King Louie

King Louie is a fictional orangutan who kidnaps Mowgli in Disney's 1967 animated musical adaptation of The Jungle Book. He is voiced by the late Louis Prima in the film and therefore has his same mannerisms. Initially, the producers considered Louis Armstrong for the role, but to avoid the likely controversy that would surround casting an African-American to voice an ape, they instead chose Prima. As the Disney movie is "inspired by" rather than "based on" the Kipling stories, the character King Louie does not appear in Rudyard Kipling's original book, as orangutans are not native to India. Also, Kipling insists that the Bandar-log or monkeys have no king, or any effective leadership. In the book, Mowgli is abducted by a band of...