Psycho's Movie Reviews #384: DUMBO (1941)

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth Disney animated feature film, it is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, and illustrated by Helen Durney for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book"). The main character is Jumbo Jr., an elephant who is cruelly nicknamed "Dumbo", as in "dumb". He is ridiculed for his big ears, but in fact he is capable of flying by using his ears as wings. Throughout most of the film, his only true friend, aside from his mother, is the mouse, Timothy – a relationship parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.

Made to recoup the financial losses of both Pinocchio and Fantasia, Dumbo was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy for the Disney studios. At 64 minutes, it is one of Disney's shortest animated features. Sound was recorded conventionally using the RCA System. One voice was synthesized using the Sonovox system, but it, too, was recorded using the RCA System.

Dumbo was released on October 23, 1941, where it was met with generally favourable reviews. It has since been considered to be among the greatest animated films of all time. In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant".

A live-action adaptation of the film directed by Tim Burton was released on March 29, 2019.

Plot

While a large circus spends the off-season in the "Winter Grounds" in Florida, a flock of white storks delivers babies to the animals. One elephant, Mrs. Jumbo, does not receive her baby, and keeps scanning the sky. The circus sets out on a new tour, and a belated stork catches up with the moving train and drops off the expected baby elephant, Jumbo Junior. The other elephants are initially delighted, until they see the baby has far-oversized ears, and promptly nickname him "Dumbo". However, Mrs. Jumbo shows her baby great care and love, defending him from the teasing of the other elephants.

Dumbo, clumsy due to his ears, is made into a sideshow attraction. When some rowdy boys start blowing in and pulling Dumbo's ears, Mrs. Jumbo spanks their leader and throws hay bales at them. Circus staff remove Dumbo from the pen, and Mrs. Jumbo flies into a rage, eventually dousing the ringmaster in a water tub. She is subsequently deemed mad and locked in a cage. Dumbo is blamed for the incident and shunned by the other elephants.

Timothy, a mouse that travels with the circus, befriends Dumbo and decides to make him a star. He whispers in the ringmaster's ear while the latter sleeps, and convinces him to try a new stunt with Dumbo as the top of a pyramid of elephants. However, Dumbo trips on his ears during the show and knocks over the pyramid, injuring the other elephants and bringing the big top crashing down. After this, the other elephants exile Dumbo completely, and he is put in with the clowns' firemen act, regularly jumping from a "burning building" prop into a vat of pie filling. Despite his newfound popularity, he hates the job and becomes depressed.

Timothy decides to take Dumbo to see Mrs. Jumbo, but they cannot see each other's faces and can only intertwine trunks. Meanwhile, the clowns decide to increase the popularity of their fireman act by dangerously raising the platform Dumbo jumps from. In celebration of the plan, they drink champagne, and a bottle of it falls into a water vat. Dumbo, crying after visiting his mother, gets the hiccups, so Timothy takes him to the vat for water. Both of them get drunk, and hallucinate pink elephants.

Dumbo and Timothy are later discovered asleep high up in a tree by Dandy Crow and his friends. Initially making fun of Timothy's assertion that Dumbo flew with his ears while drunk, the crows are soon moved by Dumbo's sad story. They decide to help Timothy, giving him a "magic feather" to help Dumbo fly. Holding the feather, Dumbo does indeed take off a second time, and he and Timothy return to the circus with plans to surprise the audience.

During the clowns' act, Dumbo jumps off the platform and prepares to fly. He drops the feather, but Timothy assures him it was only a psychological aid, and Dumbo successfully flies about the big top, much to the delight of the public. Dumbo gains fame and fortune, Timothy becomes his new manager and signs him to a Hollywood contract, and Mrs. Jumbo is freed. She and Dumbo are given a private coach on the train, and the crows wave goodbye to the elephants as they travel away.

Production

Development

Dumbo is based upon a children's story written by Helen Aberson-Mayer and Harold Pearl, with illustrations by Helen Durney. The children's book was first brought to the attention of Walt Disney in late 1939 by Kay Kamen, the studio's head of merchandise licensing, who showed a prototype of the Roll-A-Book that included Dumbo. Disney immediately grasped its possibilities and heartwarming story and purchased the rights to it.

Originally it was intended to be a short film; however, Disney soon found that the only way to do justice to the book was to make it a feature-length film. At the time, the foreign markets in Europe had been curtailed due to World War II, which caused Pinocchio and Fantasia to fail at the box office. With the film's modest budget, Dumbo was intended to be a low-budget feature designed to bring revenue to the studio. Story artists Dick Huemer and Joe Grant were assigned to develop the plot into a feature-length film. From January 22 to March 21, 1940, they wrote a 102-page script outline in chapters, much like a book, an unusual way of writing a film script. They conceived the stork-delivery and the pink elephants sequences and had Dumbo's mother renamed from "Mother Ella" to "Mrs. Jumbo". They riffed on elephants' fear of mice by replacing a wise robin named "Red" found in the original story with the wisecracking mouse character, Timothy. They also added a "rusty black crow", which was later expanded into five. Regardless of this, very little was changed from the original draft. In March 1940, a story team headed by Otto Englander translated the outline into story sketches.

Animation

From Disney's perspective, Dumbo required none of the special effects that had slowed down production and grew the budgets of Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi. 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, the character designs are simpler, background paintings are less detailed, and a number of held cels (or frames) were used in the character animation. Although the film is more "cartoony" than previous Disney films, the animators brought elephants and other animals into the studio to study their movement.

Watercolour paint was used to render the backgrounds. Dumbo is one of the few Disney features to use the technique, which was also used for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and regularly employed for the various Disney cartoon shorts. The other Disney features used oil paint and gouache. 2002's Lilo & Stitch, which drew influences from Dumbo, also made use of watercolour backgrounds.

Disney Animators' Strike

During a story meeting for Bambi on February 27, 1940, Disney observed that Dumbo was "an obvious straight cartoon" and that the animators that were assigned on Bambi were not appropriate for the look of Dumbo. Animators such as Art Babbitt and Ward Kimball were considered for the film. For that reason, less experienced animators were brought on to animate the characters. Kimball recalled that Disney approached him in a parking lot about Dumbo and summarized the entire story in five minutes. "And listening to him tell that story," Kimball noted, "I could tell that the picture was going to work. Because everything sounded right. It had a great plot." In spite of this, Bill Tytla, who was one of the studio's top animators, animated the title character, but admitted that "it was in the nature of the film to go very fast and get it out in a hurry." To speed up production, Disney used photostats of story sketches instead of full layout artwork for the film, and had experienced animators to supervise the younger, less experienced animators assigned on the film.

Production on the film was interrupted on May 29, 1941 when much of the Disney animation staff went on strike. Kimball chose to not to strike, but his close friend Walt Kelly, who was an assistant animator helping him on the crow sequence, left the studios shortly after for reasons unrelated to the strike.

The clowns' requests to get a raise from their boss is a reference to the Disney animators that went on strike in 1941 (during the creation of the film), demanding higher pay from Walt himself. Moreover, the clowns, or at least their silhouettes, are caricatures of those animators.

Music

Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace scored the film while Ned Washington wrote the lyrics to the songs. For their work on the score, Churchill and Wallace won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Churchill and Washington's work on "Baby Mine" also garnered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Dumbo was completed and delivered to Disney's distributor, RKO Radio Pictures, on September 11, 1941. RKO initially balked at the film's 64-minute length and asked Disney to add another ten minutes. Disney refused, "No, that's as far as I can stretch it. You can stretch a thing so far and then it won't hold. The picture is right as it is. And another ten minutes is liable to cost five hundred thousand dollars. I can't afford it." The film was re-released in theaters in 1949, 1959, 1972, and 1976.

Variety wrote that Dumbo was "a pleasant little story, plenty of pathos mixed with the large doses of humour, a number of appealing new animal characters, lots of good music, and the usual Disney skilfulness in technique in drawing and use of colour." Cecelia Ager, writing in PM, called Dumbo "the nicest, kindest Disney yet. It has the most taste, beauty, compassion, skill, restraint. It marks a return to Disney first principles, the animal kingdom—that happy land where Disney workers turn into artists; where their imagination, playfulness, ingenuity, daring flourish freest; where, in short, they're home."

Bosley Crowther, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote that the film was "the most genial, the most endearing, the most completely precious cartoon feature film ever to emerge from the magical brushes of Walt Disney's wonder-working artists". Time wrote: "Like story and characters, Dumbo's colouring is soft and subdued, free from picture-postcard colours and confusing detail—a significant technical advance. But the charm of Dumbo is that it again brings to life that almost human animal kingdom where Walter Elias Disney is king of them all." Harrison's Reports praised the film as "one of Walt Disney's most delightful offerings. Technically, it is excellent; the colour is exceptionally good. The story itself is pleasing; it combines comedy with human appeal. The only fault is that occasionally the action slows down."

Additionally, Time had originally scheduled to run a story with an appearance cover for "Mammal of the Year" (a play on its annual "Man/Person of the Year" honour) on December 8, 1941. However, the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7 of that year had postponed it, and the story was later published on December 29.

Among retrospective reviews, film critic Leonard Maltin stated that Dumbo is his favourite of Disney's films and he described it as "one of Walt Disney's most charming animated films". In 2011, Richard Corliss of Time named the film as one of the 25 all-time best animated films. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 98% based on 43 reviews, with an average score of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads "Dumbo packs plenty of story into its brief runtime, along with all the warm animation and wonderful music you'd expect from a Disney classic." Metacritic has assigned a weighted score of 96 out of 100 for Dumbo based on 11 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Despite the advent of World War II, Dumbo was still the most financially successful Disney film of the 1940s. After its October 23 release, Dumbo proved to be a financial miracle compared to other Disney films. The simple film only cost $950,000 (equivalent to $16,720,000 in 2020) to produce, half the cost of Snow White, less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio, and certainly less than the expensive Fantasia. Dumbo eventually grossed roughly more than $1.3 million (equivalent to $28,150,000 in 2020) during its original release. The film returned a profit of $850,000.

Budget $950,000

Box office $1.3 million (est. United States/Canada rentals, 1941)

My Review

The shortest all-animated feature Disney ever made and my only regret is that it's not just a few minutes longer and that Dumbo's new-found success is illustrated only by three newspaper headlines when a few shots of Dumbo being chased by adoring fans or handing out autographs would have been most welcome. However, that's purely a personal opinion. Most people love the film exactly the way it is. And (aside from wishing it were just that mite longer), I do too.

Oddly, my enthusiasm for Dumbo is a new-born thing. Many times I saw it as a child. I enjoyed the gossipy elephants ("Listen, girls, have I got a trunk-full of dirt?"), but I found many aspects of the film too grotesque for enjoyment - Dumbo himself; the clowns; particularly the "Pink Elephants"; even the circus train. As an adult, I enjoy these characters enormously. I revel in the inventiveness and wit of the drawing, I applaud the innovations of a more abstract, less formal Disney, I enjoy the polish and sophistication, the sly humour and satiric edge of the dialogue. Most of all, I gambol deliriously along with the songs, so consistently clever in lyrics ("I've seen a peanut stand, I've heard a diamond ring, but I've never seen an elephant fly!") and so catchily scored, who could resist?

The answer is - children. If ever Disney made a cartoon that will appeal mostly to adults, Dumbo is it. No wonder Bosley Crowther went overboard in praise (all of it justly deserved)! No wonder Dumbo made the New York Times Ten Best Films of 1941.

Admittedly, there are many grotesque elements in Disney's other feature cartoons which would repulse, terrify or antagonize children. Normally these are counterbalanced by an overdose of moralizing, by dreary stretches of sweetness and light. But Dumbo is uncompromisingly pragmatic. Its view of self-seeking self-fulfilment is undiluted by sentiment, strengthened by satire. Aside from Timothy Q. Mouse, the stork, Mrs Jumbo and Dumbo himself, the human and animal characters are either malicious (the elephants) or venal (the clowns, the ringmaster). Of the "good" characters, the stork is too earnestly stupid and Mrs Jumbo too possessively simple-minded to elicit much sympathy - and even Timothy and Dumbo are often viewed primarily as simple figures of fun.

No child could appreciate the gentle mockery of Dumbo in which clowns are presented as an uncomfortable mirror image of adults, and cartoon children are unflinchingly drawn as loutish brats.

From a technical viewpoint, Dumbo represents the Disney craftsmen at the apex of their powers. From the timing of the visual gags to the swift editing of the fall of the pachyderms, from the brilliant atmosphere and colour of the backgrounds and effects to the faultless dubbing of voice and song, from the clever characterizations of humans, animals and train to the amusing artistry of inventive surrealism on parade, Dumbo is a masterpiece.

Dumbo for me is a mini- masterpiece, with beautiful animation, an inspiring message and the sweetest elephant on screen. Dumbo is an elephant born with big ears, but who cares? True beauty comes from within. Dumbo's mother was like Bambi's mother, wise and memorable, and like Dumbo, misunderstood. The song "Baby of Mine" is so sad, that I always cry when I see this film because of it, Casey Jnr is very rousing and having a good laugh during "Seen an Elephant Fly". In regard to the crows, I saw nothing racist about them, they are stereotypical yes in a sense but in a positive way. Timothy the mouse is also memorable, a bit like Dumbo's conscience in a sense. For me, the highlight was Dumbo's dream, with the elephants dancing (a bit unrealistic but very imaginative), with ballet-like incidental music towards the end. I found the song "Elephants on Parade" catchy and I love how trippy the whole sequence is. In conclusion, I rejoiced when Dumbo conquered his fears, when it looked impossible. Great idea, Disney, about the flying elephant, although Don Bluth used a similar idea 50 years later for Pebble and the Penguin. A beautiful film {And that film has Tim Curry}, 10/10!!!