Peter Behn

Bambi is a 1942 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The fifth Disney animated feature film, it is based on the 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Austrian author and hunter Felix Salten. The film was produced by Walt Disney and directed by David Hand and a team of sequence directors. The main characters are Bambi, a white-tailed deer; his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother); his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit); and Flower (a skunk); and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. In the original book, Bambi was a roe deer, a species native to Europe; but Disney decided to base the character on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California. Illustrator Maurice "Jake" Day convinced Disney that the mule deer had large "mule-like" ears and were more common to western North America; but that the white-tail deer was more recognized throughout America. The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound (Sam Slyfield), Best Song (for "Love Is a Song" sung by Donald Novis) and Original Music Score.