Welcome to spooky season! I’m not usually a Halloween person but since being stuck at home in 2020, it’s helped me appreciate the smaller joys that life brings, such as being excited for a season. I know Disney lovers have a big soft spot for Halloween and Fall time, so here’s a themed post for you! As we approach the scary season, let’s talk about our favourite scary Disney characters. That’s right: the villains.

If you’re not already aware, when animators are working on Disney films, a lot of the time they draw from a reference. This could mean taking inspiration from past animated characters for certain scenes, using their own faces in mirrors to see how a character would react, or using full reference models to really get the movements, quirks, and facial reactions right. There have been a few real life reference models for our Disney villains, so let’s meet them:

Eleanor Audley - Maleficent/Lady Tremaine

Audley is widely known for taking on both of these iconic roles, with animator Marc Davis deciding to model them both after her, as well as using her voice for both of them. Davis also said her voice was a majorly impressive voice, as it was so unique and perfect to fit both of these roles.

Divine - Ursula

When Rob Minkoff was tasked with designing the villain for The Little Mermaid, he drew inspiration from Joan Collins, Patti Labelle, Ursula’s voice actress Pat Carroll, but most of all: Divine. Divine was a drag queen who befriended John Waters, who gave her her stage name as well as got her into taking on movie roles. Divine also performed in theatre and is well known for taking on Water’s first version of Hairspray in 1988.

Hans Conried - Captain Hook

Not only was Conried the reference model, but he was the voice for both Hook and Mr.Darling, as the parallelism between the two characters needed to be evident. Conried worked in radio, made his way to Broadway, and eventually into voice acting with Peter Pan and later Sleeping Beauty.

Mary Wickes - Cruella Deville

Wickes came from a household who loved theatre, so naturally she began her career on Broadway. She started acting in films in the 1930s. She starred as Mary Poppins in a Westinghouse Studio One version, Katie the maid on the Mickey Mouse Club, and later of course became the model for Cruella for 101 Dalmatians.

Stewart Granger - Claude Frollo

Although he wasn’t Frollo’s official reference model to work with Disney, the character was inspired by his looks, along with Hans Conried again but his character from The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Granger worked in theatre for most of his early life and continued to work with MGM for many years on film. In my opinion, Frollo is one of, if not the most terrifying Disney villain.

Cher - Mother Gothel

According to one of Tangled’s creators Byron Howard, Gothel is loosely based on Cher’s appearance, as she appears “exotic and gothic-looking”, to give Gothel that dark vibe to contrast with Rapunzel’s brightness.

Image from: https://www.hit.com.au/story/cher-and-amanda-seyfried-look-exactly-like-rapunzel-mother-gothel-101544

A lot of the other Disney villains didn’t have very specific people they were based on or have real life reference models at all, but were rather a combination of different ideas from animators. If there are any other villains you know who were modeled after people we know, let me know in the comments!

References:

https://www.oldradio.org/2013/04/april-17-happy-birthday-hans-conried.html

https://www.insider.com/the-little-mermaid-ursula-concept-art-2019-7

https://alchetron.com/Divine-(performer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wickes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Frollo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Gothel