A circus elephant receives a baby elephant with big ears from a stork. She calls him Dumbo. Everyone makes fun of Dumbo for having big ears. His mother does everything she can to protect him from jerks. They won’t leave him alone and that causes her to loose control and then locked up. Timothy Mouse sees Dumbo is looking down after having his mother taken away from him. Timothy wants to help Dumbo find his cause in the circus. Timothy and Dumbo himself later discover that he can fly. Dumbo shows everyone what he is made of during his next act. Dumbo becomes a huge star and reunites with his mother.
Blaine: “Dumbo” is an emotional movie for a lot of people including me. You feel sorry for the character for having his mother taken away, locked up and then left all alone to be made fun of. Then close to the end you’re proud of him for showing everyone he is no joke. He is one of a kind. Plus he makes history. The scene that really makes me sad is when Dumbo goes to visit his mother while she is chained up and the song “Baby Mine” is playing in the background.
Disney movies like “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia” weren’t doing so well at the box office when they were released and that left the Disney studio in financial trouble. The people at the Disney studio felt they needed to do a shorter picture and that was “Dumbo”. “Dumbo” is based off a children’s book by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl that was published in 1938. Walt Disney bought the rights to the book and then gave the project to two of his top writers, Joe Grant and Dick Huemer. Joe was one of the few people Disney trusted with a story because of the impact he would have for both a story and the design of the characters. He had done a lot of designs for Mickey Mouse shorts. Walt and Joe set up what they called the character model department to help set up the looks of the characters. It was where a lot of the ideas for future films came from.
On January of 1940, Walt Disney asked Joe Grant and Dick Heumer to develop a story about a little elephant with big ears. They made a few changes compared to the book like the supporting character was a red robin, but for the film they replaced it with a mouse. They thought it was a great idea because elephants are afraid of mice, but this one shows how friendly he is to Dumbo. The two things they thought about adding to the story right away was the stork sequence at the beginning of the movie and the pink elephants for when Dumbo and Timothy get drunk. Walt looked through the script they had finished and thought they did a really good job. During the past six months after that they had done storyboards. Then they worked on the animation during the fall of 1940. There was a Disney strike in May of 1941, but all the sequences for “Dumbo” were done before then.
Walt Disney liked to have songs advance the plot of the animated features he would make, but the music for “Dumbo” was less about advancing the plot. Audiences loved “Dumbo” when it was released. People would go see it again and again and it’s success is what Walt really needed at the time. America was at the brink of war at the time and some say that “Dumbo” gave people a place to escape from all of that.
