My Goodness, Did You Catch Those <i> Real</i> Guys in ‘Aladdin?’

In Walt Disney Pictures’ “Aladdin,” the Genie’s madcap transformations into caricatures of Jack Nicholson, Arsenio Hall, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ed Sullivan have delighted critics and audiences.

But few people realize that caricatures of several animators who worked on the film appear as extras in the crowd scenes: When Aladdin sidles through the crowd to get a better look at Jasmine’s would-be suitor, Prince Achmed, he stands between likenesses of co-producers/directors Ron Clements and John Musker.

All the in-house caricatures were designed by animator T. Daniel Hofstedt, who explains, “Originally, those characters were going to be Siskel & Ebert, who would give a thumbs up or down rating to the new suitor on his way to the palace. When I showed my caricatures to the directors for approval, they wondered if it was appropriate to use their likenesses without permission, so we opted for the Ron & John version instead.”

Clements and Musker also turn up in the crowd, watching a muscleman striking poses, hiding Aladdin from the pursuing guards during the song “One Jump.” In the same number, clean-up artist Marshall Toomey appears as a jewelry vendor, and the fire walker that Aladdin races by is the late designer-director T. Hee, with whom Hofstedt studied at CalArts. At the end of “One Jump,” the guards fall into a cart belonging to used fertilizer dealer “Crazy Hakim”--Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists’ Union Local No. 839 President Tom Sito, who animated the character.

In addition, effects animator Dorse Lanpher is one of the 40 thieves the Genie summons up at the beginning of the song “Friend Like Me”--Hofstedt describes him as “the tall pear-shaped one with bare feet and a small sword.” The crowd watching Prince Achmed also includes caricatures of Eric Goldberg, who supervised the animation of the Genie; Glen Keane, who was in charge of Aladdin, and a self-portrait of Hofstedt with his 3-year-old son, Daniel. However, Hofstedt notes “they go by so quickly, we’ll have to wait to look at the video frame-by-frame to see them.”

There’s long tradition of this kind of self-parody at the Disney studio. Animators Ward Kimball and Fred Moore drew themselves as the vaudeville song-and-dance team “Fred and Ward, two clever boys from Illinois” in the Mickey Mouse short “The Nifty Nineties” (1941). The skeptical pawnbroker in “Oliver and Company” (1988) is feature animation president Peter Schneider. The parade of toreadors in “Ferdinand the Bull” (1938) includes likenesses of Moore, Kimball, Hamilton Luske, Vladimir (Bill) Tytla and Art Babbit (who designed the characters), and the swaggering matador with the mustache and mobile eyebrows is Walt Disney himself.