Jules Verne started the first draft of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1867 while outfitting his yacht, the Saint-Michel. A bit of Nemo is revealed in Verne's affection for the Saint-Michel: "I am in love with this assembly of nails and planks the way one is in love with a mistress when one is twenty!" (From his biography by Jean Jules-Verne.) The novel was completed in 1870 and translated into English in 1873. It was an immediate success.
The film, released in 1954, was Disney's first full-length, live-action motion picture produced in the United States. It was also the second CinemaScope picture to go into production. Disney was famous for pushing his staff to the new, the untried, the experimental. For Harper Goff, the film's designer and driving force, it was the project of a lifetime. Mr. Goff remembers: "I was assigned the task of getting together a 'true-life adventure' film using some exceptional footage, shot in a laboratory aquarium by Dr. McGinnity of Cal Tech's marine biology lab in Corona Del Mar. Walt thought that inasmuch as 20,000 Leagues was in the public domain, we might do worse than to use the title for our 'true-life adventure' short subject. Walt went to England, while I stayed in Burbank storyboarding a live-action version of the classic, using McGinnity's footage as a sort of ballet episode in which Nemo shows Professor Aronnax the wonders of the deep. Walt liked the storyboard well enough to give me an 'A.R.I. ' (audience reaction inquiry) to a group of exhibitors who were in town. They were enthusiastic — and the rest is history."
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