Six-year-old Peter Behn auditioned with several other children for the voice roles of Mother Rabbit's children. When Behn said the line (in reference to Bambi), "Did the young prince fall down?", a casting director who was watching the audition in another room shouted, "Get that kid out of here! He can't act!" However, the Disney animators who heard the audition tape loved the sound of Behn's voice. Behn was called back to the studio, and the character of Thumper was created largely based on his vocal performance.
Some scenes of woodland creatures and the forest fire are unused footage from Pinocchio.
The character of Thumper (called Bobo in the first draft) does not appear in Felix Salten's original novel. He was added by Walt Disney to bring some much-needed comic relief to the script.
The Disney studios were walking a very precarious line financially, and were constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. A studio strike and, of course, the outbreak of war - which deprived them of their lucrative European market - didn't help matters. Disney was able to secure another loan from the Bank of America, but when both Pinocchio and Fantasia failed at the box office, a lot was riding on Bambi to be a success.
The fifth animated Disney feature.
The first and one of the few Disney features where the songs were not sung by any of the film's characters. Each song was either sung off screen by a soloist or a choir.
The hunter who shoots Bambi's mother was originally going to be included as a character in the movie. But, for a man to shoot the mother of the hero, he would have to be clearly cruel and villainous for children to accept him. Since Walt Disney didn't want to be seen as maligning hunters as evil, the character was cut and never shown in the final version of the film.
The last film for Otis Harlan (the voice of "Mr. Mole"), who died in 1940. Harlan had previously appeared as "Happy the Dwarf" in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The look of the film was inspired by the work of Tyrus Wong, a Chinese animator whose sketches used softened backgrounds. This meant that the focus was squarely on the beautifully drawn animals.
The Maine Development Commission sent two fawns, appropriately named Bambi and Faline, to the Disney studio, to be kept as pets while artists studied their movements and behavior. When they were fully grown, they were released in nearby Griffith Park. Other animals, such as skunks and squirrels, were kept in the Disney zoo for similar purposes.
The movie is responsible for the so-called "Bambi-confusion" ("Bambi-Irrtum") in German-speaking countries. In the book Bambi is a roe-deer (German: Reh). But since there are no roe-deers in the US, Walt Disney changed Bambi's appearance to that of a white-tailed deer, which in turn is unknown in Europe. However, both the original German-dubbed version from 1950 and the re-dubbing from 1970 stuck to the original Felix Salten version and called Bambi a roe-deer instead of a stag (German: Hirsch), which would be a lot more correct. Since the appearance of Bambi's father and Bambi in adult life resemble a red-deer (which is common in Europe) a lot closer than an adult roe-deer, kids in German-speaking regions for the past 60 years have come to believe that a Reh (roe-deer) is the younger version of a (Rot) Hirsch (Red deer). This confusion has never really been cleared up for many so that this is now even taught to children by their parents who saw the movie when they were young.
The movie lost money at the box office for the first run, but began to recoup its considerable cost (over $2,000,000) during the 1947 re-release.
The movie was set for a world premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on 30 July 1942, but was delayed due to the extended run of Mrs. Miniver.
The opening multi-plane shot is one of Disney's biggest use of the multi-plane. It had been used on scenes in The Old Mill, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo.
The world premiere of this film was scheduled to be in the tiny Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta, Maine, USA. Maurice Day, an animator with Disney, brought Felix Salten's book to the attention of Walt Disney, and when Walt decided to make the movie he thanked Maurice by planning to hold the premiere in Maurice's home town. However, the State of Maine objected, fearing that hunters would be offended by the film, and the actual world premiere was elsewhere.
There are approximately only 1,000 words of dialog throughout the entire film.
To design Bambi's scenes, Walt Disney traveled to Argentina in 1941, and there he was inspired in the forests of Neuquén's province, southwest of Argentina.
Two asteroids have been named after Bambi and Thumper.
Unusually for the time, Walt Disney insisted on children providing the voices for the animals when they were young, instead of using adults mimicking youngsters.