"You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!"

Partly because it's my favorite Disney song from what is probably my favorite Disney cartoon, but primarily because someone uploaded it, here is the "You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!" segment from Peter Pan. I most likely saw it for the first time during the film's 1969 reissue (Peter Pan was first released in '53, then '58). There will always be a magical quality about this for me (I hope!):



Bow down to the Disney animators - every speck of pixie dust was hand drawn.


I love the music from Peter Pan, primarily "You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!" My little sister and I spent a lot of time listening to the Peter Pan soundtrack. It's some of the earliest music I can remember (also "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden"). "You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!" was written by Sammy Cahn and Sammy Fain. The singers are The Jud Conlon Chorus and The Mellomen - are they not the sound of fifties' mainstream culture?!



Noteworthy trivia about the film (from its Wikipedia page):

This film marked two "lasts" for Disney: 1) This was the final Disney film in which all nine members of the Nine Old Men worked together on it as directing animators. 2) It was the last Disney animated feature to be distributed by RKO Radio before Disney started its own distributor, Buena Vista.

The phrase "second to the right and straight on till morning" was changed into "second star to the right..." for the Disney version, however the phrase was said by Peter Pan while standing on one of Big Ben's clock hands. Also, since the film came out, non-Disney versions have used the term "Never Never Land" as opposed to "Neverland".

The melody for "The Second Star to the Right" was originally written for Alice in Wonderland (1951) as part of a song to be entitled "Beyond the Laughing Sky".

Though the film was extremely successful, Walt Disney himself was dissatisfied with the finished product. He felt that the character of Peter Pan was cold and unlikable, not to mention adult-hating.

Initially planned for the film was a scene where Tinkerbell is dying and Peter sings a song to save her. This scene was cut for pacing purposes and Tinkerbell appears with Peter later in the film and no explanation is given as to her healing.

Ronald D. Moore, one of the executive producers and developer of the re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica," has cited this film as the inspiration for one of the recurring themes of the T.V. series concerning the cyclical nature of time. The first line of the film, "all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again," has been featured prominently in the "Battlestar Galactica" series as a piece of scripture often repeated by characters.


Bonus image:Nana!