August 8 - Bambi

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1942, the Walt Disney Studio’s fifth animated feature, Bambi, had its world premiere in the midst of a war-torn London, England. In 1923, an Austrian novelist, Felix Salten, published one of the forerunners to environmental literature, Bambi, A Life in the Woods. The book about a buck who grows up in the forest, loses his mother, learns a few things from his father and avoids predatory hunters quickly became a bestseller and was almost instantly considered a classic. MGM purchased the film rights to Felix’s book in 1933, intending to make a live action adaptation of it. They spent four years trying to figure out how that would work without ever coming to a conclusion. In April 1937, MGM sold the rights to Walt Disney, who intended to turn Bambi into his studio’s second animated feature. That didn’t happen.

Disney ran into their own set of adaptation problems almost immediately. The book was written with an adult audience in mind; its dark themes and message were almost the opposite of the usual light and frothy children’s fare the studio produced. The story also lent itself to an almost infinite array of interpretations and subplots. The Story Department might spend weeks developing a sequence involving Bambi stepping on an ant hill and what happens to the colony in the aftermath before realizing none of that has anything to do with the central story and scrapping the whole thing. Compounding all of the story problems: the animators were finding deer to be extremely hard to draw realistically and consistently, especially their skinny little legs. Walt still believed that Bambi was worth doing, and doing right, but as time went by, the film slipped in the studio’s release order from second to third, then from third to fourth.

Image courtesy animationsource.org

By July 1940, the story issues had all been worked out. The animators had visited the Los Angeles Zoo multiple times to study deer and a pair of fawns had even been housed at the studio for a while for observational purposes. In fact, the work the animators put in on studying all kinds of animals, not just deer, would push the envelope on what kinds of characters and styles of animation the studio did for decades to come. Work on Bambi was finally ready to begin in earnest. When the last cell slid into place two years later, though, the world’s market for movies was a much different place.

Europe had already been embroiled in World War II for several months before production ramped up on Bambi. As a result, most of that continent’s market was closed off to American (or any other) movie studios. Pinocchio and Fantasia didn’t enjoy the same wide distribution as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and both lost money. Dumbo managed to recoup some of those losses only because it cost nearly a third less to produce than Pinocchio. In spite of the fact that Bambi cost almost $100,000 less than Dumbo to make (a huge chunk of change in those days), it too lost money in a war-time economy that now included the United States.

Image courtesy nal.usda.gov

Bambi received mixed reviews when it was initially released. Hunters hated it, of course, but there were a number of critics who bemoaned the fact that the film was too realistic in its depiction of animals. They felt that Disney was overreaching himself by removing the fantasy element. Even Walt’s own daughter, Diane, was critical. When she wanted to know why Bambi’s mother had to die, Walt said he was only following the book. Her response? You’ve changed stories before, dad. You’re Walt Disney. You can do whatever you want. Since those early days, however, Bambi has come to be seen for the masterpiece that it is. It’s listed at #3 on the American Film Institute’s list of the Top 10 Animated Films of All Time and was nominated for their list of the best 100 films. And the character of Man, who is never actually seen in the movie, came in at #20 on AFI’s list of best villains.

In 2006, the National Forest service began using footage from Bambi in their fire prevention public service announcements. It was a natural fit but wasn’t the first time that had happened. Right after the film was released, Disney allowed characters from Bambi to be used for the same purpose, but only for one year. At the end of that term, the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed which left the government in a bit of a bind. They managed to rally, though, creating the character of Smokey the Bear to take Bambi’s place.

January 4 - Sterling Holloway

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On this day, in 1905, Sterling Prince Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia. The son of the town grocer (and later mayor), Sterling went to the Georgia Military Academy for his primary schooling. He graduated at the age of 15 and almost immediately traveled to New York City to begin attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there he began a lifelong friendship with Spencer Tracy. After graduating a second time, Sterling traveled the country doing vaudeville acts interspersed with walk-on parts on Broadway whenever he was in New York.

In 1926, Sterling moved to Hollywood to try his luck in motion pictures. His high pitched voice and shock of red hair usually meant some sort of comedic sidekick role for him, but he didn't mind. Over the next five decades, he would appear in more than 150 films. It started with The Battling Kangaroo, a silent picture. A couple of years later, when talkies came along, many of the actors in Tinsel Town couldn't make the transition. Not only did Sterling make the leap but sound actually made him more popular. Over the years, he worked alongside the likes of Fred McMurray, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Bing Crosby, to drop just a few names.

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When World War II hit, Sterling stepped right up, joining the United States Army in 1942 as an old man of 37. He was assigned to special forces where he developed a show, Hey Rookie, that ran for nine months and raised over $350,000 for the Army Relief Fund. At the end of the war, he played a rare dramatic role in the movie A Walk in the Sun, as a reluctant medic, earning quite a bit of critical praise in the process.

With his distinctive voice, and nearly ubiquitous presence in Hollywood, it didn't take long for Sterling to show up on Walt Disney's radar. In the mid thirties, Sterling was actually tested for the role of Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a role he ultimately lost to Pinto Colvig. He made his first appearance for Disney in 1941 as Mr. Stork in Dumbo. From there, he became a Disney staple. When I met Dave Smith, the head Disney archivist, once I asked him who had done the most voices in Disney films. His reply was that with all the little, mostly uncredited voices we may never know but that when it came to major roles, it was Sterling Holloway, hands down.

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Over the next few decades, Sterling would play a variety of characters for Disney, from the villainous to the downright cuddly. He provided the voice for Adult Flower in Bambi in 1942. Two years later he narrated the Pablo, the Cold Blooded Penguin section of The Three Caballeros. Two years after that, he narrated the Peter and the Wolf sequence in Make Mine Music. In 1951, Sterling was the Cheshire Cat for Alice in Wonderland, 1967 brought us Kaa in The Jungle Book and 1970 found him as Roquefort the mouse in The Aristocats.

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But it was Sterling's last series of roles (just one role but in a series of films) for Disney that he is not only best known for, but was his favorite to perform. I am, of course, talking about that tubby little cubby, Winnie the Pooh. Starting with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree in 1966, Sterling also did Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). All three of those shorts were later combined into the studio's 22nd feature film called The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh released in 1977.

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In addition to his voice work in Disney features, Sterling also narrated a bunch of shorts, including The Little House, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, and the role of Amos Mouse in Ben and Me. His final role with the company was actually a live action one, moonshiner Hobe Carpenter in the 1977 comedy Thunder and Lightning, starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.

Image lifted from gettyimages.com

Outside of Disney, Sterling had smoothly made the transition to television starting in the Fifties. He had recurring roles on Superman, The Andy Griffith Show and The Life of Riley as well as guest spots on everything from The Untouchables to Gilligan's Island to Moonlighting. He also landed several contracts for commercials, hawking wares ranging from Puppy Chow to Libby's baked beans. He was also the voice of Woodsy the Owl in Forest Service PSAs during the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1991, Sterling was named an official Disney Legend, the first person to receive the award for voice work. At the ceremony, the 86 year old was helped to the stage by none other than Winnie the Pooh himself. He would pass away a little over a year later on November 22, 1992 from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California.