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Disney's Dumbo
Dumbo was original story was only eight drawings and a few lines
of text. Walt Disney gave it to the studio's animators to see what
they could do with it. He had planned to make it a half hour special
and let his top animators work on Bambi. Once he saw how well the
artists were handling the project he said it might make a good feature
film. He though it might make the studio a little money.
And it did.
In fact it was the only Disney film to make any money until Cinderella.
Still Walt felt that Bambi was going to be the big money maker
and gave the team working on Dumbo a very small budget. They were
only allowed a very few special effects. The script spent only six
months in development and one year in animation.
Many felt that Dumbo was too short to be a full feature film (it's
run time is only 64 minutes and is the shortest film in Disney history)
and wanted an additional ten minutes added. Since Walt had only
planned it to be a thirty minute short outright refused saying,
"No, that's as far as I can stretch it. You can stretch a thing
so far and then it won't hold. This picture is right as it is."
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