Anastasia [1997] (1 disc)

Random Trivia For This Title:

• Glenn Walker Harris Jr. voices the younger version of John Cusack's character in this film. In Say Anything, he portrays Cusack's nephew.
• The music box in this movie actually existed. It was given to the real ^[?] Anastasia Romanov by the real ^[?] Marie Feoderovna for her thirteenth birthday, but was silver with a ballerina on top.
• Just as was suggested in this movie, the real-life ^[?] Anastasia Romanov loved playing practical jokes. This made her quite notorious among her family and the palace staff.
• Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Pryce, and Tim Curry were considered to voice Rasputin.
• This was the first feature for 20th Century Fox's animation division.
• The Russian Ballet that the characters go to see is Cinderella.
• Liz Callaway was called at the last minute by Flaherty and Ahrens to substitute for a singer who couldn't make the recording session of the temp tracks for Fox. Her tracks of the songs were liked so much they led to her subsequent casting as the singing voice of Anastasia.
• The portrait in the ballroom of the whole family includes a dog. The dog existed. This spaniel named Joy belonged to Anastasia's brother, Alexei, and was found alive at the house where the family was killed. Anastasia's own dog, Jimmy, did not survive.
• The musical number {Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)} includes cameos by various historical characters from the time including ^[?] Maurice Chevalier, ^[?] Sigmund Freud, ^[?] Charles A. Lindbergh, ^[?] Josephine Baker, ^[?] Claude Monet, ^[?] Isadora Duncan, ^[?] Auguste Rodin, and ^[?] Gertrude Stein.
• Composer David Newman's father Alfred Newman wrote the score for 1956's Anastasia.
• The Parisian bridge on which the confrontation between Rasputin and Dimitri and Anastasia occurs is the Alexander III bridge, named after the real ^[?] Anastasia Romanov's grandfather on the occasion of his state visit to France in the 1870s.
• When Meg Ryan was offered the role of Anya, she could not decide if she wanted to accept it or not. Upon hearing of Ryan's indecision, Fox took an audio clip of Ryan talking in Sleepless in Seattle and created a short animated sequence of Anya speaking the lines. They sent the clip to Ryan, and she was so impressed that she changed her mind and accepted the role.