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Jiminy Cricket
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| Jiminy Cricket | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Pinocchio, 1940 |
| Created by | Ward Kimball |
| Voiced by | Cliff Edwards Eddie Carroll |
| Also known as | |
Jiminy Cricket is a fictional character who first appeared in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Pinocchio. He was appointed by the Blue Fairy to serve as the official conscience for Pinocchio. He is also a comical and wise partner who accompanies Pinocchio on his adventures.
"Jiminy Cricket!" or "Jiminy Crickets!" was originally a polite expletive euphemism for Jesus Christ. The name of the character is a play on the exclamation (which itself was uttered in Pinocchio's immediate predecessor, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). Another way to say this is "Jiminy Christmas!", "Jeeminy Christmas", or "Jiminy Crispus". Another example occurs in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. When the group first enters the Wizard's chamber, they are startled by the Wizard's sudden thunder-and-lightning display, and Dorothy (Judy Garland) cries, "Oh! Oh! Jiminy Crickets!" (Garland also says the expression in her 1938 film Listen, Darling) Jiminy Crickets is also one of Howard Cunningham's catch-phrases when something unpleasant or astonishing happens on Happy Days. Another similar-sounding euphemistic expletive, criminy, arose in the seventeenth century as an alternative to saying Jesus Christ, though this appears to arrise from the Latin phrase Jesu domine or the Italian word crimine, meaning 'crime', instead of being derived from Jiminy Cricket.
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The character was designed by Ward Kimball, who had been very disappointed and was about to leave the Disney studio when much of the work he did for Snow White was cut from the final version of that film. However, Walt Disney persuaded him to stay by giving him the assignment to design Jiminy.
Jiminy Cricket's voice was originally performed by singer Cliff Edwards,[1] who voiced the character for Disney through the 1960s. Jiminy's most famous song, as sung by Edwards, is When You Wish Upon a Star. After Edwards's death, Eddie Carroll replaced him as the voice actor for Jiminy.
After Pinocchio, Jiminy appeared in Fun and Fancy Free as the host of the cartoon segments. He also hosted many Disney television specials. In a recurring segment of the children's television series Mickey Mouse Club, he taught a generation how to spell e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a. He also appears at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts as a meetable character.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Jiminy Cricket appeared in numerous safety films aimed at grade-school-aged audiences. He advised children how to steer clear of dangerous traffic, sharp objects, strangers, exposed electrical lines, and so forth. In each short, he sang the refrain:
I'm no fool, no sirree!
I'm gonna live to be 33 (then 43, 53, etc., up to 103)
I play safe for you and me
'Cause I'm no fool!
Jiminy appeared in Mickey's Christmas Carol as the ghost of Christmas past (The badge given to him by the Blue Fairy at the end of Pinocchio marking him as an official conscience now declares him to be the Ghost of Christmas Past). Scrooge is perplexed at his size, but Jiminy shoots back at him that if he were measured by his amount of kindness, "you'd be smaller than a speck of dust!" Nevertheless, he shows Scrooge past Christmases of him (Scrooge) while working at Fezziwig's and the horrid memory where Scrooge put his money before his love, whom he never saw again. As Scrooge begs the minuscule ghost to take him away from these bad memories, Jiminy reminds Scrooge that he "brought these memories upon himself."
Jiminy Cricket hosted these four sing-along shows:
- The Bare Necessities (October 13, 1987)
- Be Our Guest (November 12, 1991)
- Friend Like Me (March 3, 1993)
- Circle of Life (VHS Version only; DVD version features a voiceover only) (December 14, 1994)
He was also among the numerous Disney characters to appear in the television series House of Mouse. He also appeared in the movie Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse.
He also appears in the video game Kingdom Hearts, as the chronicler to Sora's travels, writing a journal and keeping a cast list of the figures they meet, friend or foe. He has a substantially bigger part in the sequel, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, frequently talking to Sora and offering advice. His role in Kingdom Hearts II is smaller than in the first game. In Kingdom Hearts coded, He finds a message in his journal he didn't write back at Disney Castle; to solve this, he and King Mickey digitize the contents of the note, awakening a virtual Sora. Carroll is his English voice, and Kaneta Kimotsuki voiced him in Japanese.
More recently, Cricket and the Blue Fairy are the hosts of the Wishes fireworks display at the Magic Kingdom theme park.
- Although largely modified by Disney for the film, the cricket character actually appears in the book. The book cricket got far less page time, only appearing in chapters 4, 13, 16 and 36. Furthermore, the book cricket is crushed to death by a mallet, though this happens in the first chapter and he thereafter appears once as a ghost and thenceforth as a living cricket, none the worse for being killed with a hammer.