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History of Peter Pan: the Story Behind the Disney Classic
All of this has happened before,
and it will all happen again.
So begins my favorite Walt Disney animated movie, Peter Pan, which debuted 69 years ago today on February 5, 1953. The original movie poster said:
“It will live in your heart forever”
…and indeed it has. Why was this turn-of-the-century tale one of Disney’s favorite stories?
Walt Disney’s Peter Pan
It’s because Walt Disney was Peter Pan. Am I suggesting that because he was “the boy who wouldn’t grow up?” Perhaps, but I really mean that Walt Disney performed Peter Pan as a child. How did that happen?
The Play: Peter Pan
First, we must begin by recognizing that Peter Pan came to notice in the 1904 stage play by James Matthew Barrie, a Scottish author and playwright. It was first performed in London, where he’d previously met the Llewelyn Davies boys, whom he later adopted.
George Bernard Shaw said that Peter Pan was
“ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people.”
The Llewelyn Davies boys were the inspiration for the boy who has adventures in nearby Kensington Gardens in London and the magical Neverland. Barrie wrote “Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” a play about an ageless little boy and a London girl named Wendy.
Trivia: J.M. Barrie “popularized” the girl’s name Wendy, taking it from a five-year-old girl he knew named Barrie Margaret Henle. He called her “my fwendy-wendy.” The boy’s name Wendy goes back to 1615.
J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan
What is not as well known is that J.M. Barrie was himself the “boy who wouldn’t grow up.” When James was 6, his older brother David died at 13 in an ice-skating accident. His mother was…
