50 Fun Facts About Bambi

In Bambi, what is the first word the newborn fawn learns to say?

Bird. Thumper coaches him until he shouts it, and the proud fawn promptly calls a passing butterfly a bird as well.

Bambi held its world premiere in August 1942 not in America but in which city?

London. Bambi opened there days before its American release, and with a war on its first run earned far less than Disney had hoped.

MGM's Sidney Franklin bought the Bambi rights in 1933 hoping to make what, before urging Disney to animate it?

A live-action film. He soon judged an all-animal cast too hard to shoot, passed the idea to Walt Disney and stayed on as an adviser; the finished picture is dedicated to him.

Disney first planned Bambi as its second animated feature, but which film took that slot instead?

Pinocchio. Animators struggled to draw believable deer and to lighten the novel's grim story, so Bambi was postponed and finally arrived as the studio's fifth feature.

Salten's Bambi was a European roe deer, so which American species did Disney make him instead?

White-tailed deer. Roe deer are a European species, so Disney moved the story to American woods and sent artist Maurice 'Jake' Day to photograph the forests of Maine for reference.

What were the two live fawns kept at the Disney studio as models for Bambi's animators called?

Bambi and Faline. The donated pair were studied alongside zoo trips and lectures from animal experts, because Walt wanted deer that moved like real animals.

Which artist shaped Bambi's forest look but was credited only as a background artist?

Tyrus Wong. He spent only three years at Disney, yet his paintings set the colour schemes and the appearance of the forest for the whole film; the studio named him a Disney Legend in 2001.

Which character, a striped skunk, is one of Bambi's two best friends?

Flower. Bambi, still learning to talk, calls the skunk a 'pretty flower', and the bashful skunk says he can call him that if he wants to.

In Bambi, how does Thumper describe the frozen pond before coaxing the fawn onto the ice?

The water's stiff. Thumper skates out to prove it, then coaches the sprawling fawn to 'watch both ends at the same time'.

Who first taught Thumper the rule his mother makes him recite, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all'?

His father. When Thumper says the newborn prince 'doesn't walk very good', his mother asks what his father told him that morning, and he sheepishly recites it.

Disney's Thumper was adapted from which character in Salten's novel?

Friend Hare. In the book he is a gentle, anxious adult whose wife is killed in the hunt; Disney recast him as a cheeky child and expanded the part.

Donnie Dunagan, the voice of young Bambi, kept the role secret for decades while serving where?

The Marine Corps. He fought in Vietnam and retired as a major, and told nobody about the film because he didn't want his recruits calling him 'Major Bambi'.

What word does Friend Owl use to warn the young animals about falling in love in springtime?

Twitterpated. Bambi and his two friends swear it will never happen to them, and within minutes each has fallen for the first female he meets.

What do the forest animals call the unseen killer of Bambi's mother?

Man. He is known only by his gunshots, yet the American Film Institute ranked him 20th among the greatest screen villains.

How does the film present the death of Bambi's mother?

Off screen. Shots ring out as the pair run, and only when the fawn reaches the thicket alone does the Great Prince tell him his mother can't be with him any more.

What starts the forest fire at the climax of Bambi?

A campfire. It gets out of control at the camp, and the Great Prince has to urge his son to his feet so the two can outrun the flames.

'Little April Shower' is better remembered, but which Bambi ballad earned the film's Oscar nomination for Best Song?

Love Is a Song. It lost the Oscar to 'White Christmas', and with its score and sound nominations also beaten, Bambi left the ceremony empty-handed.

Which Disney live-action comedy was also loosely based on a Felix Salten novel?

The Shaggy Dog. Its boy-turns-into-a-sheepdog plot came from Salten's The Hound of Florence, after Bambi led Walt Disney to buy up more of the author's books.

Outdoor Life's editor wired Disney that shooting a doe in spring was illegal, urging what addition to Bambi?

A foreword calling it fantasy. The hunting magazine's editor had just seen a preview; when Disney declined, his editorial branded Bambi 'the worst insult ever offered' to American sportsmen.

Which musician has credited the death of Bambi's mother for his initial interest in animal rights?

Paul McCartney. He told a schools newspaper in 2005 that the shooting made him 'grow up thinking hunting isn't cool', and he went on to campaign against hunting and fur.

Which film topped the AFI's 2008 list of the greatest animated films, on which Bambi came third?

Snow White. The top three places all went to films Walt Disney made before 1943, so Bambi, a box-office letdown in its day, outranked every animated film made since.

Nazi Germany banned Salten's Bambi after reading the deer's story as an allegory of what?

The persecution of Jews. Salten, a Jewish writer in Vienna, saw his books burned, and after Germany annexed Austria in 1938 he moved to Switzerland, where he spent his last years.

Who produced the first English translation of Bambi in 1928, later becoming notorious for other reasons?

Whittaker Chambers. He was soon spying for the Soviets, yet his version remained the only English Bambi available for almost a century.

Some critics call Salten's Bambi one of the first novels of what kind?

Environmental. Salten, himself a keen hunter, wrote the forest from the animals' side, where humans appear only as 'He', a danger they cannot understand.

Where does the story of Bambi II (2006) fall in relation to the original film?

Midway through it. The follow-up fills the gap after the fawn is orphaned: the Great Prince first plans to hand him to a foster doe, then warms to raising his son himself.

Who voices the Great Prince of the Forest in Bambi II?

Patrick Stewart. The Great Prince, a remote figure in 1942, gets far more to do in the follow-up, and Variety praised Stewart's mix of gravitas and melancholy.

In Marv Newland's 1969 cult cartoon short, a grazing Bambi is flattened by which movie monster?

Godzilla. The student film is a single joke: long opening credits roll over a peaceful fawn, then one giant foot comes down and the closing credits begin.

Which company distributed Bambi to theatres in 1942?

RKO Radio Pictures. RKO had released Disney's features since 1937, until Walt founded his own distributor, Buena Vista, in 1953 and took the business in-house.

Bambi and Thumper are the names of two acrobatic bodyguards who fight which screen hero in a 1971 film?

James Bond. In Diamonds Are Forever the two acrobats give Sean Connery's 007 a thorough beating at a desert hideaway before he defeats them and frees their captive.

Bambi's rival for the doe's affections, seen in both films, is a young buck named what?

Ronno. The name comes from Salten's novel, where he is an older stag who limps from a bullet wound and loves to tell how he got away on three legs.

With Salten's novel out of US copyright, a 2025 British film retold Bambi in which genre?

Horror. In Bambi: The Reckoning the deer hunts people; its makers turn children's classics into low-budget slashers once the books are free to use.

Near the end of Bambi, what happens to the grown hero as he leaps a ravine to escape the dogs?

He is shot. Hit in mid-leap, he lies stunned while the forest fire spreads, until the Great Prince arrives and urges him to get up and run.

What hobby did the artist behind Bambi's forest look take up in retirement near Santa Monica Pier?

Kite making. After leaving film work he built elaborate animal kites, centipedes, pandas and butterflies among them, and flew them on the beach one Saturday a month.

Sterling Holloway, heard in Bambi as one of the grown-up friends, later became the voice of which Disney bear?

Winnie the Pooh. Walt Disney first hired Holloway for his odd, raspy tenor as the stork in Dumbo, then used him in Bambi, long before the bear made him famous.

Cammie King, the voice of the young Faline, had played a doomed child in which 1939 film?

Gone with the Wind. She played Bonnie Blue Butler, voiced Faline soon after and then quit the movie business, later joking, 'I peaked at five.'

Which place does Bambi's mother teach him never to rush into without checking for danger?

The meadow. Out there, she tells him, the deer are unprotected, with no trees or bushes to hide them, and it is on the meadow that she is later shot.

One chapter of Salten's Bambi, storyboarded by Disney but cut, is a conversation between two what?

Autumn leaves. The last two leaves on an oak wonder why they must fall and what comes after; Disney found talking leaves didn't suit the film and kept only a shot of two leaves drifting down.

Bambi II was produced by which arm of Disney, working out of Australia?

Disneytoon Studios. Its Sydney studio finished the film under notice: Disney had announced in July 2005 that the Australian operation would close in mid-2006.

How had the English translation of Salten's Bambi fared in the years before Disney's film?

It was a bestseller. The translation sold about 650,000 copies in a dozen years, yet the film grew so dominant that it left both the book and its author obscure.

Which part of the clover does Thumper tell Bambi is 'the good stuff'?

The blossoms. His mother catches him skipping the greens and makes him recite that 'eating greens is a special treat', to which he whispers that it 'sure is awful stuff to eat'.

Disney lent Bambi to the US Forest Service's posters for only a year, so which mascot took over?

Smokey Bear. The Bambi poster proved that an animal could sell fire prevention, so when the loan ran out the Forest Service created a bear it could use for good.

In Salten's novel, how is the doe Bambi eventually mates with related to him?

She is his cousin. Faline is Aunt Ena's daughter, and her sickly twin brother Gobo, left out of the film, vanishes during the hunt that kills Bambi's mother.

In 2018 a Missouri judge ordered a jailed deer poacher to watch Bambi how often during his one-year sentence?

Every month. The order, at least one viewing a month, came in one of Missouri's biggest poaching cases: hundreds of deer killed for their heads, the bodies left to rot.

In Bambi II, what can Bambi's young rival do that he never did in the 1942 film?

Speak. A silent brawler in 1942, he gets lines at last in the follow-up, where he jeers that Bambi sounds like a girl's name.

Alexander Gould, who voiced the fawn in Bambi II, was already known as the voice of which young Pixar hero?

Nemo. By the 2016 sequel Finding Dory Gould's voice had broken, so another boy played the fish and he took a bit part instead.

In 1994 Disney allowed Bambi to be dubbed into which Native American language?

Arapaho. Students and staff of Wyoming Indian Schools on the Wind River Reservation voiced the dialogue to help keep the language alive, while the songs stayed in English.

In Salten's novel, the tame deer Gobo comes home with a stripe of worn hair on his neck, left by what?

A collar. Gobo calls it 'His collar' and an honour to wear (the first English translation says halter); trusting humans completely, he later strolls up to one and is shot.

In the final scene of Bambi, Faline appears before the forest animals with what?

Twin fawns. His two friends, now fathers themselves, come to admire them while Bambi watches from a crag beside the old Prince, whose place he then takes.

At the end of Salten's novel, what does the old Prince show Bambi to prove that humans are not all-powerful?

A dead man. The deer had feared 'He' as a kind of god, and the sight teaches the ageing Bambi that there is a power above humans too, after which the old Prince goes off to die.

In 2020 Disney announced a Bambi remake as a 'companion piece' to The Jungle Book and which 2019 photorealistic remake?

The Lion King. That film had just earned more than $1.6 billion with computer-made animals that look filmed, which is why Disney lined up Bambi's forest for the same treatment.