Darleen Carr who played the voice of The Girl (Shanti) is the younger sister of The Sound of Music actress Charmian Carr (Liesl von Trapp). She stopped working with Disney Studios after this film.
Bruce Reitherman - who provides the voice of Mowgli - is now a wildlife documentarian.
Walt Disney died during production of this film. Many people wondered at what the studio's fate would be, particularly the animation division. The film performed extremely well at the box office, ensuring that the animators would not be put out of work. Had the film failed, it is likely that animation would have been closed down at the Disney studio.
Walt Disney told his animation crew to "throw away" Rudyard Kipling's book, "The Jungle Book" because the original concept storyboards were too dark and dramatic. During pre-production, Disney assigned animator Larry Clemmons to head story development on the project. He gave Clemmons a copy of "The Jungle Book," and told him, "The first thing I want you to do is not read it."
Walt Disney's instructions to his animators was to discard all "the heavy stuff" from the novel.
Bill Peet worked on the adaptation for over a year.
Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman were hired as songwriters after Terry Gilkyson wouldn't distance himself from the "darker" side of The Jungle Book. His song "The Bare Necessities" was included in the film, and was the only song from the film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Two other songs written for the film (by Gilkyson) can be heard on the soundtrack CD: "Brothers All" and "The Song of the Seeonee."
A scene with a near-sighted, short-tempered rhinoceros named Rocky, who would encounter Baloo and Mowgli after the fall of King Louie's palace, was cut out of the script after Walt Disney figured that two comic scenes back-to-back was poor movie-making. Rocky was to be voiced by Frank Fontaine, who recorded his lines, and animation went as far as detailed storyboards.
According to Elsie Kipling Baimbridge, Rudyard Kipling's daughter, "Mowgli" is pronounced "MAU-glee", not "MOH-glee". She reportedly never forgave Walt Disney for the gaffe.
All of the 'scatting' in the film was improvised by 'Phil Harris' and Louis Prima.
Although it is unverified, some of the animation sequences used for the wolf mother and pups appear to be reused from One Hundred and One Dalmatians, just colored differently. The motions of the wolf pups leaning on the tree log, for example, compared to three of the dalmatians on the arm of the chair in Cruella Deville's mansion.
Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther, and Hathi the elephant are named after the words in Hindi for their species. Shere Khan means Tiger King.
Because of their busy band schedule, Louis Prima and Phil Harris recorded their song "I Wanna Be Like You" separately.
Came seventh in the UK's Ultimate Film, in which films were placed in order of how many seats they sold at cinemas
Col. Hathi mentions that he received the Victoria Cross for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration which is, or has been, awarded for "most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valor or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy" and is awarded to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories. It takes precedence over all other orders, decorations and medals.
Disappointed by the muted reception to The Sword in the Stone, Walt Disney was determined to come back with a universally well regarded film. He urged his story men to not bother reading the original novel.
Disney and Bill Peet ultimately didn't see eye to eye on the direction of the film with the end result that Peet left the studio, ending a 25 year professional working relationship. Sadly, their friendship was never renewed as Disney died during the film's production. Peet however had nothing but nice things to say about his former employer in his autobiography.
Every story idea was supervised by Walt Disney including the ending in which a girl entices Mowgli to go to the man village. Animator Ollie Johnston hated that ending because he felt it was lazy and tacked on but the more he worked on the sequence the more he began to feel it was the right one. Later Johnston said that he was glad that Walt didn't listen to him.
Her role as Winifred the Elephant (Colonel Hathi's mate) was the last film role for Verna Felton, before her death in December 1966 (one day before Walt Disney himself died). Her first role in an animated Disney film was also that of an elephant: she was The Elephant Matriarch in Dumbo.
In the early 70s, the Disney studio was undergoing a cost-cutting exercise with their film Robin Hood. To help save money, they recycled several elements from The Jungle Book, including using the design of Baloo for Little John and the dance sequence between Baloo and King Louie which was rotoscoped and used again for Little John and Lady Cluck's dance.