An English tourist (Faith Brook) visits an Indian village. She gives a storyteller, Buldeo (Joseph Calleia), a coin to tell her a jungle story. In the jungle a group of men and women are building a village. When a young child goes missing his father goes looking for him. The tiger, Shere Kahn, kills the father. The child becomes lost in the jungle and finds a wolf den. Inside the den is the mother wolf with her cubs. The she-wolf adopts the child and raises him. He is called Mowgli (Sabu), which means little frog.
Mowgli grows up in the jungle. He becomes friends with Bagheera the panther, Hathi the elephant, Baloo the bear and Kaa the snake. His only enemy is Shere Kahn. When Mowgli is a young man, he is captured by the villagers. Buldeo believes the wild child is evil and wants to kill him. Messua (Rosemary DeCamp) comes to his aid and convinces Buldeo to let her take care of him. Unbeknownst to Messua, Mowgli is her real son. After being in the village for a while Mowgli becomes acquainted with village life and learns to speak. He becomes friends with Buldeo’s daughter, Mahala (Patricia O’Rourke). Learning about money, Messua gives Mowgli money to buy a knife. Now, when Shere Kahn returns he will have a tooth to fight and kill the big cat.
After buying the knife, Mowgli takes Mahala out into the jungle to explore. They find an ancient, abandoned city. Underneath is a treasure room full of gold and jewels. The old cobra that guards the treasure warns Mowgli that the treasure brings death. When they leave, Mahala takes one gold coin as a souvenir. When her father finds the coin, he learns about the ancient city and the chamber full of treasure. Buldeo and two other villagers, the Barber (John Qualen) and the Pundit (Frank Puglia) vow to find the treasure not realizing it will be the downfall of the entire village.
“The Jungle Book” was released in 1942 and was directed by Zoltan Korda. It is a live action jungle adventure story. The American and British film was loosely adapted from four of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” stories, "Mowgli's Brothers," "How Fear Came," "Tiger! Tiger!," and "The King's Ankus." Kipling wrote fifteen Jungle Book stories in all.
The movie was set in India but filmed in California. The only animals in the film that talk are the two snakes, Kaa and the Father of Cobras, the guardian of the treasure. The voice of Kaa was done by Mel Blanc. The voice of the white cobra is not credited, at least anywhere I could find. It could be Mel doing both voices but I’m not sure.
The main animals in the film are Bagheera and Shere Khan. There are a few wolves here and there, Kaa plays the main character in one scene. Hathi the elephant is around but Baloo is only mentioned in passing. Since most of the animals don’t talk, they don’t have much character development, which makes the film less charming than the subsequent animated films.
Other than the 1937 film “Elephant Boy”, which also starred Sabu and was based on the Kipling story “Toumai the Elephant Boy”, this was the first film that was based on Kipling’s Jungle Book anthologies. Both films were made by the Koda brothers.