Darby O'Gill and The Little People - Production

Production

The film's development began with a visit to Ireland and the Irish Folklore Commission by Walt Disney and associates in 1947. The Disney company continued to liaise with the Commission and its director, James Delargy, over the coming decade based on Disney's desire to use Irish folklore as the basis of a film but, to Delargy's disappointment, eventually decided to make an adaptation of Irish-American writer Herminone Templeton Kavanagh's 1903 collection of stories 'Darbie O'Gill and the Good People.'

This is the film that first brought Sean Connery to the attention of producer Albert R. Broccoli, who at the time was casting the first James Bond film, Dr. No. Broccoli hired Connery on the recommendation of his wife, Dana Broccoli.

The Death Coach, or cóiste bodhar (pronounced "Coashta-Bower" in the film), acquired its name from a misunderstanding - 'bodhar' being the Irish word for 'deaf' rather than 'death', the misunderstanding presumably arose from differences of accent.

There are actually two versions of the film's soundtrack. Several of the original Irish actors' accents (notably Darby, Widow Sheelah Sugrue, King Brian, and the Leprechauns) were deemed too difficult for American audiences to understand and were consequently overdubbed with easier-to-understand voices, possibly from different voice actors. The original soundtrack also contains some dialogue in Irish, especially from King Brian and his leprechaun subjects, which was subsequently changed in the overdubbed version to English alternatives. Both versions are used on television showings and also on DVD, although quite contrarily, the Region 1 US/Canada DVD contains the original undubbed soundtrack and the Region 2 PAL disc uses the dubbed version.

Despite its setting, the bulk of the film was shot at Disney's ranch in Burbank, California. Second unit footage from Ireland, combined with matte paintings by Peter Ellenshaw, helped present a seamless picture of late-nineteenth century Ireland.

Many of the scenes combining humans and Leprechauns used forced perspective, with the "Little People" much farther from the camera. This required stopping the camera's lens way down for adequate depth of field, and a consequent increase in lighting to compensate.

The duet "Pretty Irish Girl", apparently sung by Sean Connery and Janet Munro, has been alleged to feature dubbed vocals by Irish singers, Brendan O'Dowda and Ruby Murray. A single of the duet was released in the UK. However, the deeper male vocal and breathy female vocal (which matches Munro’s a capella finish to the song, plainly recorded on set) performing the song in the American version of the film do not match the voices of O'Dowda (a tenor) nor Murray (a trained singer.) Connery does sing the song Pretty Irish Girl (with solo piano accompaniment) on the 1992 compilation The Music of Disney: A Legacy of Song, and in 1959 Top Rank released a single in the UK (catalog number JAR 163) which featured Connery and Munro singing the song.

Walt Disney devoted an episode of his show Disneyland to promoting the film, recruiting actors Sharpe and O'Dea to film special segments on the set with Disney, as well as Irish-American actor Pat O'Brien. The episode, "I Captured the King of the Leprechauns", marked the only known television appearance of both Sharpe and O'Dea.