Dumbo
1941 animated film directed by Ben Sharpsteen
Dumbo is a 1941 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, and illustrated by Helen Durney for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book").
The main character is Jumbo Jr., an elephant who is ridiculed for his oversized ears and mockingly nicknamed "Dumbo", but in fact he is capable of flying by using his ears as wings. Throughout most of the film, his only true friend, aside from his mother, is a mouse named Timothy – a relationship parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.
Produced to recoup the financial losses of both Pinocchio and Fantasia, Dumbo was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy. At 64 minutes, it is one of the studio's shortest animated features. Sound was recorded conventionally using the RCA System. One voice was synthesized using the Sonovox system, but it too was recorded using the RCA System.
Dumbo was released on October 23, 1941, where it was met with critical acclaim for its story, humor, visuals, and music. The film was later criticized for stereotyping of black people.
“Dumbo” enters the record as 1941 animated film directed by Ben Sharpsteen. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dumbo, animated and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dumbo” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dumbo, animated and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q40895. VIAF identifies the subject as 1410155105808776320008. The Library of Congress control number is n2002066095. 7 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 7 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dumbo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.