Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
At a circus's winter quarters in Florida, storks deliver babies to all the animals except Mrs. Jumbo. Her baby arrives late, on the circus train, and the other elephants coo over him until he sneezes and his enormous ears unfold. They mock him and call him "Dumbo". When boys tease him, Mrs. Jumbo attacks them and is locked up as mad. Shunned, Dumbo is befriended by Timothy Q. Mouse, who tries to make him a star. Dumbo's first act, as the top of an elephant pyramid, brings the whole big top down, and he is made a clown, falling into a tub of custard. Timothy takes him to visit his mother, who rocks him with her trunk through the bars of her cage. Afterwards Dumbo and Timothy accidentally drink water laced with champagne and see pink elephants. They wake up at the top of a tree, and a group of crows suggest that Dumbo must have flown. With a "magic feather" from the crows, Dumbo flies. During his next performance he drops the feather in mid-fall, and Timothy tells him he never needed it. Dumbo flies, becomes a sensation, and his mother is freed.
Why It Matters
- "Pink Elephants on Parade" is one of the most surreal sequences Disney ever made, a nightmare of shape-shifting elephants made of light and colour, while "Baby Mine", with Mrs. Jumbo cradling her son through the bars, is one of the studio's most tender scenes. Bill Tytla's animation of Dumbo, who never speaks, carries the film's emotion through pure pantomime.
- Made quickly and cheaply after Pinocchio and Fantasia lost money, at 64 minutes it is one of Disney's shortest features, and it was a commercial success that helped keep the studio afloat during the war. It won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and was added to the National Film Registry in 2017.
Notes and Trivia
- The story came from a prototype for a "Roll-a-Book" novelty toy, written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl.
- The crows, and especially their leader, named Jim Crow in production, have long been criticised as racial stereotypes.
- It was completed during the bitter 1941 Disney animators' strike; the drunken clowns asking for a raise are often read as a jab at the strikers.
- See also: Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940).