The Rescuers is a 1977 American animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor respectively star as Bernard and Bianca, two mice who are members of the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization dedicated to helping abduction victims around the world. Both must free a young orphan Penny (voiced by Michelle Stacy) from two treasure hunters (played by Geraldine Page and Joe Flynn), who intend to use her to help them obtain a giant diamond. The film is based on a series of books by Margery Sharp, including The Rescuers (1959) and Miss Bianca (1962).
An early version of The Rescuers entered development in 1962, but was shelved due to Walt Disney's dislike of its political overtones. During the 1970s, the film was revived as a project intended for the younger animators, with the oversight of the senior staff. Four years were spent on the film's production. The Rescuers was released on June 22, 1977, to positive critical reception and became a box office success, earning $48 million during its initial theatrical run. It has since grossed $169 million after two theatrical re-releases in 1983 and 1989. Due to the film's success, a sequel titled The Rescuers Down Under was released in 1990, which made this the first Disney theatrical animated film to have a sequel.
Plot
In an abandoned riverboat in Devil's Bayou, Louisiana, a small orphan girl named Penny drops a message in a bottle, containing a plea for help, into the river. The Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization inside the United Nations, finds the bottle when it washes up in New York City. The Hungarian representative, Miss Bianca, volunteers to accept the case. She chooses Bernard, a stammering janitor, as her co-agent.
The two mice visit Morningside Orphanage, where Penny lived, and meet an old cat named Rufus. He tells them about a woman named Madame Medusa who once tried to lure Penny into her car, prompting the mice to investigate Medusa's pawn shop for clues.
At the pawn shop, Bianca and Bernard discover that Medusa and her partner, Mr. Snoops, are searching for the world's largest diamond, the Devil's Eye. Snoops is currently at the Devil's Bayou with Penny, whom the pair have kidnapped and placed under the guard of two trained crocodiles, Brutus and Nero. With the help of an albatross named Orville and a dragonfly named Evinrude, the mice follow Medusa to the bayou. There, they learn that Medusa plans to force Penny to enter a small blowhole that leads down into a blocked-off pirates' cave, where the Devil's Eye is located.
Bernard and Bianca find Penny and devise a plan of escape. They send Evinrude to alert the local animals, who loathe Medusa, but Evinrude is delayed when he is forced to take shelter from a cloud of bats. The following morning, Medusa and Snoops send Penny down into the cave to find the gem. Unbeknownst to Medusa, Bianca and Bernard are hiding in Penny's dress pocket. The three soon find the Devil's Eye within a pirate skull. As Penny pries the mouth open with a sword, the mice push the gem through it. The oceanic tide rises, flooding the cave; Penny and the mice only barely manage to escape.
Medusa betrays Snoops and hides the diamond in Penny's teddy bear, while holding Penny and Snoops at gunpoint. Bernard and Bianca use a cable to trip Medusa, who drops the bear; Penny snatches it up and runs. The local animals arrive at the riverboat, help Bernard and Bianca to trap Brutus and Nero, then set off Mr. Snoops's fireworks to create a diversion. Meanwhile, Penny and the mice commandeer Medusa's swamp-mobile, a makeshift airboat. Medusa unsuccessfully pursues them, using Brutus and Nero as water-skis. As the riverboat sinks from the fireworks' damage, Medusa crashes and is left clinging to the boat's smoke stacks. Mr. Snoops escapes on a raft and laughs at her, while the irritated Brutus and Nero turn on her and circle below.
Back in New York City, the Rescue Aid Society watch a news report of how Penny found the Devil's Eye, which has been given to the Smithsonian Institution while it is implied that Medusa and Mr. Snoops have been arrested. The report also mentions that Penny has been adopted. The meeting is interrupted when Evinrude arrives with a call for help, sending Bernard and Bianca on a new adventure.
Cast Bob Newhart as Bernard, Rescue Aid Society's timid janitor, who reluctantly tags along with Miss Bianca on her journey to the Devil's Bayou to rescue Penny. He is highly superstitious about the number 13 and dislikes flying (the latter being a personality trait of Newhart). Eva Gabor as Miss Bianca, the Hungarian representative of the Rescue Aid Society. She is sophisticated and adventurous, and fond of Bernard, choosing him as her co-agent as she sets out to rescue Penny. Her Hungarian nationality was derived from that of her voice actress. Geraldine Page as Madame Medusa, a greedy, redheaded, wicked pawn-shop owner. Upon discovering the Devil's Eye diamond hidden in a blowhole, she kidnaps the small orphan, Penny, to retrieve it for her, as Penny is the only one small enough to fit in it. She has two pet crocodiles, who turn on her after she is thwarted by Bernard, Bianca, and Penny. Joe Flynn as Mr. Snoops, Medusa's clumsy and incompetent business partner, who obeys his boss's orders to steal the Devil's Eye in exchange for half of it. Upon being betrayed by Medusa, however, he turns on her and flees by raft, laughing at her. This was Flynn's final role, with the film being released after his death in 1974. Jeanette Nolan as Ellie Mae and Pat Buttram as Luke, two muskrats who reside in a Southern-style home on a patch of land in Devil's Bayou. Luke drinks very strong, homemade liquor, which is used to help Bernard and Evinrude regain energy when they need it. Its most important usage is for fuel for powering Medusa's swamp-mobile in the film's climax. Jim Jordan as Orville (named after Orville Wright of the Wright brothers, the inventors of the airplane; most likely influenced from Bob Newhart's stand-up sketch "Merchandising the Wright Brothers"), an albatross who gives Bernard and Bianca a ride to Devil's Bayou. Jordan, 80 years old by the time the film was completed, had been lured out of retirement and had not performed since the death of his wife and comic partner Marian in 1961; it would serve as Jordan's last public performance. John McIntire as Rufus, an elderly cat who resides at Morningside Orphanage and comforts Penny when she is sad. Although his time onscreen is rather brief, he provides the film's most important theme, faith. He was designed by animator Ollie Johnston, who retired after the film following a 40-year career with Disney. Michelle Stacy as Penny, a lonely orphan girl residing at Morningside Orphanage in New York City. She is kidnapped by Medusa in an attempt to retrieve the world's largest diamond, the Devil's Eye. Bernard Fox as Mr. Chairman, the chairman to the Rescue Aid Society. Larry Clemmons as Gramps, a grumpy, yet kind old turtle who carries a brown cane. James MacDonald as Evinrude (named after a brand of outboard motors), a dragonfly who mans a leaf boat across Devil's Bayou, giving Bernard and Miss Bianca a ride across the swamp waters. George Lindsey as Deadeye, a fisher rabbit who is one of Luke and Ellie Mae's friends. Bill McMillian as TV Announcer Dub Taylor as Digger, a mole. John Fiedler as Deacon Owl
Production In 1959, the book The Rescuers by Margery Sharp had been published to considerable success. In 1962, Sharp followed up with a sequel titled Miss Bianca. That same year, the books were optioned by Walt Disney, who began developing an animated film adaptation. In January 1963, story artist Otto Englander wrote a story treatment based on the first book, centering on a Norwegian poet unfairly imprisoned in a Siberia-like stronghold known as the Black Castle. The story was revised with the location changed to Cuba, in which the mice would help the poet escape into the United States. However, as the story became overtly involved in international intrigue, Disney shelved the project as he was unhappy with the political overtones. In August 1968, Englander wrote another treatment featuring Bernard and Bianca rescuing Richard the Lionheart during the Middle Ages.
During the early 1970s, The Rescuers reentered development as a project for the young animators, led by Don Bluth, with the studio planning to alternate between full-scale "A pictures" and smaller, scaled-back "B pictures" with simpler animation. The animators had selected the most recent book, Miss Bianca in the Antarctic, to adapt from. The new story involved a King penguin deceiving a captured polar bear into performing in shows aboard a schooner, causing the unsatisfied bear to place a bottle that would reach the mice. Fred Lucky, a newly hired storyboard artist, was assigned to develop the story adaptation, alongside Ken Anderson. This version of the story was dropped, to which Lucky explained the Arctic setting "was too stark a background for the animators." Vance Gerry, also a storyboard artist, also explained director Wolfgang Reitherman "decided not to go with Fred Lucky's version. He said, It's too complicated. I want a simple story: A little girl gets kidnapped and the mice try to get her back, period. According to Burny Mattinson, he stated: "Our problem was that the penguin wasn't formidable or evil enough for the audience to believe he would dominate the big bear. We struggled with that for a year or so. We changed the locale to somewhere in America and it was now a regular zoo and we tried to come up with something with the bear in the zoo and needing to be rescued but that didn't work either."
In that version, the bear character was still retained, but was renamed Louie the Bear. Jazz singer Louis Prima was cast in the role and had recorded most of the dialogue and multiple songs that were composed by Floyd Huddleston. The writers also expanded the role of his best friend, Gus the Lion. Huddleston had stated, "It's about two animals. One is Louis Prima — he's the polar bear — and Redd Foxx is the lion ...Louis gets cornered into leaving and going to the South Pole where he can make himself a bigger star. But he gets homesick; he feels fooled. They send out little mice as 'rescuers'." By November 1973, the role of Louie the Bear had been heavily scaled back and then eliminated. In one version, the bear was meant to be Bernard and Bianca's connection to Penny. Gerry explained, "We developed the sequence where, while the two mice are searching for clues as to where Penny has been taken, they come across this bear who she had been friends with because the orphanage where Penny was living was near the zoo." In the final film, the idea was reduced to a simple scene where Bernard enters a zoo and hears a lion's roar that scares him away.