Trivia for
Dumbo (1941)

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• The only Disney animated feature film that has a title character who doesn't speak.
  
  
• A very tightly budgeted, scripted, and produced film, because Walt Disney needed the film to bring in much-needed revenue after the expensive failures of Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940). Final negative cost of Dumbo was $813,000 (making it the least expensive of all Disney's animated features), and it grossed over $2.5 million in its original release (more than Pinocchio (1940)'s and Fantasia (1940)'s original grosses combined).
  
  
• This film and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) are the only classic Disney films to use watercolored backgrounds (they were used in this film because they were cheaper than the gouache and oils used for Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942)) and the last time they were used until Fantasia/2000 (1999).
  
  

• In December 1941, Time magazine planned to have Dumbo on its cover to commemorate its success, but it was dropped due to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  
  
• Initially Walt Disney was uninterested in making this movie. To get him interested, story men 'Joe Grant' and Dick Huemer wrote up the film as installments which they left on Walt's desk every morning. Finally, he ran into the story department saying, "This is great! What happens next?"
  
  
• The first Disney movie for Sterling Holloway (the Stork) and Verna Felton (the Elephant Matriarch). Both would become regulars in Disney animated films for the next thirty-five years.
  
  
• According to some sources this was Walt Disney's favorite film made by his studios.
  
  
• During production there was a long and bitter animators strike, in which half of the studio's staff walked out. Some of the strikers are caricatured as the clowns who go to "hit the big boss for a raise".
  
  
• While trying to comfort Dumbo, Timothy says: "Lots of people with big ears are famous!". That's a joke with Walt Disney himself, who did have big ears. The line also refers to Clark Gable, renowned for his charming looks and large ears.
  
  
• Mrs Jumbo (Dumbo's mother) only speaks once when she says Dumbo's original name.
  
  
• The name of the circus (seen on a sign as the train leaves the winter headquarters) is WDP Circus (Walt Disney Productions).
  
  
• Cels for Dumbo (1941) are the rarest in the industry. The animators, after the scene was safely "in the can", would strew the used cels in the corridors and go sliding on them. In addition the gray paint (used for so many of the elephant skins) would "pop" when the cel was flexed. Many irreplaceable cels were destroyed this way.
  
  
• Walt Disney's distributor, RKO Radio Pictures, had qualms about releasing this 64-minute feature as a major motion picture. They tried to persuade Disney to either cut it to short-subject length, extend it to at least 70 minutes, or have it released as a B picture. Disney stood his ground, and the film was released as an A picture as Disney intended.
  
  
• When the drunken Timothy is sliding down the staircase-shaped bubble Dumbo has blown, his laugh is actually that of Mickey Mouse.
  
  
• When Jim Crow plucks the "magic" feather off of the little crow's tail, the crow's yell is actually a snippet of dialogue from The Reluctant Dragon (1941). The full line is the dragon saying "Well, that's splendid!"
  
  
• This was the first Walt Disney Animated Classic released on videocassette. Its first video release was in 1981 for rental only, and put on sale in the summer of 1982. And it was repackaged in 1985 and 1989 and then 1994 and 2001, and the new release in 2006. Dumbo has never went out of print. The longest Disney animated feature on video to be in print since it came out.
  
  
• The film was originally planned as a 30-minute featurette before Walt Disney assigned one of his producers, Ben Sharpsteen, to expand the idea into a feature.
  
  
• According to animation historian John Canemaker on the 2001 DVD release commentary, Timothy's line, "Lots of people with big ears are famous," was recognized by audiences of 1941 as a reference to Clark Gable. The line was also featured in the original theatrical trailer.
  
  
• There's a reference to "The Little Engine That Could". While Casey Jr. is trying to get up a hill, the train sounds like it's talking. It says "I think I can, I think I can." Then when the train gets up the hill and starts going faster, it changes to, "I thought I could, I thought I could."
  
  

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