Dumbo

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For the Brooklyn, New York City, neighborhood, see DUMBO.

For the domesticated breed of rat, see Fancy rat.

Dumbo
Image:Dumbo-1941-poster.jpg Dumbo 1941 release poster
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
Music by	Frank Churchill Oliver Wallace
Release date(s)	October 23, 1941
Running time	64 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$950,000 USD (estimated)
Preceded by	Fantasia (1940)
Followed by	Bambi (1942)
IMDb profile

Dumbo is the fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based upon a children's book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl, Dumbo was produced by Walt Disney, and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. 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.

1 History
2 Titles in different languages
3 Trivia
4 Soundtrack Listing
5 Voice cast
6 Directing animators
7 Dumbo's Circus
8 Direct-to-video sequel
9 See also
10 Notes
11 References
12 External links

[edit] History

[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 Pearl, which was their only involvement 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 strike. 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 ringleader 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 keeping the costs down.

Image:Dumbo movie poster.jpeg

[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 it 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 in fact African-American caricatures; the leader crow voiced by Cliff Edwards, a white man, is officially named "Jim Crow". The other crows are all voiced by African-American actors, all members of the Hall Johnson Choir. Since the 1960s, Dumbo has been publiclly criticized for the presence of the black orphaned crows, regularly seen as having racist intents <ref>Woodward, Emily. Review for Dumbo. PopMatters. Retrieved from http://popmatters.com/film/reviews/d/dumbo.shtml on September 8, 2006 </ref>. Refutations to the accusations of racism state that the crows are the only truly happy and sad child 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.<ref>Amazon.com video review for Dumbo. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033563/amazon on September 8, 2006</ref>

[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.

Image:Dumboposter2.jpg

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, also was the 3rd film to be in the classics series in video release series in 1985; 9 years later it started the Disney Masterpiece Collection with three other releases in that series (Snow White, Mary Poppins, and Alice in Wonderland). In 2001, a special 60th Anniversary edition was released. Dumbo also made a cameo appearance in the 2002 video game Kingdom Hearts as a summonable character to assist in battle.

[edit] Dumbo theatrical release history

[edit] Worldwide release dates

Argentina: December 25, 1941
Mexico: July 9, 1942
Spain: September 25, 1944 (Madrid)
Spain: December 14, 1944 (Barcelona)
Sweden: September 16, 1946
France: October 25, 1947
Norway: December 26, 1947
Denmark: June 25, 1948
Finland: October 1, 1948
Italy: October 3, 1948
West Germany: April 8, 1952
Japan: March 13, 1954

[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) (Walt Disney Gold Collection)
June 6, 2006 (DVD) (Big Top Edition)

[edit] Titles in different languages

Bosnian: Dumbo
Bulgarian: Дъмбо
Chinese: 小飛象 (means Little Flying Elephant)
Croatian: Slonić Dumbo
Danish: Dumbo, den Flyvende Elefant
Dutch: Dombo
Finnish: Dumbo - Lentävä Elefantti
French: Dumbo, l'Éléphant Volant
German: Dumbo, der Fliegende Elefant
Greek: Ντάμπο το ελεφαντάκι
Hebrew: דמבו הפיל המעופף
Icelandic: Dúmbó: Fíllinn Fljúgandi
Italian: Dumbo, l'Elefante Volante
Japanese: ダンボ (Danbo or Dambo as an n before certain consonants is pronounced and sometimes written as an m when romanized)
Maltese: Dambow
Norwegian: Dumbo, den Flyvende Elefanten
Polish: Dumbo
Portuguese: Dumbo, o Elefante Voador
Russian: Дамбо
Serbian: Дамбо, Dambo
Spanish: Dumbo, el Elefantito Volador
Swedish: Dumbo den Flygande Elefanten
Vietnamese:Chú voi biết bay Dumbo

(NOTE: Most of the above titles were later renamed simply Dumbo.)

[edit] Trivia

At only 64 minutes, Dumbo is the shortest single segmented Disney animated feature.
A number of the strikers from the 1941 strike at the studio are caricatured into this film as the clowns who want to put Dumbo at risk for their own gain and go to "hit the big boss up for a raise".
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.
The "Pink Elephants On Parade" sequence depicts Dumbo and Timothy's drunken hallucinations. The sequence was the first venture into surrealismi 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 with 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).
Dumbo was a summon in the game Kingdom Hearts. While riding Dumbo, Sora was invincible and could fly on Dumbo. Dumbo could also shoot water at enemies (equivalent to Blizzard magic).
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 unfortunately 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.
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 infant 2-year-old son, Peter. He didn't base it on elephants as he claimed, "I don't know a damn thing about elephants".
Dumbo has no spoken dialogue lines, 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 marginalized most of the time to lend greater credibility to the animal characters. Circus workmen are kept in shadow, and the clowns are seen as silhouettes when not in the circus ring. The spare story and concise characters inspired a style in Dumbo that is predominantly visual.
Dumbo is the first Disney animated feature to be set in the same time period as the production. (For Dumbo, 1941.)
There are no actual villains in this film.
A large portion of Steven Spielberg's film 1941 involves some of the main characters watching Dumbo in a theater.
A straight-to-video sequel, Dumbo II was put into production, but ultimately cancelled. A preview of the then in-production film can be seen on the original DVD release of Dumbo.
The scene where Casey Junior struggles up the hill saying "I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can" is a tribute to the children's story The Little Engine that Could.
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).
The crows that Dumbo befriend are a racial stereotype to the african americans because they are dressed like slaves, talk like southern black men, & the leader of the crow's is named Jim Crow.

[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

John McLeish - Narrator
Herman Bing - Ringmaster
Edward Brophy - Timothy Mouse
Margaret Wright - Casey Jr.
Sterling Holloway - Mr. Stork
Cliff Edwards - Jim Crow
Jim Carmichael - Crow
Hall Johnson Choir - Crow Chorus
Billy Sheets - Clown
Verna Felton - Matriarch (Elephant)
Noreen Gammill - Fidgity (Elephant)
Dorothy Scott - Giddy (Elephant)
Sarah Selby - Prissy (Elephant)
Billy Bletcher - Clown
Eddie Holden - Clown
Malcolm Hutton - Skinny
Harold Manley - Boy
Tony Neil - Boy
Chuck Stubbs - Boy

[edit] Directing animators

[edit] Dumbo's Circus

Main article: 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. This straight-to-video sequel now seems to have been cancelled.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[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.