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Plot summary
In Mother Goose Village, Tom Piper and Mary Contrary are preparing to marry, and the villagers join in the celebration. Barnaby, a miser, wants Mary for himself, and he knows she is the heiress to a fortune she has never heard of. He hires Gonzorgo and Roderigo to get rid of Tom and to take the sheep that feed Mary and the children in her care. The two henchmen knock Tom out, then decide to sell him to Gypsies instead and be paid twice. They come back with a forged letter and the news that Tom has drowned. Believing herself without means, Mary accepts Barnaby's proposal.
Cast
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- James Gonzalezas Villager (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Babes in Toyland (1961)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Handed the project, animator Ward Kimball read the three scripts already written and dismissed them all as "terrible, absolutely nothing". Finding Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta too complicated, he cut the orphans subplot and built the story round Tom, Mary Contrary and Barnaby.
- Kimball lost the film over publicity and casting: a studio publicist took out trade advertisements promoting his work on it, which convinced Disney that Kimball had got above himself, and Kimball then wanted a different actress for Mary while Disney insisted on Annette Funicello.
- Ray Bolger was cast as the villain Barnaby in January 1961, the first villain role of his career; a few months earlier Disney had been looking at Dean Jones for the male lead of Tom.
- By Annette Funicello's account, Tommy Sands took the male lead of Tom Piper ahead of Michael Callan and James Darren.
- The toy soldiers outlived the film. Disney animator and Imagineer Bill Justice designed the theme-park soldiers to match the 1961 costumes exactly, and with fellow Imagineer X Atencio put the same soldiers into the stop-motion nursery sequence of Mary Poppins in 1964.
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