Everything about Dumbo totally explained
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 child's book of the same name by
Helen Aberson and illustrated by
Harold Perl. The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-
anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. He is ridiculed for his big
ears, but in fact he's capable of
flying by using them as
wings. Throughout some of the film, his only true friend aside from his mother is the
mouse Timothy, parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.
Synopsis
On the night before animals from the zoo are transported to the circus (the "Winter Quarters" in Florida is a reference to
Sarasota, the former winter headquarters of
Ringling Brothers), one mother of each species receives a baby to look after and raise as their own, all except for an elephant, Mrs. Jumbo, who is devastated by this. The next day, however, the stork who was supposed to deliver the baby elephant catches up with the train and presents Mrs. Jumbo with her new baby. At first, the baby is well received until his oversized ears are discovered. He is then rudely ridiculed by the other female elephants for his enormous ears, and one of them calls him "Dumbo". The name sticks. Mrs. Jumbo is forced to send the other elephants away violently for their behaviour. The train arrives at the circus grounds, and throughout the night, everyone builds the circus and puts the tents up. The next day, however, proves to be the first of Dumbo's saddest days, as during the promotion parade, Dumbo slips on his big ears, lands in a muddy puddle and is laughed at, much to his dismay. But that wasn't the worst of it, for later, after Mrs. Jumbo washes him in the tents, a group of naughty boys visiting to see the elephants. Unsatisfied with just making faces at Dumbo, one boy crosses the rope and starts playing with Dumbo's big ears, infuriating Mrs. Jumbo so much that she spanks the boy with her trunk and throws things at the others. Unfortunately, the Ringmaster and the circus guards assume Mrs. Jumbo has gone mad, and she's subsequently locked in solitary confinement after they "rescue" Dumbo.
Dumbo is left alone and constantly ridiculed by the other elephants, until a friendly little mouse named Timothy (who has been watching Dumbo crying alone for the past few days and feels sorry for him) scares the elephants and befriends Dumbo, determined to make him happy again. His plan of getting the Ringmaster (by "talking" to him during his sleep, pretending to be his subconscious) to make Dumbo the climax of his next elephant act backfires when Dumbo slips on his ears again and literally causes the circus to collapse, injuring all the elephants and getting them sent to a vet for a few days.
Dumbo is subsequently made into a clown, and becomes the star attraction of the show. Although he's clearly loved and praised by the audience, he hates his job and misses his mother greatly, with Timothy as his only friend. To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his imprisoned mother, although all she can do is gently rock him side to side with her trunk, as she can't reach him due to her chains. In what
Pixar's
John Lasseter describes as "one of the most emotional scenes that Disney ever made," Timothy sees all the other baby animals happy with their mothers, and reflects on how the boy who bullied Dumbo wasn't punished. He sheds a tear as the time comes for them to leave, and Dumbo starts crying again, so much that he gets the hiccups.
To cure the hiccups, Timothy takes Dumbo for a drink of water from a bucket, not knowing that the clowns, during their celebration, accidentally knocked a bottle of beer in it. Within seconds, Dumbo and Timothy are both drunk, and they subsequently have a vision of pink elephants made from Dumbo's bubbles.
The next morning, Dumbo and Timothy are woken up by a group of crows, the leader of which, Jim Crow, while laughing his head off, reveals to them that they're somehow in their tree. In shock, Dumbo loses his balance, and they fall to the ground in a puddle. As they walk back to the circus, Timothy wonders how they ended up in the tree, and Jim Crow jokingly suggests that they must have flown with Dumbo's ears. Timothy takes this seriously and gets excited, and the crows start bullying Dumbo about his flying ears by singing a song about it. Enraged, Timothy lashes out at the crows for their cruelty and tells them Dumbo's tragic story. The crows are shocked to hear this, and even start crying for Dumbo.
Jim Crow, however, suggests a way to make Dumbo happy again, thinking that Dumbo
might be able to fly if his confidence is boosted. Timothy and the crows present Dumbo with a feather which they claim to be magical. Armed with the "magic feather", Dumbo is able to fly with ease.
During a particularly daring circus stunt, Dumbo loses the feather and nearly plummets to his death -- until Timothy reveals that the feather was never magical, and that Dumbo's ability to fly was his own. In the end, Dumbo is finally able to fly with confidence and ease, without the crutch of the magic feather. As the train takes the animals back to the zoo (the circus was over), Dumbo, having gained the respect of all the animals, flies behind the train with the crows for a while until he descends into Mrs. Jumbo's trunk in their own private compartment.
Critical reaction
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 miracle compared to other Disney movies. 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. Despite suggestions of racism by some, many historians such as Zoe Pritchard reject these claims.
Theatrical release and home video
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 also was released in the
Walt Disney Classics Video Collection in 1985. That release was followed by remastered versions in: 1986, 1989, 1991 [Classics], and 1994 [Masterpiece]. In 2001, a 60th Anniversary Special Edition was released. In 2006, a "Big Top Edition" of the film was released on DVD. A UK Special Edition was released in May 2007 and was a successful Disney release.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dumbo'.
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