I missed my mother.I was swept up by the emotion and the artistry. I watched it last night and cried like a baby. SM: With a middle name like Roan, and in light of your future military ranking, you’d have been a shoo-in to voice Major in Cinderella.ĭD (Laughing hard): That’s very good! Bambi resonates today everywhere.
Looking at the performances, I would think to myself, “I could have played that role.” I would watch some films from time to time. I played a lot of football, I boxed both before and during my time in the Marine Corps and never said a word about any of it. I never talked about the movies I was in, never boasted about them. I wound up living in a boarding house at age 14, supporting myself from then until now. That, along with some other tragedies that occurred, broke up my family. Pearl Harbor was invaded right before the release of Bambi. That must have cost him some serious economic losses, but he did it anyway.
For many years he did not make animated films for entertainment. Disney, on his initiative, turned over the Disney Corporation, and all the artwork, to the War Department. A lot of people today, including some college professors I’ve discovered, don’t realize that Mr. Why didn’t you hang in there? You could have been another Roddy McDowall.ĭD: I would have loved to have done it. Talk about leaving the audience wanting more. You had worked consecutively in seven movies, and then, at the peak of your powers, you disappear from show business. SM: Bambi was your last appearance on film. “What do you think?” I made a frowny face and they said, “Hold it!” (Laughing) It became known as the “Castor Oil kiss” scene. “Pretend like you just drank a lot of Castor Oil, Donnie,” he said. I had recently been sick, and two weeks before my mother had given me a dose of Castor Oil. “Has your mother given you something bad to eat lately?” one of the asked. The artists said, “Look like something really bad has happened to you.” How can I? I’m having the time of my life and find it difficult thinking up bad things. Then Feline, the little girl deer who eventually becomes his partner in life, sticks her head through and gives him a lick on the cheek, causing a big frown to cross his face.
THUMPER BAMBI SCENE MOVIE
There’s a scene early on in the movie where Bambi does something foolish and winds up in a thicket sitting in a puddle of water. In the interim I had sat on a stool many times while a whole bunch of men with a million pencils were gathered around asking me to look afraid, look left, look right. We said something very clever like, “You bet!” (Laughing.) I was eating ice cream, I remember well, and he asked my mother if I would do the voice. It was a brand new cafeteria kind of environment…that’s not precise in my memory now. He sat down with us at a table…it may have been at the studio. He was a real “lead by example” kind of person. He wasn’t a pompous executive running around like I saw in some of the other studios, frankly. Disney gave me the invitation with his sleeves rolled up. But I have a friend on Facebook named Elizabeth Rye who thinks the world of you, and she provided me with the following background material: “Donnie was hired first as the model of the deer, and then Walt, realizing he had a dynamo on his hands, gave Donnie the job of voicing the character as well.” How’d she do?ĭD: Very well! Please send her my best. SM: Normally, I would ask how Walt went about selecting you to provide Bambi his voice.
The Disney people were outrageously good to work with. (Laughing.) Bambi was really a fun thing. I wanted to chase puppy dogs and ride a bicycle.
But as a kid, making one film after another kind of steals your childhood.Ī couple of the movies were…I did not say it at the time, I hope, but they were kind of boring. It was one movie after another starting with Mother Carey’s Chickens in November and December of 1938. I hope I was not jaded, but I was very aware of things. I was reasoning well by age five, which means by age six I was kinda like six going on nineteen. We were dirt poor…I was very sensitive to that. Do you recall feeling any pressure when - at the age of what, seven or eight? - you became the family breadwinner?ĭonnie Dunagan: Oh, yes. That was a lot of dough for a kid in the ‘30s who was coming out of the Great Depression. Scott Marks: At the age of three-and-a-half you tap danced your way to winning a talent contest prize of $100. Other than a few new bonus features - the studio unearthed audio of Walt Disney recorded during the production - unless you’re in need of a Digital HD copy, the Blu-ray transfer is identical to the stunning Diamond Edition that came out in 2011. (Though I suppose it’s easy to understand why drill instructor Dunagan didn’t want to give his grunts any Bambi material to work with.) Strangely enough, both gentlemen spent decades keeping their Disney connection a secret.
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