Dumbo
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- For the domesticated breed of rat, see Fancy rat.
- For the deep sea octopus that has been nicknamed Dumbo, see Grimpoteuthis
| Dumbo | |
|---|---|
 Dumbo 1941 release poster |
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| Directed by | Ben Sharpsteen |
| Produced by | Walt Disney |
| Written by | Helen Aberson (book) Harold Perl (book) Otto Englander (story direction) Joe Grant Dick Huemer |
| Starring | John McLeish Herman Bing Edward Brophy Margaret Wright Sterling Holloway Cliff Edwards Jim Carmichael Hall Johnson Choir Billy Sheets Verna Felton Noreen Gammill Dorothy Scott Sarah Selby Billy Bletcher Eddie Holden Malcolm Hutton Harold Manley Tony Neil Chuck Stubbs John McLeish |
| Music by | Frank Churchill Oliver Wallace |
| Release date(s) | October 23, 1941 |
| Running time | 64 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $813,000 USD |
| IMDb profile | |
Dumbo is a 1941 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth film in the Disney animated features canon, Dumbo is based upon a children's book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl based on true events. The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. He is ridiculed for his big ears, but it turns out that he is capable of flying by using them as wings. His only friend is the mouse Timothy, parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants. Dumbo was a deliberate exercise in simplicity and economy for the Disney studio, and is today considered one of its finest films.
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[edit] Production
The film was designed as an economical feature to help generate income for the Disney studio after the financial failures of both Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940. Storymen Dick Huemer and Joe Grant were the primary figures in developing the plot, based upon a children's book written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl (the only involvement the authors had with the cartoon industry). Their book was made of only 8 drawings and just a few lines of text. When it was published in 1939, the edition was so small and obscure that nobody knows how Disney got his hands on it. He gave it to his lead animators and told them to see what they could get out of it.
When the film went into production in early 1941, supervising director Ben Sharpsteen was given orders to keep the film simple and inexpensive. As a result, Dumbo lacks the lavish detail of the previous three Disney animated features (Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs): character designs are simpler, background paintings are less detailed, and a number of held cels (or frames) were used in the character animation. However, the simplicity freed the animators from being overly concerned with detail, and allowed them to focus on the most important element of character animation: acting. The famous artist Bill Tytla's animation of Dumbo is today considered one of the greatest accomplishments in American traditional animation. The critical reactions were positive, as many critics of the day felt that Dumbo was a return to roots for Disney after growing increasingly "arty" with its predecessors.
On May 29, 1941, during the production on Dumbo, much of the Disney studio staff went on the Disney animators' strike. A number of strikers are caricatured in the feature as clowns who go to "hit the big boss for a raise." The strike lasted five weeks, and ended the "family" atmosphere and camaraderie at the studio.
None of the voice actors for Dumbo received screen credit, but Timothy Mouse, who befriended Dumbo even in his darkest days and was instrumental in helping him find greatness within himself, was voiced by Edward Brophy, a character actor known for portraying gangsters who has no other known animation voice credits. The pompous matriarch of the elephants was voiced by Verna Felton, who also played the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, and Flora of the Three Good Fairies in Sleeping Beauty. Other voice actors include the perennial Sterling Holloway in a cameo role as Mr. Stork, and Cliff Edwards, better known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket, as Jim Crow, the leader of the crows.
To save costs, watercolor paint was used to render the backgrounds. Dumbo and Snow White are the only two classic Disney features to use the technique, which was regularly employed for the various Disney cartoon shorts. The other Disney features used oil paint and gouache. 2002's Lilo & Stitch, a simple, emotional story with influences from Dumbo, also made use of watercolor backgrounds. The fast production also helped keep the costs down.
[edit] Release: Reactions and criticisms
Dumbo was completed and delivered to Disney's distributor, RKO Radio Pictures, in fall 1941. RKO balked at the fact that the film only ran 64 minutes, and demanded that Walt Disney either (a) expand it to at least 70 minutes, (b) edit it to short subject length, or (c) allow RKO to release it as a b-movie. Disney refused all three options, and RKO reluctantly issued Dumbo, unaltered, as an A-film.
After its October 23 release, Dumbo proved to be a financial success. The simple film only cost $813,000 to produce, half the cost of Snow White and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio. Dumbo eventually grossed $1.3 million during its original release; it and Snow White were the only two pre-1943 Disney features to turn a profit (Barrier, 318). It was intended for Dumbo to be on the cover of the December 1941 issue of Time, but the idea was dropped when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, resulting in the United States entering World War II and reducing the box office draw of the film.
Dumbo won the 1941 Academy Award for Original Music Score, awarded to musical directors Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace. Churchill and lyricist Ned Washington were also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song for "Baby Mine", the song that plays during Dumbo's visit to his mother's cell. The film also won Best Animation Design at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.
The crow characters in the film are seen as African-American caricatures; the leader crow voiced by Cliff Edwards, a white man, was originally named "Jim Crow" for script purposes, and the name stuck. The other crows are all voiced by African-American actors, all members of the Hall Johnson Choir. Since the 1960s, Dumbo has been publically criticized for the presence of the black crows, regularly seen as having racist intent.[1] Refutations to the accusations of racism state that the crows are the only truly kind and emotional characters in the film outside of Dumbo, his mother and Timothy. They start to shed tears, then they apologize for picking on the elephant, and they are in fact the ones that help Timothy teach Dumbo to fly.[2]
[edit] Re-release schedule, home video & beyond
Despite the advent of World War II, Dumbo was still the most financially successful Disney film of the 1940s, thanks to a 1949 re-release. It was also re-released theatrically in 1959, 1972, and 1976.
This film was one of the first of Disney's animated films to be broadcast, albeit severely edited, on television, as part of Disney's anthology series. The film then received another distinction of note in 1981, when it was the first of Disney's canon of animated films to be released on home video and has been kept in general release ever since. It also was the third film to be in the classics series in video release series in 1985; 9 years later it started the Disney Masterpiece Collection with several other releases in that series (including Snow White and Mary Poppins). In 2001, a special 60th Anniversary edition was released. In 2006, a "Big Top Edition' of the film was released on DVD. A UK Special edition release is schedules for a 15/05/07 release.
[edit] Dumbo theatrical release history
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[edit] Worldwide release dates
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[edit] Dumbo home video release history
- June 28, 1981 (VHS, Laserdisc and Beta)
- December 1, 1985 (VHS and Beta) (Walt Disney Classics)
- October 13, 1986 (VHS and Beta) (Walt Disney Classics)
- May 23, 1991 (VHS and Laserdisc) (Walt Disney Classics)
- October 28, 1994 (VHS and Laserdisc) (Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection)
- April 14, 1995 (VHS) (Walt Disney Colección Maestra)
- October 23, 2001 (VHS and DVD) (60th Anniversary Edition)
- June 6, 2006 (DVD) (Big Top Edition)
[edit] Trivia
- At only 64 minutes, Dumbo is the shortest single segmented Disney animated feature.
- There are no actual villains in this film.
- Many of the artists who worked on the "Pink Elephants" segment were the younger artists at the studio who joined the picket line in May 1941 and eventually would become the nucleus of United Productions of America, the most influential animation studio of the 1950s.[citation needed]
- The "Pink Elephants On Parade" sequence depicts Dumbo and Timothy's drunken hallucinations. The sequence was the first venture into surrealism for a narrative Disney film, taking its cue from the experimental Fantasia. The sequence essentially breaks all of the "rules" that the Disney animators had lived by for creating realistic animation over the previous decade: pink, polka-dot, and plaid elephants dance, sing, and morph into a number of various objects. The design of the sequence is highly stylized.
- The "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence appeared in the Californian version of Disneyland's night-time show Fantasmic!.
- While trying to comfort Dumbo, Timothy says, "Lots of people with big ears are famous!" That's a joke of Walt Disney himself, who did in fact have big ears. Also, according to animation historian John Canemaker on the commentary track for the 2001 DVD release, audiences of 1941 recognized it as a humorous reference to actor Clark Gable.
- The name of the circus (seen on a sign as the train leaves the winter headquarters) is WDP Circus (Walt Disney Productions).
- When the movie was released, there was a concern that exposure to bright colors for prolonged periods of time might make the audience ill. The film was set in the world of a circus, and bright colors were essential to capturing the mood of the circus. To remedy this, Disney alternated sequences of bright colors with those of a darker tone, to give the audience a chance to recover.[citation needed]
- The sequence called Bathtime for Dumbo was one of the most memorable in the film. To create this scene and Dumbo's behavior, Bill Tytla got inspiration from his own 2-year-old daughter, Susan. He didn't base it on elephants as he claimed, "I don't know a damn thing about elephants".[citation needed]
- Dumbo has no spoken dialogue, much like Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- Dumbo's mother, Mrs. Jumbo, speaks only once when she says Dumbo's original name, "Jumbo, Jr."
- The human characters in the film are simplified most of the time to lend greater credibility to the animal characters. Circus workmen are kept in shadow, and the clowns are seen in silhouette when not in the circus ring. The sparse story and concise characters inspired a style in Dumbo that is predominantly visual.
- A large portion of Steven Spielberg's film 1941 involves some of the main characters (including General Stillwell) watching Dumbo in a theater. According to Spielberg, this event actually occurred in real life.
- With roughly a year and a half from script to screen, including the extensive strike during the making of the movie, this is the fastest production ever done from Walt Disney Feature Animation (WDFA).[citation needed]
- Dumbo makes an appearance in the popular Playstation 2 game Kingdom Hearts, in the form of a summon that the player can call upon in battle for aid.
[edit] Soundtrack Listing
- Main Title (01:47)
- Look Out For Mister Stork (02:16)
- Loading The Train / Casey Junior / Stork On A Cloud / Straight From Heaven / Mother And Baby (04:58)
- Song Of The Rustabouts (02:38)
- Circus Parade (01:28)
- Bathtime / Hide And Seek (01:31)
- Ain't That The Funniest Thing / Berserk / Dumbo Shunned / A Mouse! / Dumbo And Timothy (03:23)
- The Pyramid Of Pachyderms (01:58)
- No Longer An Elephant / Dumbo's Sadness / A Visit In The Night / Baby Mine (03:34)
- Clown Song (01:00)
- Hiccups / Firewater / Bubbles / Did You See That? / Pink Elephants On Parade (06:07)
- Up A Tree / The Fall / Timothy's Theory (01:32)
- When I See An Elephant Fly (01:48)
- You Oughta Be Ashamed (01:10)
- The Flight Test / When I See An Elephant Fly (Reprise) (00:57)
- Save My Child / The Threshold Of Success / Dumbo's Triumph / Making History / Finale (02:14)
- Spread Your Wing (Demo Recording) (01:08)
[edit] Voice Cast
- Herman Bing: Ringmaster
- Edward Brophy: Timothy Q. Mouse
- Margaret Wright: Casey Junior
- Sterling Holloway: Mr. Stork
- Cliff Edwards: Jim Crow
- Hall Johnson Choir: Crow Chorus
- Verna Felton: Matriarch
- Noreen Gammill: Catty
- Dorothy Scott: Giddy
- Sarah Selby: Prissy
- Billy Bletcher: Clown 1
- Eddie Holden: Clown 2
- Billy Sheets: Clown 3\Joe
- Malcolm Hutton: Skinny
- Harold Manley: Boy 1
- Tony Neil - Boy 2
- Chuck Stubbs: Boy 3
- John McLeish: Narrator
[edit] Songs
- Look Out for Mr. Stork (The Sportsmen)
- Casey Junior (The Sportsmen)
- Song of the Roustabouts (The King's Men)
- Baby Mine (Betty Noyes)
- The Clown Song (Billy Bletcher, Eddie Holden and Billy Sheets)
- Pink Elephants on Parade (The Sportsmen)
- When I see an Elephant Fly (Cliff Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir)
- When I see an Elephant Fly (Reprise)
[edit] Directing animators
- Vladimir Tytla
- Fred Moore (The boys)
- Ward Kimball (The Young Orphaned Crows)
- John Lounsbery (Timothy Mouse)
- Frank Thomas (Pink Elephants)
- Art Babbitt (Mr. Stork)
- Wolfgang Reitherman (Timothy Mouse)
[edit] Dumbo's Circus
Dumbo's Circus was a live-action/puppet television series for preschool audiences that aired on The Disney Channel in the 1980s. Unlike in the film, Dumbo spoke on the show. Each character would perform a special act, which ranged from dancing and singing to telling knock knock jokes.
[edit] Direct-to-video sequel
Around the time of the release of the 60th Anniversary DVD Edition of Dumbo, Disney announced that Dumbo II was in production. A preview was available on the DVD, but no further announcements have been made.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Woodward, Emily. Review for Dumbo. PopMatters. Retrieved from http://popmatters.com/film/reviews/d/dumbo.shtml on September 8, 2006
- ^ Amazon.com video review for Dumbo. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033563/amazon on September 8, 2006
[edit] References
- Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503759-6.
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, updated 1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-452-25993-2.
[edit] External links
- Dumbo - Disney's Official Dumbo (Big Top Edition) DVD site
- Dumbo at the Internet Movie Database
- Dumbo at the Big Cartoon DataBase
| Preceded by Fantasia |
Walt Disney Pictures 1941 |
Succeeded by Bambi |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1941 films | Disney animated features canon | English-language films | Fictional elephants | Films based on children's books | Films shot in Technicolor | Musical films | Films featuring anthropomorphic characters
