Cat & Fox Hanged Pinocchio at the End of the 15th Chapter
In the original story, Pinocchio killed Jiminy Cricket, got his feet burnt off, & was hanged & left for dead
Walt Disney's animated film Pinocchio won two Academy Awards.
Carlo Collodi, the author of Pinocchio, was born on 24 November 1826 in Italy. His parents were servants at the house of rich Florentines. They did not want such a life for their son so they sent him to a seminary, however, he did not wish to be a priest. Having completed his studies, Collodi went on to work in a bookshop, then as a journalist, theatre critic, writer, & magazine publisher. Collodi began publishing Pinocchio in a children's magazine in 1881. At first, the tale was short with a tragic ending. The nameless Cat & Fox, disguised as bandits, robbed Pinocchio & then hanged him.
The young readers demanded a sequel with a happy ending. Collodi himself became famous, & in Italy Pinocchio was republished over 500 times!
It may seem surprising, but Collodi gravitated towards his fame as a children's writer & did not like his character. He wrote adult novels, plays, dreamed of becoming an Italian Dickens or Shakespeare.
Carlo Collodi died in 1890. His most famous work was translated into more than one hundred languages. Walt Disney himself produced a full-length animated Pinocchio movie in 1940. In 1956 in Italy, a monument to a mischievous 'son' of Carlo was erected with the inscription, "To the immortal Pinocchio, from the grateful readers, aged from four to seventy years". Carlo Collodi was buried at the Cimitero delle Porte Sante in Florence.
The original text of the tale was affected by Collodi's seminary studies. The failing priest overflowed the tale with morality in the spirit of the 19th century. An echo of this can be seen in the episodes with The Blue-haired Fairy who forced the mischievous Pinocchio to brush his teeth & then guides Pinocchio to his goal. The wooden doll with a long nose dreamt of becoming a living person, his nose grew longer as he lied. After escaping from the clutches of the Cat & Fox, Pinocchio became a donkey, then was in the belly of a giant fish. The adventures lasted many months until the mischievous wooden puppet became a well-mannered boy. A human being.