Dumbo Memories

Corrie and I have been trying to build a complete library of the initial Disney animated features, the original five Golden Age entrants: Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. Our reasoning, or rather, my reasoning, is that I want to study the film-making of the classic movies. So far, we have three of the five. The difference that nine years make, from Steamboat Willy in 1928 to Snow White in 1937 is such a monumental shift in technological abilities that it boggles the mind. Other classic films from the late 30s, live-action films, many times barely compare with today's audiences to the animated features Walt pulled from his team.

Bambi came out after Dumbo but had been originally planned as the second feature. It fell behind schedule and over budget due to the realism desired and achieved by the animators. They could only achieve eight drawings a day, whereas for other features the animators could get nearly thirteen seconds a day done.

The financial success of Snow White led to the ballooning budgets for the next films, only to suffer bad losses at the box office. Most of this was due to the European markets cut off because of war, but right before the workers were to rebel and go on strike, effectively ending Disney's Golden Age, Walt was able to siphon a few of the old-guard guys off of Bambi and give them a cheap project, one that could possibly recoup some of the money the studio needed to stay afloat.

What became known as the 9 Old Men in Disney's animation crew history is fodder for it's own post (or not), but the old guys pulled from Bambi and given the Dumbo project were the guys who trained the then-young men who'd become the 9 Old Men.

Because of that, maybe, Dumbo has always held the banner of being Disney's most emotionally involved feature, containing the most heart-breaking animation in all of the features before or since. One of the most accomplished animators in American history, Bill Tytla, worked on Dumbo himself, using his toddler as inspiration, and the loving scenes of Dumbo splashing and playing hide-and-seek with his mother convey a certain playfulness. Contrasting that scene with Dumbo apprehensively approaching his mother's holding cell, then climbing into her trunk and she gently swinging him and we see his momentary comfort, shows the range that Tytla had. Some of the other wildly expressive characters that Tytla worked with were Grumpy from Snow White, Chernabog (the Black God) from Fantasia, and Stromboli from Pinocchio.

We owned the VHS cassette of Dumbo when my brother and I were kids; it was among many of the old classics my parents had purchased. I remember liking the flying elephant aspect of it, the cool pink elephant sequence, but not really being all that into the real sadness that is in those moments of heartbreak. As a kid, that's how I rationalized it to myself: those scenes are too sad, so I'll avoid it for the most part.

The Pink Elephant Parade sequence is one of the coolest things animated in a major feature ever, maybe. I was surprised that Walt and Salvador Dali had collaborated on a project (that was unfinished until Roy worked it out in the late 90s), but with Surrealism being so popular--popular enough to make it into Dumbo's famous sequence--it makes a certain kind of sense.

I looked into it: "seeing pink elephants" was a euphemism for hallucinations from delirium tremens for a number of years prior to the movie (I was always curious which came first). The drunkenness representations of Timothy Mouse and Dumbo were animated with an eye for cartoony realism. I'd hazard a guess that you'd be hard-pressed to get those images in a major motion picture for kids nowadays.

One last note: the crows. The Disney brand has caught flak over the years from groups concerned with racial sensitivity issues. The problem those groups have is with the crows, voiced by and based on a performing family of black entertainers. They are obvious caricatures of American ideas of their black neighbors. They are, having just watched the movie, not portrayed in a negative light.

The crows are the only free characters in the movie. They are, besides Timothy Mouse and mamma Jumbo, the only characters who are warm towards Dumbo, even going so far as to be supportive. They can, as an alienated segment of society, empathize with Dumbo's plight, and this leads them to decide to help.

Snow White showed off what was possible; Pinocchio was an exercise in perfection; Fantasia was about the music; Bambi was about the realism; and Dumbo was about alienation and mother's love, all in a cartoony package.

It's the most cartoony of those original five features. The animators went on strike right after it came out. The totalitarian spell was broken.

The spell lasted long enough to give us one of my favorite tiny bits from Dumbo, when the matriarch of the elephants, being the top-dog boss-lady of the group she's the elephant who is on the bottom of their elaborate elephant pyramid, balancing on the ball. The animation is so good of the elephants slowly climbing up and getting into place. The bit I'm talking about has the matriarch, sweating and struggling with the weight of the entire clan on her back, literally, while we're hearing the ringmaster blathering off in the distance, and as an audience we share in her struggle. As we gawk at her, she says what we're thinking, "Won't that blowhard just get on with it..."