He was all over the place - all over the place! And leading by, I would call, by example. So I saw him often, and if I was behaving myself and quiet, they'd forget you were there. Two months would go by, they'd come back, come back, come back, come back, and then the voice. I was there for a long, long time, first as the facial model, from the spring of 1940 forward. That's what I most remember.ĭo you have any specific recollections of your interactions with Walt Disney himself?ĭunagan: Oh yes, yes - I would call him, in Marine Corps vernacular, a leader by example, setting the example. So the different kinds of impressions of what went on. There was like scraps of this long ribbon that came off. Actually, it carved a groove in the record, the disc, and plastic came off the end. So what I remember most is the mechanics of the recording: the big recording device had a 20-inch disc on it, and a big arm that came over. Because the recording operation was, like, sentence-by-sentence in the sound booth, with the proper inflections of course, directed by the director.
#FIGHTING THUMPER BAMBI MOVIE#
Very honestly, I don't think I knew the storyline until I saw the movie in 1942. Peter Behn: I think the mechanics of the operation were more memorable to me than some of the other aspects. I didn't have a clue.īut once I had a sense of the storyline, then it mattered a great deal more when the prompting lady in the booth would say, "Say this, say that, say that:" "What's a meadow? Mother, mother, mother," etc. I was thrilled! But up to that point, I'd be fibbing to you if I told you I knew what it was about. "What is this all about?" I was eager to know.Īnd a nice lady I don't think we ever saw again got ahold of one of the books from 1923, translated by Whittaker Chambers in '28, and sat us down in a room with the young lady that played Faline, and she read parts of several chapters to us, and then gave us her own oral summary what the story was about. I'm sure they got a bit tired of me pestering them: "What's the storyline?" Nobody ever scolded me for that. I remember well how courteous, and professional, and gentle with children Disney staff people were. This was my eighth film total - first animated - so I wasn't, I hope, jaded, but I was a bit older. Moviefone: What specific memories do you still hold from recording the voices of Bambi and Thumper? Do you have vivid things that are still stuck in your brain from those experiences?ĭonnie Dunagan: Precisely. Peter Hehn was the four-year-old son of '30s-era screenwriter Henry Behn (" Hell's Angels") when he was cast as the giggly voice of the precocious bunny Thumper, and would leave Hollywood behind when his family relocated when his father began teaching English courses he'd later attend Yale and enjoy a long career in real estate.Īnd even as octogenarians, it's clear that being a part of Disney's magical legacy remains enchanting for Dunagan and Behn, who joined Moviefone for one more walk in the forest. He'd go on to a long and distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps: the youngest-ever drill instructor, he was wounded multiple times in combat in Vietnam and earned three Purple Heart medals and a Bronze Star. Today, as "Bambi" receives a fresh new Blu-ray and Digital HD release to celebrate its diamond jubilee, two of its most charming contributors are raising their voices once again to share their experiences making the film.Īs the voice of and visual reference for the wide-eyed fawn Bambi, actor Donnie Dunagan was the veteran of the duo, with several films to his credit (including 1939's " Son of Frankenstein") by the time he stepped into the recording studio for Disney. The fifth animated feature film to come out of Walt Disney's animation studio in the summer of 1942, based the book "Bambi, a Life In the Woods" by on Austrian children's author Felix Salten, " Bambi" marked multiple turning points for Disney's now-fabled pantheon of classics.Ĭreatively, the film saw the animation art form blaze new trails with its extremely realistic depiction of its woodland creatures and its colorfully impressionistic, atmospheric background art that allowed the lavishly animated lead characters to better pop onscreen in audience's eyes.īehind the scenes, "Bambi" would be the last Disney full-length feature released to the public for the duration of World War II, during which Disney and his team labored on government-contracted animation and musical cartoon anthologies until the war ended and work commenced on the studio's next masterpiece, 1950's " Cinderella." Seventy-five years later, Bambi and Thumper - and the no-longer-little fellas who gave them voice - are still pretty captivating.
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