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For the Brooklyn, New York City, neighborhood, see DUMBO.:For the domesticated breed of rat, see Fancy rat. 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.
Story The film takes place in a circus setting, ostensibly in present-day 1941, and begins with a formation of storks delivering newborn offspring to the various circus animals. Mrs. Jumbo's baby is delivered to her belatedly by a mixed-up stork, but the baby is well received by the other elephants until the size of his ears is revealed. The elephant, named Jumbo Jr. by his mother, is immediately renamed "Dumbo" by the gossipy, giggly female elephants, who regard both mother and son as outcasts. The consequences of this were troubling, as Mrs. Jumbo slammed the shutter on their heads. The two get along fine without them, however, until the pair are shown to the public. The crowd mock Dumbo and pull him from behind his protective mother to continue their taunting. Mrs. Jumbo tries to defend Dumbo, but Dumbo is grabbed by his ankles, and is pulled away from her while she is imprisoned after a violent struggle with the ringmaster and several other humans using ropes and chains. Timothy subliminally convinces the circus ringmaster to set up a "pyramid of pachyderms," to the top of which Dumbo will jump (using a springboard). The act goes horribly wrong, the big top falls to the ground, the other elephants are seriously injured, and Dumbo is unceremoniously demoted to being a clown. Dumbo's clown act involves him falling from a platform in a dramatized fire rescue into a vat of pie filling. The audience reacts well to the act, and the clowns decide to alter the act for the next show so that Dumbo falls from a platform many times higher than the original one. After an emotional visit to his mother's holding cell, Dumbo and Timothy try to plot their next step. They settle down for a drink of water outside of the clowns' tent. Unbeknownst to them, the water has been accidentally spiked with moonshine, and the elephant and mouse become inebriated and hallucinatory, seeing pink elephants sing and dance before their eyes. Dumbo and Timothy awake the next morning — in a tree over 100 feet (30 m) up, awoken by a number of amused black crows. Timothy conjectures that since elephants are unable to climb or jump (so high), Dumbo must have used his ears to fly the both of them to the top of the tree while they were drunk, an idea the crows find hilarious. Nevertheless, the crows decide to help Timothy teach Dumbo to fly. By convincing the elephant he can fly with the use of a "magic feather," they succeed in getting Dumbo to fly. Dumbo shows up at the next clown "fire rescue" performance with his magic feather; however, he loses the feather after leaping from the platform. Timothy admits that Dumbo can fly without the magic feather, and, barely avoiding death from the fall, Dumbo opens his ears and soars through the air, to the amazement of the audience. Dumbo the Flying Elephant is made the star of the circus and an international celebrity, and he and his mother are reunited and given their own private coach on the circus train. 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. 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. 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. Re-release schedule, home video & beyond
Dumbo theatrical release history Worldwide release dates Dumbo home video release history Titles in different languages Trivia Voice cast Directing animators Dumbos 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. 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. See also Notes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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