Trivia / Bambi

For trivia about Bambi II, see here.

• Blooper:
  • Faline's eyes switch between blue and brown several times.
  • In the original theatrical and VHS releases, after the forest fire, a baby raccoon suddenly moves position while being licked by its mother. This is corrected in later DVD releases.
• Cast Incest: Paula Winslowe, the voice of Bambi's mother, was married to Bambi's adult voice actor, John Sutherland, and the couple stayed together until the former's death in 1996.
• Children Voicing Children: The younger voices of Bambi, Thumper, Flower, and Faline are from actual children.
• Creator Backlash: A more pragmatic case. During his days in the Marine Corps, Donnie Dunagan kept his role as the voice of Bambi a well-kept secret for the majority of his employment, knowing no one there would take him seriously as "Major Bambi". He had fond memories of making the film, however, and following his retirement, he came to embrace the connection.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: This is said to have been Walt's personal favorite of his films.
• Cut Song: The soundtrack to the first film has an early version of "Little April Showers" called "Rain Drops", which was more of an Andrews Sisters-esque swing number.
• Defictionalization: The phrase "Man is in the forest" was used as the code phrase around the studio to indicate that Walt was on his way. This was demonstrated in the film Saving Mr. Banks.
• Disowned Adaptation: Felix Salten conflicted with his American publisher, who made alterations to his second novel Bambi's Children for a Lighter and Softer tone (the English translation removes a lot of dark or graphic elements from the original German edit). Salten did not want his work advertised as a children's story. He also expressed regret about selling the film rights to Bambi to Disney, though his opinions on the film itself are mostly unknown.
• Dueling Dubs:
  • The film has been dubbed in Finnish twice. The first dub was released in 1969 and the second dub was made in 2005 for the DVD release.
  • The film has been dubbed twice in Sweden and Germany.
• Dub Name Change: In 1969 Finnish dub Thumper became Kalle and Faline became Minna.
• DVD Commentary: The 2005 DVD release of Bambi had re-enactments of the story meetings between Disney and his story men as one of the several bonus features. The movie itself played in a window on the corner while the rest of the screen showed preliminary artwork.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Peter Behn (young Thumper in the first film) was only four during the recording phase, and couldn't read the script. Instead, he mimicked the director until each line had the vocal inflection that was needed. The loud bursts of vocalization he used to play Thumper were also completely unscripted; that was literally how he talked.
  • In a more meta example, the 1988 theatrical re-release saw Mark Elliot going with a lower-key more dramatic tone (similar to the tone he used for Walt Disney Home Video's famous "Feature Presentation" bumper used on animated features throughout the '90s) than his usual warm and chipper voice for the trailer. The reason for this was because, according to an interview, he had a cold when recording the trailer and they didn't have enough time to let him recover before doing so thus he begrudgingly agreed to at least give it a try, and the executives loved it so much that they kept it in.
• Genre-Killer: The film's poor box office returns, along with the studio's involvement in World War II, put an end to Disney's lavish and expensive features. The studio only produced package films for a few years and their only attempt to return to this form didn't fair any better; it wouldn't be until the early 90's with the Disney Renaissance that they would go for movies with this type of punch again, although a handful of other classics came about in the meantime.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Though a Bambi's Children Animated Adaptation never came to be, Disney did release a comic book of the novel in 1943 that has never been reprinted. Good luck finding a copy now.
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • In the 1985 holiday season, Hardee's released a set of five plushes based on Disney movies. Besides Bambi, there were also plushes of Lady, Dumbo, Pinocchio, and one of the 101 Dalmatians.
  • In 1988, McDonald's released a set of four figures to promote the movie's theatrical re-release. These consisted of Bambi, Thumper, Flower, and Friend Owl.
• Missing Episode: The film was dubbed three times into Brazilian Portuguese, but the first two dubs are now lost.
• Money, Dear Boy: Felix Salten's key reason for giving Disney the film rights to Bambi, since he was in exile during the war, he was in desperate need of money to finance a new life and expressed his regret at it later on. To add further insult to injury, Salten got no royalties for the film upon its release.
  Felix Salten: I have been delivered over to Disney with my hands and feet fettered, and a gag in my mouth.
• No Export for You: Thanks to a little thing called World War II, Bambi originally didn't get released in Japan until 1957, and received a redub in 1993. However, Osamu Tezuka made a manga adaptation of the film during the 60's after getting permission from Walt himself when they met each other at the World Fair of the time.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Some sources (even this very wiki) claim that Ward Kimball was the supervising animator on Faline. There is nothing to back this up, especially since not only is Kimball uncredited in the opening, but he was known for his wild and zany character animation, which would've clashed with the more realistic tone the film was going for.
• Promoted Fanboy: Osamu Tezuka was a major fan of this movie and saw it 80 times. Disney hired him to write a manga adaptation in 1951.
• Science Imitates Art: The dromaeosaur Bambiraptor was named after the deer main character, due to its small size (however, this was only because the holotype fossil which gave the species its name was of a juvenile animal).
• Sequel in Another Medium: The Disney adaptation of Bambi's Children was initially planned as a movie follow-up before getting canned due to the original movie's poor box office returns, though it eventually got a Comic-Book Adaptation published via Dell.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Sidney Franklin, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filmmaker, acquired the screen rights to Salten's novel in 1933. Not only did he go as far as to record Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda's voices, but he later came to realize that the available technology simply wasn't up to standard for film production. It was while reading about the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that he recognized Walt Disney's potential to bring "Bambi" to life on the big screen. Upon being contacted about this opportunity, Disney was instantly enthusiastic about jumping on board with the project.
  • According to the book "Mickey and the Gang: Classic Stories in Verse", a film adaptation of the sequel novel "Bambi's Children" was actually planned but never got beyond the early stages of development.
  • Bambi's design was initially intended to be more realistically proportioned, going from this these test cels for the film.
  • In the production of the first film, it was debated how to show the death of Bambi's mom: originally, she was to be shown collapsing into◊ the snow◊ after jumping over a log◊ and hearing the sound of a shotgun, but it was decided the scene would be more effective emotionally if she was not shown. The animators also considered having Bambi find her body in a pool of blood, but this family-unfriendly image was replaced by the Great Prince simply telling him "Your mother can't be with you anymore."
  • Walt Disney was also eager to show Man burned to death by the fire that he inadvertently started. Trying to maintain a lack of gore and Man's ambiguity, Disney suggested a silhouette of some form. A rough cut was shown to a private audience with the proposed scene in animatic form. An enormous portion of the audience shot up at the sight of the dead hunter, driving Walt to cut the scene entirely from the final film.
    • Allegedly, an artist had asked Walt "How do you want the bodies drawn, Walt? Medium rare or well done?". Disney did not find it too amusing.
  • Thumper was originally named Bobo and was meant to be a minor character. An ornery grasshopper was also planned as a supporting character at one point, but the team considered him unlikeable and merged his Grumpy Old Man persona into Friend Owl.
  • Thumper's father was planned to appear in person, though the character never gained a role outside some Disney storybooks.
  • The film was originally going to be the studio's second animated film after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Walt's goal of animating the deer realistically proved to be more challenging than anticipated, so it was moved down the production line, and Pinocchio became their second feature instead.
  • As charted through the Making of documentary, Walt Disney went through endless brainstorms for scenes and gags consisting of, but not limited to, a Laurel and Hardy-esque squirrel and chipmunk duo (these characters appear in the final film, albeit with a very small role and only one line), the plight of a nest of ants that Bambi tramples, and Bambi swallowing a live bee that communicates to the other animals through his ears. All of these dropped as the creative team realised they had barely any bearing to the actual main plot.
  • They also planned to recreate more elements of the original novel such as that of a conversation between the sentient leaves.
  • In the mid-80s, Disney brainstormed several plans to make Thumper a Breakout Character. There were plans for a spin-off film, starring Thumper, as well as a cartoon series planned for the Disney Afternoon lineup "Thumper's Thicket". Neither got off the group though two decades later, the Disney Bunnies books and merchandise line did finally launch.
  • During production, Peter Behn (who ended up voicing Thumper), Scotty Beckett, Bobs Watson, Roddy McDowall and Dickie Jones (best known as the voice of Pinocchio) were both considered to voice Young Bambi. Henry Fonda was also considered to be the voice of Adult Bambi.

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