A live action film version of Peter Pan, which would have starred Audrey Hepburn in the title role and Laurence Olivier as Captain Hook, was scrapped because of a legal wrangle between Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and Walt Disney. The London hospital, which was given the rights to the play by JM Barrie in 1929, had hoped a new cinema version of the classic children’s story would generate tens of thousands of pounds towards patient care.
The $10?million film, proposed in 1964, was to have been made by George Cukor, the director of My Fair Lady and The Philadelphia Story.
But it never got off the ground because Disney’s Hollywood studio threatened legal action, claiming it owned all the cinematic rights to the play. The studio had paid the relatively low sum of pounds 5,000 for the animation rights to Peter Pan in 1939, and had released its cartoon version in 1953.
The row, which is outlined in confidential documents in the hospital’s archive, will prove embarrassing for Disney. The files disclose that hospital managers believed that the filmmaker was putting its commercial needs before the needs of sick children.
While tensions between the studio and the hospital have surfaced over the decades, the aborted film starring Hepburn and Olivier remained under wraps until now.
In 1964, Cukor and Hepburn, whom he had just directed in his Oscarwinning classic My Fair Lady, began negotiations with the hospital. But the film, which was to have been produced by Hepburn’s husband at the time, Mel Ferrer, was stopped in its tracks after Disney threatened court action.
On August 24, 1964, a furious Cukor vented his anger to Gordon Piller, the hospital’s secretary. He wrote: “Quite apart from the serious inconvenience that Disney has caused us all, I find his behaviour unconscionable.
He(Walt Disney) cannot honestly believe that he has any legal or moral claim to the title.
"He must or should recognise that he’s trying to appropriate something for himself that belongs to a hospital for sick children.
"I don’t think he’d cut a very good figure, in his eyes or anyone else’s, if this was generally known. All the more so because he represents ‘wholesome entertainment’ to the world.” In a handwritten postscript, Cukor adds: “We’ll stick right with it until we succeed!” Cukor later complained to the hospital about Disney’s decision to release a big screen version of Mary Poppins, starring a flying Julie Andrews.
In another letter to Mr Piller, Cukor wrote: “I haven’t seen it yet but Mary Poppins flies and flies all over the place. That makes Disney’s behaviour all the clearer. He is determined that not only does he own the title Peter Pan but he and he only is permitted to make characters fly.” To defend its rights over Peter Pan the hospital launched legal action against Disney, but the courtroom wrangling dragged on for years, meaning that Cukor and Hepburn were no longer able to make the film.
The dispute carried on after Walt Disney’s death in 1966 and was not finally settled until 1969, when the hospital was awarded pounds 14,000 in compensation as well as pounds 30,000 in costs.
A spokesman for the Walt Disney Company said Saturday: “Disney has supported Great Ormond Street Hospital over many years and in January 2008 the company announced that it would join forces with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity to raise pounds 10?million towards the hospital’s capital appeal.