Last Updated on March 16, 2003
The History of Tinkerbell
"When the first baby laughed for the first time, that laugh broke into a thousand pieces and went skipping about... That was the beginning of fairies!"
Tinkerbell mended pots for Peter Pan and the Lost Boys...She was a tinker...She never spoke...She just had a bell...So that was her name Tinker Bell!!
Most people actually spell out her name Tinkerbell as one word...It is incorrect, but a lot easier to me to write anyways... :)
Tinkerbell was created by Sir James M. Barrie ,a British playwrite and author of Peter Pan who created the story of Peter Pan in 1904... To gain insight
into what Barrie had in mind beyond the dialogue of the story and scene description, Walt Disney used Barrie's original play notes...These notes were
concepts of the characters and their reactions to the events that unfolded before them in the story...
When Walt and his brother Roy were children, they scraped together enough money to watch a road company perform the story of Peter Pan on stage...
It was then that Walt became so fond of the story, not long after, Walt played Peter Pan in his school play...
There are a number of differences between the stage and the screen Peter Pan... The most significant is the casting of Peter Pan... Prior to the film,
Peter had always been played by a young woman, but Disney chose to portray him as a twelve-year-old boy...Walt explained the age plainly saying, "He is
twelve years old forever simply because he refuses to grow up beyond that comfortable age." The other differences were provided by magic and animation...
Although firmly established in legend, the figure of Tinkerbell is not based on Marilyn Monroe!..Tinkerbell owes her shapely form to the "Pin-Up Girls" of
World War II like Betty Grable...Monroe was still a supporting actress and relatively unknown at
the time Tinkerbell was developed...A woman named Margaret Kerry was Tinkerbell's live-action reference, and model personified
and brought to life by the animator Marc Davis...In the J.M. Barrie play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, Tinkerbell
was just a projected beam of light...
By 1953, the time of its release, Peter Pan had been in development at Disney for fourteen years... Disney had purchased the film rights to the story in 1939...
Tinkerbell continued her Disney career as the intorductory icon on many of Disney television programs, as well as introducing spectacular firework displays at
Disney theme parks...
