Walt Disney Soars with the Beguiling Dumbo

  

                Among the most endearing, original and touching works from the Golden Age of Hollywood, 1941’s Dumbo represents the sterling result of a group of artists, lead by studio chief Walt Disney, freely working at the peak of their abilities. Based on the 1939 book Dumbo, The Flying Elephant penned by Helen Aberson-Mayer and her husband Harold Pearl, the whimsical Joe Grant/Dick Huemer screenplay, concocted with great warmth, humor and not a trance of sentimentality, follows the exploits of the shy title figure, made insecure by the heckling he faces from birth for owning a pair of oversized ears, but uplifted by the love and support he gains from a doting, protective mother, Mrs. Jumbo and a spunky, loyal friend in Timothy Q. Mouse. Aided by vibrant Technicolor, a terrific score by Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace, and scintillating voice work by such pros in the field as Cliff Edwards (fresh off his success as Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio), Verna Felton, Stanley Holloway and Edward Brophy in the key role of Timothy, Dumbo resonates with the ability to entertain the masses with an uncommon charm and power rarely seen in any film.

                By 1941 Walt Disney had established himself in the mind of the public as an animation genius and the cinema’s most trusted purveyor of quality family entertainment. Founding (with his brother Roy) the Walt Disney Animation Studio in 1923 at only 22 years old, Disney achieved wide fame with the 1928 introduction to general audiences of his most famous creation, Mickey Mouse, in the classic cartoon short Steamboat Willie Disney would ascend to the forefront of filmmakers during the 1930s, first with a stream of Oscar-winning cartoon shorts (starting with 1932’s “Flowers and Trees,” the first three-strip Technicolor cartoon short), then with his game-changing 1937 feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, considered both upon release (Disney was presented with a special Academy Award, which included seven miniature Oscars along with the normal-scale one) and today one of the decade’s primary achievements, which also placed among the top moneymakers of its era, allowing Disney the cash flow to continue creating ambitious animated material, following Snow White with both Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940, before turning the studio’s efforts to Dumbo and the more elaborately produced Bambi. Working in close collaboration with Dumbo’s Supervising Director Ben Sharpsteen and a team of top animation virtuosos (including Samuel Armstrong, Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney and Bill Roberts) while also overcoming a strike during production, Disney and his ace team of craftsmen produced one of the finest endeavors ever to come out of Hollywood.

               Dumbo’s storyline unfolds in a consistently fixating, skillful manner, with several memorable passages marking high points in the feature. Disney’s experimental nature, so fully invested in the making of Fantasia, is given free rein throughout the “Pink Elephants on Parade” number, wherein a drunken Dumbo and Timothy envision some of the most fantastical hallucinations ever seen on the silver screen. The artistic creativity showcased in this daring, florid scene is awe-inspiring and will leave audiences witnessing it as dumbfounded as Dumbo. Dumbo also continues one of the most emotionally enthralling sequences found in any film, as Dumbo seeks solace by cradling in his now-caged mother’s trunk, while the beautiful “Baby Mine” (eloquently sung by Betty Noyes) plays on the soundtrack. Whether one is eight or eighty, experiencing this prime example of the firm, loving bond between mother and child can leave the viewer a sobbing mess, no matter how many times one has seen Dumbo, so profoundly gripping is the reunion, then subsequent separation, of Mrs. Jumbo and her fragile offspring.

              As had already become a frequent aspect of Disney’s major works (the Evil Queen/Witch in Snow White, the transformation of Lampwick from boy-to-donkey in Pinocchio, the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in Fantasia, etc.), unnerving moments that can reappear in nightmares also take part in the Dumbo scenario, including a vividly sketched elephant stampede brought on by Timothy and some of that surrealistic imagery in the “Pink Elephants” section. The perversely eerie, mature content Disney includes in many of his seminal works undeniably add great flavor to the films, and account for some of the most unforgettable passages seen in the cinema. In the most controversial segment in the film, a group of black crows (voiced by Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir, including Johnson, James Baskett, who would go on to portray Uncle Remus in Disney’s also-problematic Song of the South, Jim Carmichael and Nick Stewart) put over one of the movie’s signature songs, “When I’ve Seen an Elephant Fly,” with comic aplomb, but in a highly caricatured manner that adheres to racial stereotypes of the time, thereby making this un-PC scene difficult for some modern viewers to watch. As is the case with many classic films, and now is mentioned as a disclaimer when these movies are shown or released on physical media, one may view the work in the context of when it was created without censoring the work to exclude the contentious material as if it never existed, while simultaneously allowing that the dated aspects add an ignoble facet to the film in question.

 Released in October of 1941, Dumbo received substantial praise from critics, some of whom favorably compared the smaller-scale newest feature-length (just barely, at 64 minutes) Disney cartoon to his previous more expensive and grander productions, with the film eventually placing 5^th on the esteemed National Board of Review list of the year’s Top Ten films, before gaining an Oscar nomination for Best Song, “Baby Mine” (Churchill-Wallace, with lyrics by Ned Washington) and a win for Churchill ad Wallace’s inventive, sublime score. Several years later, Sharpsteen would be honored at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival for “Best Animation Design.” The economical production cost allowed the film to turn a neat profit, only enhanced by subsequent theatrical re-issues, then via physical media releases, starting with its 1981 debut on VHS and Laserdisc and continuing through DVD and Blu-Ray iterations. The impact and love for the film has led to a less-successful 2019 live-action remake and, more lastingly, a permanent reminder of Dumbo in Disneyland theme parks as a primary ride/attraction, with the Casey Junior train featured in the film also appearing at Disney parks and parades therein. The legacy of Dumbo is illustrated by its inclusion on the National Film Registry’s 2017 list, and in no less than renowned critic and expert on all things Disney Leonard Maltin proclaiming Dumbo his favorite Disney movie. Possessed with possibly the biggest heart found in any Disney classic, in illustrating this simple tale of faith and friendship, the supreme Disney team behind Dumbo created a singular work, one guaranteed to delight both young and young-at-heart film lovers as long as movies continue to be shown.