Dumbo

For the Brooklyn, New York City, neighborhood, see DUMBO.

Release and 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 70 minutes or more, (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.

Related Topics:
RKO Radio Pictures - Short subject - B-movie

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After its October 23 release, Dumbo proved to be a financial success. The simple film only cost 813,000 USD to produce, half the cost of Snow White and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio. Dumbo eventually grossed 1.3 million USD during its original release; it and Snow White were the only two pre-1943 Disney features to turn a profit (Barrier, 318). The United States entered World War II in December 1941, reducing the box office draw of the film, which was nevertheless the most financially successful Disney film of the 1940s, thanks to a 1949 re-release.

Related Topics:
October 23 - USD - Pinocchio - 1943 - United States - World War II - December - 1941 - 1940s - 1949

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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 nominated for the 1941 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.

Related Topics:
1941 - Academy Award for Original Music Score - Frank Churchill - Ned Washington - Academy Award for Best Song - 1947 - Cannes

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The film's simplicity and charm have made it the favorite Disney film of many people, including film and animation historian Leonard Maltin. Of particular note is the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence, which depicts Dumbo and Timothy's drunken hallucinations. The sequence was the first venture into surrealism for a narrative Disney film, taking its cue from the experimental Fantasia. The sequence essentially breaks all of the "rules" that the Disney animators had lived by for creating realistic animation over the previous decade: pink, polka-dot, and plaid elephants dance, sing, and morph into an number of various objects. The design of the sequence is highly stylized, and many of the artists who worked on it were the younger artists at the studio who joined the picket line in May 1941 and eventually would become the nucleus of United Productions of America, the most influential animation studio of the 1950s.

Related Topics:
Leonard Maltin - Surreal - Fantasia - Polka-dot - Plaid - United Productions of America - 1950s

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The crow characters in the film are in fact African-American caricatures; the leader crow voiced by Caucasian Cliff Edwards is officially named "Jim Crow". The other crows are voiced by African-American actors, all members of the Hall Johnson Choir. Though Dumbo is often criticized for the inclusion of the black crows, it is notable that they are the only truly sympathetic characters in the film outside of Dumbo, his mother and Timothy. They apologize for picking on the elephant, and they are in fact the ones that help Timothy teach Dumbo to fly. The roustabout scene which features African American laborers largely in shadow and singing a working song that many find offensive has drawn similar complaints.

Related Topics:
African-American - Caucasian - Jim Crow - Hall Johnson Choir - Roustabout

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The film received another distinction of note in 1980, when it was the first of Disney's canon of animated films to be released on home video.

Related Topics:
1980 - Animated film - Home video

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Dumbo also made a cameo appearance in the 2002 video game Kingdom Hearts as a summonable character to assist in battle.

Related Topics:
2002 - Video game - Kingdom Hearts

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