Born this date in 1869 was Felix Salten, who wrote a novel called Bambi, A Life in the Woods, on which the Disney film Bambi was based. 10 things you might not know about Bambi.
Salten’s real name was Siegmund Salzmann, an insurance clerk who wrote in his spare time. The book on which Bambi was based wasn’t intended for children. There were scenes in it which were even darker than the memorable scene where Bambi’s mother dies. At one point in the novel, Bambi is shown the body of a hunter killed by another human. The book was banned by the Nazis in Germany in 1936, not because they wanted to protect kids from reading about death, but because they thought it might be interpreted as a commentary on the plight of European Jews.
Walt Disney’s daughter, Diane, complained to her father that Bambi’s mother didn’t need to die in the film. He told her he was following the book, although in other instances, he hadn’t. He’d changed Bambi’s species from a roe Deer, which is native to Europe, to a mule deer, found in California. He’d left out the man’s corpse and the fact that Bambi’s eventual mate, Faline, was his first cousin. As an adult, Diane Disney would comment that, since he was Walt Disney, her father could take any liberties he liked.
Felix Salten sold the American film rights to director Sidney Franklin for a mere $1000. Franklin, in turn, sold it to Disney. Salten had never registered the book for copyright, which scuppered a money-grabbing corporation who eventually bought the rights to the book, no doubt with dollar signs in their eyes as they worked out how much they’d be able to sue Disney for. Since Salten had placed his work in the public domain in the beginning, they lost the case.
Bambi is the fifth animated Disney feature, and the first not to feature any human characters on screen. Even though he was never seen, “Man” still made it to 20th place in the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest on-screen villains. In the film, “Man is in the Forest” was the warning used by the animals that the hunters were coming and they needed to hide. The animators working on the film used the same words to warn each other that Walt Disney was coming, and that they needed to look busy.
Their task wasn’t an easy one. They spent much time studying deer and how they moved, in the studio and at the zoo. They even had an extremely smelly deer carcass which they used to study the creature’s anatomy. Disney insisted that every spot on Bambi’s back had to be perfectly replicated in every frame, which slowed down production considerably. Try as they might, though, the animators couldn’t get the Prince of the Forest’s antlers right. They had to resort to filming a 3D model of a stag’s antlers and inserting the footage into the animation.
Another unusual feature was that Disney, rather than use adult actors putting on kids’ voices for the young animals, decided to use actual children. Bambi was voiced by a six year old called Donnie Dunagan, who was also used as a model for Bambi’s facial expressions. Young Donnie didn’t get the acting bug, though. He never acted again, and joined the Marines instead. He became the youngest ever drill instructor and served in the Vietnam war. Understandably, he never let on about his role in Bambi for fear of being teased mercilessly. The information was, however, hidden away in a top secret file and finally came out when Major Dunagan was about to retire. He’d protested to a commanding officer about being given an extra task to do when he was already swamped with work. 'You will audit the auditors. Won't you, Maj. Bambi?' the commanding officer said, indicating the top secret file. Once retired, Dunagan was much less reticent about his past and was happy to be interviewed about it. At time of writing, he is still alive and living in Texas with his wife.
There are less than 900 words in the entire film. There could have been more, as Disney did consider a scene where two autumn leaves had a conversation before falling to the ground, but decided against it because it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the film.
Another thing that was unusual for the time – the songs in the film weren’t sung by the characters but rather by soloists and choirs off-screen. The music was composed by Frank Churchill and the lyrics written by Larry Morey.
Disney gave his permission to use the characters in Bambi in a fire prevention campaign for one year. Bambi and his bunny friend Thumper both have asteroids named after them.
The film Bambi has even been used as punishment. In 2018 a poacher in Missouri not only received a year in jail for illegally shooting deer, but was also required to watch Bambi once a month while he was inside.
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