An Actor's Life for Me, Part 9
Posted by Trevor on July 28, 2009
Tags: Disneyland, Gideon, Jiminy Cricket, Midget, Pinocchio, Robert Reed
It was about halfway through our first Plaza Inn breakfast set, and I was over at one end of the restaurant near the windows, working the room in my baggy cat suit, walkin' and wavin' with Pinocchio, when we got waved over by a large group of very friendly and talkative Italians. One of the younger women, who could speak English, asked for Pinocchio's autograph on a paper napkin. I waited my turn to sign and watched as Pinocchio obliged and a smile of recognition passed across the woman's face and she said something to the group, which got a really positive reaction. I signed my autograph: G-I-D-E-O-N in a large script, quite easily with my gloved hand instead of the usual three-fingered furry mitt. But when she read it, she frowned and passed it along. When I walked down one side of the table, the formerly friendly Italians kept saying "Bad kitty, bad kitty" to me and shooing me away.
The reason for this was fairly simple and if I had listened to "Mr. Brady" and had gone back to the text, I would have known. It turned out that the Gideon, in the original story, was a really bad cat. He even grabs a little blue bird who was offering Pinocchio some good advice about not talking to strangers and then eats him, feathers and all, right in front of the boy. When Pinocchio asks why he did it, Gideon simply says, "I did it to him to teach him a lesson. He talks too much. Next time he will keep his words to himself." Yes, in the original version, not only could the cat talk, he was a gangsta who didn't take crap from nobody. The animated movie version made him into a mute, with many of the characteristics of a feline version of Harpo Marx. This made a little sense, since the other cat in the picture, Figaro, also didn't speak. But then, the pet cat didn't wear clothes, walk with a cane and hit people over the head with a big wooden mallet, the way Gideon did. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to carry a mallet either, not even for defensive purposes. It might have come in handy.
The multigenerational extended family of now seemingly annoyed Italians glared at me with sheer contempt. One of the toddlers even pelted me with a bread roll. I didn't get it. They had treated The Sheriff of Nottingham better, even posing for pictures with him. When it was our unit's turn for photos, "Honest John" and I were shoved out of the frame and relegated to the sidelines as the aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and cousins of all sorts took snap after snap with the little wooden boy.
The bread roll projectile lay at my feet and for a moment I considered spearing it on the end of my cane and flipping it back at the boy, but my conscience got the better of me. A little voice that sounded suspiciously like a cricket I knew told me that it wouldn't be appropriate animation, even for a villain. Yes, I was hearing the voice of "Jiminy." The squeaky-clean film had also inflicted Pinocchio with Jiminy, the cricket, his external little chirping conscience. We all had one actually. Because the official logo on the Zoo Crew T-shirts was a full sized Jiminy Cricket emblazoned across it, rather than the ubiquitous mouse-faced T-shirts readily available in the park.
The first time I picked my "character whites" up from wardrobe and saw the little green guy staring up at me, I was a little surprised by the image. My buddy Harry said in a knowledgeable tone that usually meant he wasn't being serious, but that he was about to impart an important piece of wisdom that "they used da bug instead of da mouse," because as he put it, "management wants ya to be remember to let your conscious be your guide...until they can figure out a way to put a real 'bug' in our costumes and track our movements. I'm surprised they haven't microchipped us all already. Now get out there and frolic."
The weird thing about Jiminy being the little wooden boy's conscience is that in the original version of the tale, Pinocchio actually kills the cricket with a hammer. Which is really messed up for a start but what's even weirder is that he doesn't even mean to do it. Pinocchio just picks up one of Geppetto's tools he finds lying around his woodshop and throws it at the overbearing bug just to shut him up. To their equal surprise, he hits the tiny creature dead on. With a loud squish, the hundred-year lifespan of the nameless talking cricket comes to an abrupt and sticky end. Later on in the story, the overly talky-bug comes back to haunt Pinocchio as a ghost. I suppose that's where Uncle Walt got the idea of the cricket conscience. I doubt that the original story would have made it past the pre-war censors.
Looking around the restaurant at my "full unit" engaged in full photo session hell, I noticed that one in our group was missing. The little green guy seemed conspicuously absent. I couldn't help thinking, "But where's Jiminy?" Earlier I had asked the Pinocchio unit lead, Roxanne, the same question as we were marching backstage toward the break area. She took a deep breath, smiled a brittle, forced smile and said in her clipped tour-guide manner. "Yes, there is a Jiminy Cricket costume, but it isn't scheduled in the park very often. Because in the movie, he's really tiny and even if there was a midget in the costume, it is still pretty big." I flinched at her use of the "M" bomb and glanced around for Harry. Luckily, he was nowhere near.
She continued as if one of the audio animatronic characters from Mission to Mars had been let loose to explain costuming decisions to the uninitiated. "Jiminy is used more for special events and parades where the disparity in size isn't as noticeable." I had just blinked at her. It was as if a life-sized talking doll with red hair had had its string pulled and she was just mouthing platitudes by rote. "It is one thing to see the long-nosed boy's little cricket conscience from a distance, on a parade float. But it is something else for a little kid to encounter a very big, green, bug-eyed alien insect thing staring down at them, first thing in the morning, while they are being told to eat their breakfast." I got the feeling that she didn't like being a lead very much and that this was the aspect of her job that she particularly detested. "So when Jiminy is seen walking around in the park and people ask me, 'Hey lady, why is that bug so big?' I have to politely reply, 'The Blue Fairy magically made him bigger so that he wouldn't get stepped on in.' Got it?" She said this last bit with a slight sneer before surreptitiously rolling her eyes at my inane question and going about her business. "Rookies!" She hissed under her breath.
I got why the big bug wasn't with us. If she had to say that bit about the Blue Fairy once more, she probably would have taken a hostage.
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