Starr. When the Beatles departed the project, the song was rewritten as a barbershop quartet, to make it timeless.
The xerographic system, which had been used since One Hundred and One Dalmatians, was further refined to combine both Xeroxed cels with hand inked details. For example, while the basic animation on the village girl at the end of the movie was with Xeroxed cels, her mouth was inked by hand. The backgrounds also moved back towards the more traditional look of earlier films.
Voted number 19 in Channel 4's (UK) "Greatest Family Films"
When Gregory Peck was the President of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Science, he tried his hardest to get a full-length animated feature film (most notably the The Jungle Book) not only nominated for Best Picture Academy Award but actually win the award. He resigned as President in 1970 when other members didn't agree with him about animated films being nominated for the award. It would be over 20 years later before the Academy would reconsider, allowing Beauty and the Beast to be nominated.
When Walt Disney rejected original screenwriter Bill Peet's submitted screenplay, Peet quit the project.
When Baloo tickles King Louie, the ape's laugh is actually that of Brer Rabbit from Song of the South (it specifically came from the "Laughing Place" scene).
Winifred (Colonel Hathi's mate) is the only female animal to have any dialogue throughout the entire film, as though Raksha (the Mother Wolf) briefly appears at the beginning, she never actually speaks.