Trailer
Plot summary
A traveling circus winters in Florida while storks bring babies to the animals. Mrs. Jumbo waits for hers, and in the spring a late stork catches the circus train, Casey Jr., and leaves her a baby elephant, Jumbo Jr. The herd is delighted until the baby sneezes and shows his oversized ears; they nickname him Dumbo. Mrs. Jumbo keeps him close and shields him from their mockery. Because his ears make him clumsy, Dumbo is put in a sideshow, where rowdy boys pull at him; Mrs. Jumbo spanks their leader and hurls hay bales, and the ringmaster's men restrain her. The elephants blame Dumbo. Timothy, a circus mouse, scares them off and befriends the baby, planning to make him a star.
Cast
- Margaret Wrightas Casey Jr. (voice) (uncredited)
- Noreen Gammillas Catty the Elephant (voice) (uncredited)
- Dorothy Scottas Giddy the Elephant (voice) (uncredited)
- Jim Carmichaelas Crow (voice) (uncredited)
- Hall Johnsonas Deacon Crow (voice) (uncredited)
Show all 20 cast
- Malcolm Huttonas Skinny (voice) (uncredited)
- Harold Manleyas Boy (voice) (uncredited)
- Hall Johnson Choiras Choral Sounds (uncredited)
- The King's Menas Choral Effects (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dumbo (1941)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Some viewers read the clowns' demand for a raise from their boss as a reference to the Disney animators who went on strike in 1941 while the film was being made, demanding higher pay from Walt himself; animator and strike organizer Art Babbitt denied it, saying he had been assigned the sequence before the strike.
- The lead crow was originally named 'Jim Crow' after the pre-Civil-War minstrel character whose name had become a byword for racial segregation laws; Disney renamed him 'Dandy Crow' in the 1950s to try to avoid controversy.
- In the Pink Elephants sequence, the black background is achieved by painting the animation cels themselves black, while the elephants are left fully transparent so the colorful gradations of the real background show through them.
- When distributor RKO asked Walt Disney to pad the 64-minute film with an extra ten minutes, Disney refused, saying stretching it further would cost another half a million dollars he could not afford.
- Dumbo cost only $950,000 to produce, half the cost of Snow White, less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio, and certainly less than the expensive Fantasia.
- In 2021, Disney restricted Dumbo to viewers aged seven and older on Disney+, citing the crow characters' resemblance to racist minstrel-show depictions.
