Trivia for
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

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• Walt Disney started planning for this movie in the 1940s. After World War II, Disney sent several artists to Ireland for background material.
  
  
• Walt Disney visited Ireland in December of 1948 and publicly announced the production of this film, then entitled simply, "The Little People". It would be another decade before the film was actually made.
  
  
• When Michael doesn't kiss Katie, King Brian (Jimmy O'Dea) exclaims "And him a Dublin man!" O'Dea was born and raised in Dublin.
  
  

• Albert Sharpe did not know how to play the fiddle, so two professional musicians were hired to create the illusion. One handled the bowing and the other handled the frets while Sharpe kept his hands out of the way.
  
  
• Walt Disney was initially hoping to cast Barry Fitzgerald in the dual roles of Darby O'Gill and King Brian. Fitzgerald reportedly declined due to his advanced age (although his eventual replacement as Darby, Albert Sharpe, was three years his senior). Disney regretted the loss of Fitzgerald in the lead role, and blamed the film's disappointing box-office performance partly on this loss.
  
  
• The lighting used to make sure the actors were kept in proper perspective without seeming false used up so much electricity it apparently blew out a substation in Burbank when the lights were turned on without warning.
  
  
• Walt Disney had seen Albert Sharpe in a stage production of "Finian's Rainbow" in the 1940s and kept him in mind for the role of Darby. By the time he began casting this film a decade later, Sharpe had retired. Disney was able to convince him to come out of retirement.
  
  
• The movie was released one year after the copyrights expired on the stories by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh.
  
  

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