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What's the process of designing the characters and combining the voice?

Animator Andreas Deja: “Start with stunning characteristics. It's interesting, sometimes a character ends up looking like the voice actor. He has a little bit of Mowgli. You kind of borrow facial expressions. Then, other times, not so much. Like Sebastian Cabot I don't think looks like a panther.”

Why did you get involved in The Jungle Book?

Chad Stuart (of Chad and Jeremy): “I think it was through our agent, the Morris agent. Jeremy and I had already established ourselves as English and we could talk. We had hair and we'd done The Dick Van Dyke Show. We even did a Western. We did a spin-off of Laredo, which is pretty amazing. Needless to say, we weren't cowboys. So I think Jeremy would have been in it too, but he was acting in London. Which of course is why we broke up really because he just had to act. But he's back now which is kind of brilliant.

But I loved the idea. Just driving onto the Disney lot, ‘I'm going to be a voice in a Disney movie.’ I mean, it doesn't get much better than that. It was very, very cool and I remember naively, stupidly probably, auditioning for Woolie and doing my best impression of Peter Sellers doing impressions of Frenchmen. Woolie was just like, ‘Cool it, kid. Just give me a Beatle.’

There's something about a vulture and a Beatle. If that doesn't make sense, just that gloomy thing they had going, didn't they?

They were always so depressed. It's sort of a Northern England thing, isn't it? It rains a lot. Anyway, the [filmmakers] thought, ‘We better play it safe. This Beatle thing is going to be over before we know it.’"

Composer Richard Sherman: “There's an interesting anecdote that goes along with that. When we first wrote the song That's What Friends Are For, we kind of wrote it in kind of a rock star, very much like a Beatles-type song. That's the way we originally demoed it.”

Chad Stuart: “You should have stuck with it.”

Composer Richard Sherman: “Walt heard that and he said, ‘That's going to date it. That's going to date it.’ So we went back to the drawing board and Bob and I rewrote the song as a Barbershop Quartet because that's timeless. But we had [Liverpoolian] voices, one of them anyway, and we did a Barbershop Quartet as if it would sound to a bird. It was like The Beatles were singing it. And that's how we got the soundtrack. It's kind of a bastardized version, but it worked.”

How did you meet Louis Prima and conceive of his song?

Composer Richard Sherman: “Well, Louis Prima actually came about in an interesting way. We had written I Want to Be Like You for the King of the Apes to sing and it was a very fun song, Dixieland jazz kind of song. Originally we were going in a different direction and I remember Louis Prima had sung an album of Mary Poppins songs of all things. He did it with kind of a scat version of Chim-Chim-Cheree, where he was going all over the place ad-libbing with the song. It was very impressive, and Bob and I thought it would be kind of great if we have a little scat singing in there, a little Scooby-dooby-doo, be bop and that kind of a little craziness.

We added some beat like that into it and I brought up this record at a meeting one day. Everybody got into that and said, ‘Louis Prima is perfect, perfect, perfect.’ So they sent Bob and myself to Las Vegas to see Louis Prima. Now, Louis Prima worked with this band called Sam Butera and the Witnesses, the wildest group of entertainers you've ever seen. Great, great, talented guys. They'd get off the stand and parade around just like you see in the picture.

When Bob and I went there, we were kind of intimidated because I had to sing the song on a piano in a little room for these wild musicians. I was terrified, oh my god, so I sat there and you could hear a pin drop. These people sat like University professors listening to me going, ‘Ooh ooh ooh, I wanna be like you oo oo.’ And Louis Prima says to me, ‘Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?’ I said, ‘Louis, Louis, we're trying to make an ape out of you.’ And he said, ‘Well, you got me.’ And they all started to laugh because they loved the song and wanted to do it very much. They put their own personalities, of course, into it. It became a very exciting sequence.”

What’s your special memory of The Jungle Book?

Darleen Carr: “Some things sort of outlive you and I think The Jungle Book is going to outlive me. Of course it was a great experience for me, not only having an opportunity to know Walt the last year before he passed on, but also to sing Richard and Robert Sherman's music was unbelievable. I got to do that on another occasion besides Jungle Book. And it's just a joy to be here and see everyone again.”

Chad Stuart: “I think one of my favorite memories was one of almost discomfort really, which is it's one thing to pour your heart and soul into recording voices, but when you're doing it with the animators all around you armed with sketch pads staring at you… And they do, they got it. They've got that thing. Obviously with us it was pretty easy but I recognize myself. I do.”

Composer Richard Sherman: “I think the thing I take back the most from all the memories I have of the film is the fact that none of us, when we were working on this film, realized that this was the very last time Walt Disney would personally be producing a picture. He was personally involved in every sequence, personally plussing things and making suggestions and keeping the team moving forward, etc. It was just an amazing, amazing time. And as the years go by, I think back on it and I say, ‘What a treasure to know that I was part of that team that made his last great animated film.’"