Disney’s Dumbo opened Oct. 23, 1941, cost about $813,000, runs barely an hour, and its star never says a word. It was supposed to be TIME’s “Mammal of the Year.” Then Japan bombed Hawaii.
Dumbo landed in theaters on Oct. 23, 1941, and it was the cheapest, shortest, fastest thing Walt Disney’s studio had made since it started doing features. That was the whole idea.
Pinocchio and Fantasia had both come out in 1940, both cost around $2.4 million and both lost money. The studio needed a hit that didn’t cost a fortune. So it made a 64-minute movie about a baby elephant with big ears, kept the drawing simple and got out the door in a little over a year.
It worked. Eighty-five years later, it’s still the shortest Disney animated feature ever released, and one of the most loved.
How much did Dumbo cost to make?
About $813,000, per the Walt Disney Family Museum’s records, which is the same figure D23 rounds to $812,000. You’ll see $950,000 floating around online. The studio’s own number is the lower one.
Compare that to the $2.4 million each for Pinocchio and Fantasia, and you can see why Dumbo, per D23, “made a welcome profit for the Studio.” It was the movie that kept the lights on going into the war.
Was Dumbo really going to be on the cover of TIME?
Yes, and this is the best story in the film’s history. TIME had planned to put Dumbo on the cover of its Dec. 29, 1941 issue as “Mammal of the Year,” a play on its Man of the Year franchise.
Then Pearl Harbor happened on Dec. 7. The Dumbo cover was pulled. The Dec. 29 issue went to Gen. Douglas MacArthur instead, and the covers after that went to war figures.
TIME’s own retrospective on the episode put it as bluntly as a magazine can: “Pearl Harbor was well timed, from Time’s point of view.“ The Dumbo story still ran inside the magazine. It just lost the cover.
You’ll sometimes read that Admiral Yamamoto bumped Dumbo. He got a cover that month too, but the one Dumbo was slated for went to MacArthur.
Where did the Dumbo story come from?
A toy. Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, a husband and wife, wrote Dumbo for a novelty format called a Roll-a-Book, a little scroll you turned with a knob to advance the story. Disney’s licensing chief, Kay Kamen, brought the prototype to the studio in late 1939.
Almost nobody has seen the Roll-a-Book. The movie it inspired has been in continuous release for 85 years.
Why doesn’t Dumbo talk?
He has no dialogue at all. Every line in the film belongs to someone else: Timothy Q. Mouse, voiced by Edward Brophy, does the talking for him, and Sterling Holloway plays the stork who delivers him. Dumbo’s whole performance is ears, eyes and one tear.
The film won the Oscar for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture at the 14th Academy Awards, for Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace. “Baby Mine” was nominated for Best Song and lost. It’s still the song that makes grown adults cry in the middle of a cartoon about a circus.
Did Disney animators strike during Dumbo?
They did. The Disney animators’ strike started May 29, 1941, while Dumbo was in production, and wasn’t formally settled until September. Picket lines ran outside the Burbank studio for weeks.
Fans and film historians have long read the clowns in the film, who plan to go “hit the big boss for a raise,” as a dig at the strikers. Animator Art Babbitt, who led the strike, said that wasn’t the intent. Either way, the clowns are in the movie and the strike was outside the gate at the same time.
Is Dumbo still on Disney+?
It is, but not on kids’ profiles. On Jan. 25, 2021, Disney pulled Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Aristocats and Swiss Family Robinson from Disney+ Kids profiles over what the company called negative depictions.
On standard profiles the film carries a content advisory. The crows sequence is the part in question.
The 2019 Tim Burton remake, which cut the crows entirely, cost about $170 million and made $353 million worldwide. The 1941 original cost a fraction of one percent of that.
Where can you ride Dumbo at the parks?
Everywhere Disney has a castle. Dumbo the Flying Elephant opened at Disneyland on Aug. 16, 1955, a month after the park itself. Magic Kingdom’s version opened with the park in 1971 and moved to Storybook Circus in 2012 as a double ride with two spinners and an indoor play-tent queue.
Eighty-five years, 64 minutes, no lines. Not bad for a mouse’s sidekick.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
D23 (Dumbo film and Dumbo the Flying Elephant A-to-Z entries), release date, runtime, cast, budget, and the park ride dates
The Walt Disney Family Museum (”Timely Dumbo: Almost Cover Boy” and the Dumbo characters post), the $813,000 negative cost, the Roll-a-Book origin and the TIME cover plan
TIME (2019 retrospective on the 1941 cover), the MacArthur cover and the quote
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (14th Academy Awards), the scoring win and the song nomination
Variety (2019 archive feature), the Pinocchio and Fantasia costs and the strike context
WDWNT (Jan. 2021), the Disney+ Kids profile removal
The Numbers, the 2019 remake budget and gross
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