Dumbo Part 16

Once again, the film relies on contrast to make a point. The preceding sequence had the clowns celebrating their successful performance. Here, Dumbo is depressed over the very same performance. The performances in this sequence are also contrasting; Timothy is consistently upbeat, failing to rouse Dumbo out of his lethargy. Timothy tries praise and then a peanut, but Dumbo is indifferent to both. Finally, Timothy mentions visiting Dumbo's mother, and that is the only thing that cheers Dumbo up.

It doesn't look like Mrs. Jumbo will get a reprieve anytime soon. Her cage is covered in warning signs and within it, she's chained to the walls and weighted down.

From an animation standpoint, it is interesting that the personality close-ups of Timothy are done by Fred Moore and Dumbo is done by Bill Tytla, but when both characters share a shot, the are generally done by John Lounsbery and sometimes Tytla. The shared shots contain lots of character interaction, such as Dumbo lifting Timothy in shot 3. It's easier and more efficient to have one animator handle both characters rather than have two animators jointly plan the interaction. However, that didn't stop Lounsbery from giving Dumbo a bad eyeline in shot 6.1. Dumbo's pupils are nowhere near the direction of Timothy.

Dumbo Part 15

The clowns celebrate their success and toast Dumbo. So far the clowns are the only characters beside Timothy to say anything nice about the elephant.

This sequence is wholly animated by Berny Wolf. Take a look at the shapes of the characters in shot 3. The balloon construction could come out of an early '30s Ub Iwerks cartoon, where Wolf worked prior to Disney. Wolf was certainly capable of work more sophisticated than he did at Iwerks; he animated a good chunk of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. While the designs might be a throwback, the animation is advanced. The poses have beautiful lines of action and read clearly in silhouette. Wolf keeps the arms away from the body so that there is never confusion about the pose. There's great graphic clarity here.

Note that there are two colour tones of silhouette, which prevents background elements in shot 3 or the crowd of clowns at the end of shot 6 from being visually confusing. Even viewing the small thumbnails above, there's no confusion as to what is happening on screen.

Billy Bletcher, who was the voice of the Big Bad Wolf in The Three Little Pigs and the voice of Peg Leg Pete in the Mickey Mouse series, makes a cameo appearance here. He's the voice of the clown in shot 2 and is probably also the voice in shot 4.

Dumbo Part 14

Dumbo is now part of the clown's act. There are interesting parallels between this sequence and what's gone before. The clown with the elephant head is shrieking "Save my baby," so Dumbo's situation is a parody of his mother attempting to protect him from kids on the midway earlier in the film. In this act, a clown whacks Dumbo's rear to get him moving as Timothy did to get him moving in the pyramid sequence. However, Timothy was attempting to launch Dumbo as a success, where the clown is forcing Dumbo to take a pratfall. Finally, Dumbo has a rattle clutched in his trunk where he earlier grasped a flag to crown the pyramid. The actions earlier in the film are replayed here as farce.

There's no getting around how lame the clowns are. None of the gags is particularly clever and I think that was a conscious decision on the part of the filmmakers. Had the clowns been genuinely entertaining, the audience would have been distracted from Dumbo's situation and his humiliation would not have been as great.

The draft says that the stuff Dumbo falls into is plaster. Ouch.

Les Clark handles most of the Dumbo close-ups. In some of them, Dumbo's irises are huge. Was that intentional or were the shots assisted by different artists?

Grant Simmons and (probably Ray) Patterson handle the clowns. All the animation has strong poses and good timing. The clown action is often furious, but it all reads clearly. In shots 15 and 19, Simmons does some interesting work with cycles. The design of the clowns' eyes make them closer to automatons than living creatures, as they are expressionless for the most part.

The music in this sequence needs to be mentioned. It's fast-paced and slightly discordant. It certainly communicates that the actions on screen are not to be taken seriously. There is no sound from the circus audience until the act ends, when there is applause and whistling. As bad as the act is, the film has to tell us that it is a success so that the clowns' future actions are motivated.

Dumbo Part 13

The elephants, who have all suffered from the collapse of the pachyderm pyramid, learn that Dumbo has been made a clown and take an oath declaring that he is no longer an elephant.

I love the end of shot 13, which is a literal visualization of putting somebody's tail in a sling.

Once again, we have Bill Tytla showing off his versatility as an actor, handling the various elephant personalities and keeping them distinct as individuals. In shot 21, when the Verna Felton character barks, "Out with it!" Tytla animates a great, fast accent on Catty before she reveals Dumbo's fate. Catty typically oozes through her movements, so the accent really emphasizes how surprised she is by the command.

Throughout the draft, there are shots that are missing in the final film. In this sequence, it apears that shots 17-19 were done and then scrapped. They could be as simple as story panels in a leica reel or could be full colour shots. I wonder if there is Tytla animation from this film sitting somewhere in the Disney archives. I'm not aware of anything like that showing up as a DVD extra for this film.

As good as Tytla's animation is, the assistant work is lacking. If you carefully watch this sequence and pay attention to the various bandages as the elephants move, you can see that they're not nailed into place. They tend to drift. While it's not enough to bother a casual viewer, anyone with an animation background can spot the problem. My assumption is that this is another byproduct of the tight budget.

There is an inconsistency with the elephants' trunks. In shot 16 there is an elephant whose trunk is totally bandaged, yet in shot 24, when presumably all the elephants take the oath, that trunk is nowhere to be seen.

Dumbo Part 12

There's not much to say about this sequence. The big top has fallen and Casey Jr. slinks away during a stormy night. The colour, the mournful chorus and the rain all contribute to a sequence titled "Sad Casey."

Børge Ring emailed me about Milt Neil, who was last seen in this film animating Timothy Mouse.

I asked Frank Thomas what became of the fine animator Milt Neil.- "Oh," said Frank. "He went into a Danish restaurant in Hollywood. He met the owners daughter and has not left the place ever since"

Dumbo Part 11

How many elephants in a pyramid? In shot 1, there are eight elephants standing around the ringmaster. In shot 4, there are seven around the ringmaster. In shot 23, the pyramid consists of six elephants. In shot 40.1, there are eight elephants in the pyramid. In shot 41.1, there are seven, as there are in shot 51.1. All of this takes place before they trip over Dumbo and scatter, so the number should be consistent.

Hugh Fraser does excellent work in this sequence. He manages to capture the drawing and the personalities of the elephants in a manner consistent with Bill Tytla's work. He does that while dealing with multiple characters whose weight must be animated believably or the sequence loses its effectiveness. Shot 10.2. gets even more complicated with one of the elephants being swung towards and away from the camera, adding a size change to the rest of the difficulties. While Fraser has Tytla's work as a template, the animation challenges here are possibly greater than Tytla's with the same characters.

Warren Schloat, Ed Dunn, Van Kaufman and one of the Patterson brothers (the draft doesn't specify if it is Ray or Don) handle similar shots, but they don't have to deal with dialogue or personality.

Due to the action, I'm guessing that the elephants often had to be animated on a single level of paper. That makes timing and revisions extremely difficult. Timing is critical to the portrayal of weight, so I'm sure the animators had to plan these shots very carefully. Make no mistake, the pyramid and its collapse is a very difficult animation challenge.

Howard Swift handles the ringmaster for the most part and does it well. Looking at this, I wonder if he animated the sleeping ringmaster in the previous sequence. The ringmaster reacting in shot 42.1. by Ed Dunn is definitely inferior quality, with the ringmaster coming to a dead hold before dropping off screen.

John Lounsbery animates Dumbo and Timothy. His drawing is very appealing. He captures Dumbo's cuteness and panic equally well. Dumbo's stumble and fall in shot 51 is beautifully done and is worth studying single frame.

And "Out of my way, assassin!" has to be one of the greatest lines of dialogue ever.

Dumbo Part 10

Another frustrating entry, due to the lack of credits in the second half.

While Woolie Reitherman and Fred Moore have long been credited for their work on Timothy, here we have Milt Neil doing an excellent job. His Timothy is more flexible than Reitherman's and also is timed more quickly. Is Neil responsible for Timothy whispering into the ringmaster's ear? The animation does not suffer compared to either Reitherman or Moore, so if it is Neil it is evidence of another great performer brushed under the carpet.

In particular, I'd love to know who animated Timothy in shot 30. The shape of the character under the sheet doesn't resemble Timothy at all; the body shape is different and the muzzle has disappeared. It's only at the end of the shot, when Timothy's rump and tail are visible, that the character's model is taken into account.

And what about Walt Kelly? Kelly, in his post-Disney comic book and comic strip work (Pogo being the most famous) was one of the greatest cartoonists of the 20th century. (For a look at his rare adventure strip Peter Wheat, go here.) Kelly's work at Disney had a major impact on his drawing style, yet his work at Disney has received relatively little attention because so few of his shots were known for certain. Here, Kelly animates the ringmaster in silhouette, but does he do the ringmaster in bed?

My impression, based on Kelly's animation in cartoons like The Nifty Nineties, is that Disney contributed to Kelly's development far more than Kelly contributed to Disney's, but without a comprehensive knowledge of Kelly's Disney work, that judgment has to remain tentative.

Once again, I have to praise Ed Brophy's voice work as Timothy. I would also point out that his reference to "your subconscious mind" is a fairly early reference to Freud in film. Hitchcock's Spellbound wasn't until 1946. Freud died in September of 1939, so it is possible that obituaries influenced this story point.

Dumbo Part 9

This really is Woolie Reitherman's section. He animates practically everything. Ed Brophy, the voice of Timothy, gives an excellent reading, alternating between coaxing, thinking out loud, cheerleading and puzzlement. Reitherman catches all those emotions in his animation. Between Brophy and Reitherman, we get a good understanding of Timothy, a character who is warm-hearted, considerate and intelligent.

Reitherman's posing is broad and has a strong line of action, though he's fairly conservative when it comes to changing the character's shapes. As I mentioned in the last section, Reitherman's Timothy is more structural than Fred Moore's.

The sound effects in shot 10, when Dumbo vacuums the peanut away from Timothy and spits out the shells, is very funny.

The pan in shot 24.1 is on twos, another indication of the corner cutting in this low budget film. Generally, pan backgrounds are shot on ones, as twos work less well for moving backgrounds than for characters. The reason to pan on twos is to save the work of putting the animation on ones to match a smoother pan.

(In an interview in Hogan's Alley, story artist Bill Peet claimed that he redrew an entire Bill Tytla scene, making it acceptable to Walt Disney. Michael Sporn offers his thoughts on Peet's claims.)

Dumbo Part 8

This sequence begins with Mrs. Jumbo and Dumbo both sadly swaying to the music. Though separated by space, their mirror actions show that their feelings are the same; they are depressed due to their separation.

While Bill Tytla is justifiably celebrated for certain scenes in this film, particularly Dumbo's bath and the "Baby Mine" section, he doesn't receive enough attention for the other elephants. Within this film, he shows an enormous range of acting, portraying both heroes and villains, innocence and repulsiveness. The four antagonist elephants are self-righteous, insensitive and cruel. Tytla works both sides of the street, so to speak, stressing Dumbo's appeal while also showing how repellent the other elephants are. It's this combination that creates the film's emotional impact.

Because Dumbo is unjustly vilified, we immediately like Timothy for sticking up for him. His scaring the elephants is emotionally satisfying as it deflates their pride and superiority. The fact that someone so small can triumph over others so large is a foreshadowing of Dumbo's eventual success.

Timothy is voiced by Ed Brophy, an actor whose film career spanned 1920 to 1960. The earliest film I've seen him in is Buster Keaton's The Cameraman (1928) and the latest is John Ford's The Last Hurrah (1958). Brophy typically played urban wise-guys or detectives. Timothy is a different kind of role for Brophy, as it is warm and sentimental, not his typical persona.

It's interesting that Disney repeatedly used some voices over the years (Verna Felton and Sterling Holloway in this film went on to do many others) but some, like Brophy, were never used again. It's a shame, as I think that Timothy is one of Brophy's best roles and his voice was certainly distinctive and flexible enough to inspire some great animation.

Woolie Reitherman's Timothy is more solid and structural than Fred Moore's (who doesn't appear until later in the film). Reitherman has some nice business with the peanut (why no sound effect when the shell cracks in shot 8.1?), and Timothy's scare tactics are fairly reserved, better to contrast with the wild fear they inspire. Bill Shull's animation of the panic-stricken elephants in shot 38 is excellent.

I was aware that Ben Sharpsteen did some last minute editing on this film and I always assumed that the jump cut between shots 32 and 33 was the result of that. I was surprised to see on the draft that these shots were never separated by a cut away to something else. I wonder if the end of 32 or the start of 33 was truncated to speed up Dumbo's exit. I find it hard to believe that a cut this bad was intended.

(Michael Sporn has posted a Bill Tytla Dumbo run here.)

Dumbo Part 7

Once again, the principle of contrast is front and center here. The first half of the sequence is relaxed and heartwarming while the later half is tense and frightening.

The bath section is really a musical sequence, though there are no lyrics. The animation has been tied tightly to the beat and melody of the music. Certainly that was a specialty of sequence director Wilfred Jackson. Animator Bill Tytla, himself the parent of a young son at the time, perfectly captures how a parent and child tease each other and play games, both secure in their loving relationship.

One thing that makes their relationship obvious to the audience is the use of touch. Touch is a powerful way of communicating in life and on film. A caress, a pat on the back or a punch in the nose all communicate clearly. Mrs. Jumbo's trunk is there to wash her child, lift her child or caress it. Dumbo pulls on his mother's tail. The willing physical connection between the two makes their feelings for each other plain.

This sequence is crucial for making the film work emotionally. By showing how supportive Mrs. Jumbo is of her child and how happy Dumbo is in her presence, the audience feels the injustice and pain of their separation all the more.

Touch is also a major element in the latter half. Skinnay (as he is named in the draft) thinks nothing of grabbing Dumbo's ear or tail. Mrs. Jumbo understandably tries to remove her child to safety, but Skinnay won't take the hint and ends up being spanked by Mrs. Jumbo. The loving touch of the bath has given way to the aggressive touches of ridicule and revenge.

The ringmaster then uses the stinging touch of the whip and the roustabouts use the constraining touch of ropes and chains to subdue Mrs. Jumbo.

Touch isn't used as often as it should be in animation due to technical issues. A single character is the easiest to animate. Two characters sharing the screen require more planning so that their timing is complementary and the audience knows which character to look at. Generally, two characters who aren't physically interacting would be done on separate levels of paper, giving the animator the maximum freedom to alter their timings. However, whenever characters touch, either they are animated on a single level or their timing must be coordinated even more closely. That's extra work. In cgi, the animator doesn't have to worry about levels when characters touch, but does have to worry about intersections instead.

Once the ringmaster shows up, there are some striking low angle layouts to emphasize Mrs. Jumbo's size compared to the roustabouts. (And I was wrong, writing in part 5 that the roustabouts disappear from the film after raising the tent; clearly these roustabouts are also black.)

The quality of drawing suffers somewhat in the latter half of this sequence. The mob of children are pretty rough. The ringmaster and roustabouts are also not very well refined. There's a painting mistake in shot 57; the ringmaster has no white in his eyes. It's true that with fast cutting and fast action, detail matters less, but I see this as more evidence of the low budget having an effect on what's on screen. Certainly, you don't see work this rough in Fantasia.

Bill Shull does an excellent job on Mrs. Jumbo during the struggle. She's the emotional focus at this point, so it's important that she be drawn and animated well to maintain our sympathy. Note that her eyes turn red in shot 66 after Dumbo is taken away and she is chained. It's a small touch that does a nice job of stressing her increasing agitation. Prior to this, she has tried to protect Dumbo and to resist being confined. After this, she gets aggressive, tossing a roustabout into a crowd of others and dunking the ringmaster in Dumbo's washtub.

(I should point out that Michael Sporn has been featuring a lot of Dumbo pre-production artwork. Here are two segments (one and two) on the roustabouts. Here is a segment devoted to the bath sequence. Here is the "Baby Mine" sequence. Here are two sections on "Pink Elephants" (one and two) and finally, here are some random storyboards and a collection of model sheets.)

Dumbo Part 6

As I watch this film in chunks, I am struck by how much the film relies on contrast. Each sequence seems to contrast with the last and there is contrast within sequences as well. This sequence follows the raising of the big top during a thunderstorm. Where the previous sequence was dark and grey, this one is bright and colorful. The music here also contrasts with the roustabout song.

Within this sequence, there is the contrast between the excitement of the parade itself and the boredom of the animals. Those open-mouthed animals in shots 4.1 and 8 are yawning, not roaring. There's also contrast between the gorilla's seemingly ferocious demeanor in shot 7 and his embarrassment when one of the bars comes loose. Van Kaufman animated the shot. While he not well-known, he certainly gives a good performance here.

Hicks Lokey's animation of the band in shot 3 is broad, energetic and full of stretch and squash. Similarly, his animation of the clowns in shot 11 introduces them and also establishes that while they're colourful and frantic, they are not particularly funny. There are no gags taken to completion.

Alberto Becattini's listing for Lokey has no credit between Dumbo in 1941 and Lokey joining Hanna Barbera around 1958. Based on Lokey's work in this film, it's a shame that he had no further opportunities to do work of this caliber.

The final shot of Dumbo, unfortunately uncredited, is an excellent piece of character animation. Dumbo is happy to be trailing behind his mother. The crowd distracts him and he shows some nervousness. He overcomes the nervousness with a smile and then runs to catch up to his mother, tripping on his ears and landing in a puddle. Finally, he looks sad over his situation and the laughter of the crowd. This is a textbook example of what's known these days as the "gear change," where a character's thoughts are expressed through changes in facial expression.

Because the elephants in Dumbo are so well done, it's important to realize what an animation challenge they are. Characters on four legs don't have arms to help communicate. Elephants, in particular, don't have fingers. Because they are so bulky, their spines can't be used to express emotion the way that Pluto's spine can. That pretty much leaves their faces and the way their bodies move overall. The last shot here and shot 9 in sequence 3 (animated by Hugh Fraser) are both examples of the use of the head and face as the focus of elephant acting.

Dumbo Part 5

After the emotional confrontation over Dumbo's ears in the last sequence, the film takes things down a notch by following Casey Jr. as he pulls into town. There's an explicit quote from The Little Engine that Could here.

What follows is one of the most interesting sequences in Disney history, and one thing that makes it interesting is how little discussion it has provoked. While the crows later in the film have been the subject of much debate, the racial overtones of this sequence seem to have escaped notice.

Why is this sequence in the film at all? What follows it is a circle wipe to the circus parading down main street. That could easily have followed Casey Jr. pulling into town. There's a bit of humor in this sequence with Dumbo trying and failing to do the work of the older elephants, but the gags are generic, doing nothing to give us a better idea of who Dumbo is as an individual. This sequence seems to be here to make a comment on race and class. That's relatively unusual for a Disney film (though it does pop up in shorts like Who Killed Cock Robin?). This is the first Disney feature to be set in contemporary times, so this sequence is a reflection of what was on the artists' minds.

The only humans we've seen previously are in sequence 3. They are all white and wearing uniforms that clearly mark them as circus employees. When we get to this sequence, the only humans we see are black. As they are disembarking from a railroad car, we know that they are also employees, but they don't get uniforms. The roustabouts are the ones who do the heavy lifting, regardless of the weather. Why aren't the rest of the employees helping? I guess the work is beneath them. Let's not forget that the circus wintered in Florida, at the time a Jim Crow state.

The lyrics of the song are worth noting:

Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike!
We work all day, we work all night
We never learned to read or write
We're happy-hearted roustabouts

Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike!
When other folks have gone to bed
We slave until we're almost dead
We're happy-hearted roustabouts

Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike! Ugh! Hike!
We don't know when we get our pay
And when we do, we throw our pay away
(When we get our pay, we throw our money all away)
We get our pay when children say
With happy hearts, "It's circus day today"
(Then we get our pay, just watching kids on circus day)

Muscles achin'
Back near breaking
Eggs and bacon what we need (Yes, sir!)
Boss man houndin'
Keep on poundin'
For your bed and feed
There ain't no let up
Must get set up
Pull that canvas! Drive that stake!
Want to doze off
Get them clothes off
But must keep awake
Hep! Heave! Hep! Heave! Hep! Heave!
Hep! Heave! Hep! Heave! Hep! Heave!
Hep! Heave! Hep!

Swing that sledge! Sing that song!
Work and laugh the whole night long
You happy-hearted roustabouts!
Pullin', poundin', tryin', groundin'
Big top roundin' into shape
Keep on working!
Stop that shirking!
Grab that rope, you hairy ape!
Poundin'! poundin'! poundin'! poundin'!
Oh...

Note the use of the word "slave." Note also that they are illiterate and aren't paid on a regular basis. Happy-hearted? The visuals and the rest of the lyrics seem to dispute that. The song is nothing less than an extension of work songs sung in the fields by black slaves to dull the strain and boredom of work. Once this sequence is over, the roustabouts vanish from the film.

There's also an explicit parallel drawn between the elephants and the black workers. Except for one shot with camels, it appears that the elephants are the only circus animals helping to set up the big top. Shots 25 and 26 explicitly show the tigers lounging in their cage while the elephants exert themselves.

While the film is ostensibly about Dumbo, a freak who is persecuted, this sequence makes it clear that Dumbo is just an extreme case of an ongoing problem. Everyone in this film is judged on the basis of appearance, not as an individual.

One of the most interesting things to me about the early Disney features is how dangerous the environments are for the characters. We're living in a time now when entertainment is routinely made bland to protect children from upset. In 1940, the audience had weathered the greatest economic reversal in memory and was warily following a European war. The audience didn't have to be reminded that life was hard, dangerous and unfair.

Animation-wise, shot 22 by Hugh Fraser has Dumbo descending from the railroad car on a vibrating gangplank. The animation doesn't really work as Dumbo comes off as weightless. I'm sure that a higher budget would have caused the scene to be revised.

Jack Campbell's work on the roustabouts is excellent. Despite the fact that they have no faces, they do have a real presence. You can feel their exertion.

Steve Bosustow, later the head of UPA, has several shots of elephants here.

The effects animation in this sequence is excellent. The rain is well done and Disney always makes it a point to show the drops hitting surfaces. Cheaper animation generally just overlays the rain on the scene without showing the drops making contact with anything. The use of rim lighting on the elephants and the roustabouts is beautiful and the use of aerial perspective on shots like 57 and 57.1 adds a tremendous sense of depth.

Dumbo Part 4

(Revisions down below.)




It's a shame that the Dumbo draft that Hans Perk has posted (and it's all available now on his blog) is missing many animator identifications. We can guess that Art Babbitt handled the stork in this sequence, but it remains just a guess. We're fortunate, however, in knowing what Bill Tytla animated in this sequence.

This sequence keeps the audience in suspense over Mrs. Jumbo's baby until the baby is finally revealed. It's a two stage reveal, first showing us a cute elephant child and once he sneezes, showing us the ears that are his curse and finally his blessing.

The female elephants are never named onscreen, but are named in the draft. They are Matriarch, Prissy, Catty and Giggles. They are successors to the seven dwarfs in that their names describe their personalities and that they look similar, so must be differentiated by the way they move. Needless to say, Tytla is up to the task.

No explanation is ever given as to where Jumbo, Sr. is. The lack of a male role model for Dumbo or a male counterbalance to the female gossips leaves the role open for Timothy when he later enters the film.

Revision: I think that the use of space in this sequence is very important, and my previous writing about it didn't do it justice. All space on film is constructed. Even if a film is a single shot, there's a frame around it that excludes things. Once you add cutting and camera movement, a film maker is either carving up space or implying relationships by connecting things in space.

It's a cliché, and a useful one, to start a sequence with an establishing shot, showing the audience where everything is. It would be unsurprising to follow shot 11 of the stork looking into the elephant's car with a wide shot showing how many elephants are present and what their spatial relationship is. Instead, the sequence director or the layout artist made the decision to keep the space fragmented. At screen left, we have the four elephants. In the center, we have the stork and Dumbo. On the right, we have Mrs. Jumbo. Center stage is logically where the most important action occurs, and we have the stork concerned with procedure, getting a signature, speaking his poems and singing "Happy Birthday."

Once the stork is gone, Dumbo is center stage. At this point, the left and right become two poles of a magnet. At first, they have an equal attraction for Dumbo. Both sides express obvious pride. In shot 60, Dumbo looks from his mother to the others, and is equally pleased. Interestingly, it is the matriarch, not Mrs. Jumbo, who is the first to actually touch the child. Once his ears are revealed, those on screen left radically change their view.

This results in shot 62, the only shot in the entire sequence to show all the characters at once. Mrs. Jumbo slaps one of the others and removes Dumbo to her side of the screen. For the rest of the sequence, Dumbo is always shown with his mother in the frame. The only other shot with Mrs. Jumbo and the four is 77, where she pulls the pin to shut them away.

The cutting communicates the gap between Mrs. Jumbo and the others. Dumbo begins suspended between the elephants but ends connected spatially to his mother with the four excluded from their space.

The cutting is basic. There are no bravura layouts here, but clearly a lot of thought went into how this key moment -- the revelation of Dumbo's ears and the reaction of the community to it -- was to be staged. That's typical of so much of this film. It doesn't dazzle like Pinocchio or Fantasia, but within its tight budget, the creative choices are invariably effective.

Dumbo Part 3

In this sequence, we learn that the stork carrying Mrs. Jumbo's baby is running behind schedule.

The entire sequence is animated by Art Babbitt. The acting does not require flashy animation, but what's there demonstrates Babbitt's skill. During shot 1, a flying cycle, the stork's entire body stretches and squashes with the beating of his wings. The wing upstroke takes 12 frames while the downstroke takes 8 frames, giving the downstroke a definite accent that is timed to the music.

The rest of the sequence is all about weight. While we haven't seen the contents of the stork's bundle yet, we suspect that it's Mrs. Jumbo's baby and the way that Babbitt handles the weight of the bundle reinforces our belief. The bundle appears heavy when the stork drops it on the cloud. Babbitt also gets great contrast in timing in shot 3 between the stork's slow scanning of the earth below and his fast lunge to prevent the bundle from falling. That's contrasted with the slow lift, emphasizing the weight of the bundle yet again. The bit is repeated twice within the shot.

Shot 8 is another that's all about weight. For a third time, the stork has to stop the bundle from falling. There is a slow lift. The stork grabs the bundle with this beak, uses his wings to hold the bundle from the bottom and then waddles over to the edge of the cloud. That waddle is a very expressive piece of movement clearly showing how difficult it is to move this bundle. At the clouds edge, the stork leaps, and the weight of the bundle rapdily pulls him downward.

Dumbo Part 2

This sequence is pretty much just exposition. The circus is leaving its winter quarters and the animals are being loaded onto Casey Jr. However, the sequence still emphasizes the parent-child relationships. The babies we have seen delivered in the previous sequence are with their parents and all are quite happy to be together and to be boarding the train.

Shot 9, animated by Hugh Fraser, appears fairly straightforward, but actually conveys an enormous amount of story and character information. The lead elephant is as happy as all the other animals we've seen boarding the train. Then comes Mrs. Jumbo, looking depressed. She stands out from all the animals due to her contrasting emotional state and facial expression. She once again looks up at the sky, echoing movements from sequence 1, shot 27, so we know that she's still looking for her baby. The elephant behind her taps her rump. After her surprise reaction, Mrs. Jumbo looks annoyed. Don't they understand what she's going through? Her melancholy returns and the following elephant pushes her into the railroad car. These last bits of animation set up the self-centered nature of the other elephants. Their lack of support will later manifest itself in the ostracism of her child, Dumbo.

It's interesting that Casey Jr. is anthropomorphized. He (it?) is the only object in the film brought to life. The fire engine used by the clowns later in the film is not alive. This could be due to Walt Disney's own fondness for trains or could be due to the popularity of the children's story The Little Engine that Could, a story that went through various incarnations between 1906 and 1930.

The stills below are from shot 19, animated by Poul Kossoff. It's a beautiful layout, with the overlapping hills contributing to the sense of space and perspective. The movement of Casey Jr. travelling down the track does nothing to draw attention to itself, but the animation is devilishly hard. The winding path and the reduction in size need to be carefully done so that the perspective and relative sizes of the cars stay consistent. The drawing problems are of a mechanical nature, but that does nothing to lessen the effort behind them. This is one of those shots whose success renders it invisible, but don't doubt the animator's skill or perseverance.


In the comments to Part 1, Steven Hartley asked about effects animator Cy Young. I know that Young was Chinese-American. According to Alberto Becattini, Young was born in 1900, worked at the Bray Studio from 1924-1934, at Disney from 1934 to 1941 and then finished his career working for the United States Air Force until 1962. He died in 1964. Below is a two-colour cartoon Young made in 1931 of Mendelssohn's Spring Song.