Dumbo is a 1941 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, Dumbo is based upon a child’s book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl. The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. He is ridiculed for his big ears, but in fact he is capable of flying by using them as wings. Throughout most of the film, his only true friend aside from his mother is the mouse Timothy, parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants. Dumbo was made to make up for the damages of Pinocchio and Fantasia. The film has been criticized as being racist (the leader crow in the film was named “Jim Crow” and the name stuck), yet is also considered to be one of Disney’s finest films. It was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy for the Disney studio, is now generally regarded as a classic of animation. The film tells the story of a baby elephant named “Dumbo’, who can fly with his huge ears. At 64 minutes, it is one of Disney’s shortest animated features.
Plot
A baby elephant, ostracized by his own kind because of his abnormally large ears, befriends a witty and talkative mouse on a journey to circus stardom. The pair take advantage of the elephant’s ability to fly by flapping his ears on their journey to the top.
Synopsis
On the night before animals from the zoo are transported to the circus (the “Winter Quarters” in Florida is a reference to Sarasota, the former winter headquarters of Ringling Brothers), Mrs. Jumbo sadly looks on as babies are delivered by Mr. Stork to colleague circus animals. As even a baby elephant makes a most cumbersome package, hers is the last to arrive, but soon becomes the laughing stock of the herd because of his jumbo-size ears, thus getting cruelly nicknamed Dumbo. When Mrs.Jumbo loses her temper at the public for making fun of her son, she is locked up as a mad elephant, and Dumbo finds himself all alone, except for a self-appointed mentor-protector, Timothy Q. Mouse. Timothy is the ideal size to scare the mean herd, which continues to torment Dumbo. Alas inspiring the circus director to make Dumbo the top (literally) of an elephant pyramid stunt which ends up literally bringing the house down, so Dumbo’s demoted to clown. Although he becomes the star attraction of the show, and is clearly loved and praised by the audience, he hates his job and misses his mother greatly, with Timothy as his only friend. To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his imprisoned mother, although all she can do is gently rock him side to side with her trunk, as she cannot reach him due to her chains. In what Pixar’s John Lasseter describes as “one of the most emotional scenes that Disney ever made,”[1] Mrs. Jumbo holds her baby as the song Baby Mine is sung. Timothy sheds a tear as the time comes for them to leave, and Dumbo starts crying again, so much that he gets the hiccups. To cure the hiccups, Timothy takes Dumbo for a drink of water from a bucket, not knowing that the clowns, during their celebration, accidentally knocked a bottle of champagne in it. Within seconds, Dumbo and Timothy are both drunk and see hallucinations of pink elephants. The next morning, Dumbo and Timothy are woken up by a group of crows, and the leader of them, Jim Crow, while laughing his head off, reveals to them that they are somehow in their tree. In shock, Dumbo loses his balance, and they fall to the ground in a puddle. As they walk back to the circus, Timothy wonders how they ended up in the tree, and Jim Crow jokingly suggests that they must have flown up. Timothy takes this seriously and gets excited, and the crows start bullying Dumbo about his flying ears by singing the song “When I See An Elephant Fly”. Enraged, Timothy lashes out at the crows for picking on Dumbo, and tells them Dumbo’s tragic story. The crows are shocked to hear this, and even start crying for Dumbo. Jim Crow, clearly feeling guilty, suggests a way to make Dumbo happy again, thinking that Dumbo might be able to fly if his confidence is boosted. Timothy and the crows present Dumbo with a feather which they claim to be magical. The crows then persuade Dumbo to flap his ears and leap off a cliff. Armed with the “magic feather”, Dumbo is able to fly with ease. During a particularly daring circus stunt, Dumbo loses the feather and nearly plummets to his death – until Timothy reveals that the feather was never magical, and that Dumbo’s ability to fly was his own. At the last second, Dumbo pulls out of his dive and stuns the entire circus and audience at the astounding sight of an elephant flying. Now finally in command of the situation, Dumbo is able to indulge in a little revenge on his tormentors.After that performance, Dumbo is a media sensation with Timothy as his manager. The film ends with the circus train having a luxury private car for Mrs. Jumbo and her child, the star of the circus. The Crows bid farewell after one last flight with Dumbo as the train moves on to the next destination.
